Essay on Sayo Masuda’s Autobiography of a Geisha - 765 Words

Sayo Masuda’s Autobiography of a Geisha Autobiography of a Geisha was originally written for a memoir competition run by the Japanese magazine Housewife’s Companion. Sayo Masuda wrote and submitted her manuscript in hopes of winning the monetary prize offered. She won second place in the competition and came to the attention of an editor who helped her expand her story and publish it as a book. Riding on the wave of interest stirred by Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, G. G. Rowley translated Sayo Masuda’s tale for the American market. Rowley did an excellent job of capturing Masuda’s voice in his translation. If English had been Masuda’s native language, the result might easily have been Rowley’s translation. Masuda’s tale†¦show more content†¦Readers will also come away with an understanding of the hot-spring geisha’s life, but caution should be taken. It is easy, as many critics have done, to presume that Masuda’s tale is the unvarnished truth about the entire geisha world, rather than merely the unvarnished truth about a part of it. Reviewer Kimberly Shearer Palmer wrote that Autobiography of a Geisha â€Å"resolves the ambiguity over whether or not geisha are prostitutes†¦ [Masuda] leaves little doubt in the reader’s mind that even the most talented geisha are forced to sleep with men for money, a fact glossed over in many accounts of the profession.† (14). Palmer leaves little doubt in the minds of those who read her review that she takes M asuda’s experiences of geisha life as true for all classes of geisha, regarding sources such as Mineko Iwasaki’s Geisha, A Life as tainted. Many other reviewers follow in the same vein, calling reports of higher-class geisha’s lives â€Å"romanticized† (Napier) and â€Å"Hollywood version[s]† (Gavin). Perhaps these attitudes stem from a culture clash which prevents many Americans from understanding the differences between Japanese prostitutes and geisha, and the gradations within the flower and willow world. The tendency seems to be to lump all geisha together with the term â€Å"prostitute,† an attitude which is all too eager to use Masuda’s biography to support generalized, culturally skewed assumptions about geisha. Kirkus Reviews gets it right inShow MoreRelatedThe Geisha1551 Words   |  6 PagesGeisha The geisha has been the subject of innumerable books and films focusing on the myth of the profession and the culture in which she represented. Various portrayals of the geisha have focused on different aspects of their lifestyle and the different versions also have varying degrees of accuracy in their depictions. In three different films and one book, four different groups try to explain exactly what it was like for people who lived as geishas or alongside these women. Some versions of