While Sayuri values him for his loyalty, he is inflexible, ill-tempered, and prone to harsh, cutting words. I wonder if Iwasaki was still the perfect geisha, keeping her story uplifting, and glossing over the aspects that could make her company uncomfortable. Here we reach the heart of Mrs Iwasaki's complaint - the custom known as mizuage, which is crucial to the plot of Memoirs. Hatsumomo then convinces Chiyo to try to escape and find her sister, and whilst trying to escape, Chiyo injures herself and is told she’ll never have a chance at becoming a geisha again. As a result of her jealousy and fear of Sayuri, Hatsumomo loses confidence in her abilities and starts drinking unhealthily.

Since its publication in 1997, Memoirs has been translated into 21 languages and sold four million copies in English alone. I began to feel like a tree whose roots had at last broken into the rich, wet soil deep beneath the surface. Memoirs of a Geisha is an American novel, and as such the attempt at West does East, especially on the complex and delicate subject of the geisha, is compelling, interesting, but also heavy-handed and ultimately ineffective (even more so in the case of the film). Gong Li had a few awkward lines at the beginning, and Ziyi had more and is the one who had to try the hardest, but both pulled off admirably and didn't hurt their performances in the process.Back in Massachusetts, where he is working on a second novel, Golden appears bewildered by his former friend's anger. It feels forced and weird and and it's very annoying, as it slows down the pacing (which is already very slow) and frequently interrupts the narrator's flow of thoughts. Mother adopts Sayuri, and Hatsumomo begins a downward spiral into alcoholism before being thrown out of the okiya. I don´t get, but it seems quite probable that there is something deep lurking in the big history meta background. It was also made into a film, which I’ve been avoiding, knowing that I wanted to read the book first.

To pay off Sayuri’s debt and win the wager with Mother, Mameha sets up an auction for Sayuri’s mizuage (virginity).However, all of those complains are secondary, in my view, to the major complain above, and should be come obvious to the reader. Memoirs of a Geisha‘ by Arthur Golden opens in 1929 in a small fishing village where Chiyo Sakamoto (Sayuri), her older sister, and her father live. Golden interviewed a retired geisha by the name of Mineko Iwasaki who later sued him for using too much of her life story to produce this book. Sayuri relocates to New York City and opens her own small tea house for entertaining Japanese men on business in the United States.