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Autobiography of a Geisha, by Sayo Masuda
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The glamorous world of big-city geisha is familiar to many readers, but little has been written of the life of hardship and pain led by the hot-springs-resort geisha. Indentured to geisha houses by families in desperate poverty, deprived of freedom and identity, these young women lived in a world of sex for sale, unadorned by the trappings of wealth and celebrity.
Sayo Masuda has written the first full-length autobiography of a former hot-springs-resort geisha. Masuda was sent to work as a nursemaid at the age of six and then was sold to a geisha house at the age of twelve. In keeping with tradition, she first worked as a servant while training in the arts of dance, song, shamisen, and drum. In 1940, aged sixteen, she made her debut as a geisha.
Autobiography of a Geisha chronicles the harsh life in the geisha house from which Masuda and her "sisters" worked. They were routinely expected to engage in sex for payment, and Masuda's memoir contains a grim account of a geisha's slow death from untreated venereal disease. Upon completion of their indenture, geisha could be left with no means of making a living. Marriage sometimes meant rescue, but the best that most geisha could hope for was to become a man's mistress.
Masuda also tells of her life after leaving the geisha house, painting a vivid panorama of the grinding poverty of the rural poor in wartime Japan. As she eked out an existence on the margins of Japanese society, earning money in odd jobs and hard labor―even falling in with Korean gangsters―Masuda experienced first hand the anguish and the fortitude of prostitutes, gangster mistresses, black-market traders, and abandoned mothers struggling to survive in postwar Japan.
Happiness was always short-lived for Masuda, but she remained compassionate and did what she could to help others; indeed, in sharing her story, she hoped that others might not suffer as she had. Although barely able to write, her years of training in the arts of entertaining made her an accomplished storyteller, and Autobiography of a Geisha is as remarkable for its wit and humor as for its unromanticized candor. It is the superbly told tale of a woman whom fortune never favored yet never defeated.
- Sales Rank: #238640 in Books
- Published on: 2005-06-01
- Released on: 2005-07-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x .49" w x 5.50" l, .66 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 216 pages
Amazon.com Review
Sayo Masuda’s Autobiography of a Geisha offers a story of unremitting hardship faced by a hot-springs geisha, a virtual indentured sex-slave in pre-World War II Japan.
Born in 1925, Masuda began work as a nursemaid at age 5 and suffered a childhood of emotional and material poverty. She was then sold to the Takenoya geisha house in Upper Suwa at age 12. While her food and clothing were provided for by Takenoya, she was subject to constant verbal abuse as an apprentice. At one point, she was heaved down the stairs by her "Mother" (the name she uses for the proprietor of the geisha house) and nearly lost a leg. During her recovery, she attempted suicide and further injured herself.
Eventually, Masuda mastered the art of seduction as a geisha. The middle portion of the narrative is taken up with stories of her successful campaign for a danna (patron), of her brother’s tragic suicide, and of her star-crossed love affair with a Japanese politician.
Autobiography of a Geisha, translated for the first time into English by G. G. Rowley, was published in Japan in 1957 and has been in print in Japan steadily ever since. The tale is rendered in a simple English prose to reflect Masuda’s own, untrained style (she did not have schooling and she only learned to write hiragana script later in life). For Western readers, Masuda’s autobiography is a gift: a glimpse into the dark reality behind one of the most shrouded institutions in Japanese culture. --Patrick O’Kelley
From Publishers Weekly
Masuda's account of being a geisha in rural Japan at a hot springs resort is at once intriguing and heartbreaking. There is nothing idyllic in her description of geisha training or life between the world wars. Born in 1925, Masuda was sent to work for a wealthy landowner when she was five. At 12, she was sold to a geisha house for about 30 yen, the price of a bag of rice. During those years, Masuda writes, "I wasn't even able to wonder why I didn't have any parents or why I should be the only one who was tormented. If you ask me what I did know then, it was only that hunger was painful and human beings were terrifying." Originally published in Japan in 1957, where it is still in print, this book grew out of an article that Masuda, who didn't learn to read and write until she was in her 20s, submitted for a contest in Housewife's Companion magazine. Her picaresque adventures as a geisha, then mistress, factory worker, gang moll and caretaker for her young brother offer an impassioned plea for valuing children. "Never give birth to children thoughtlessly!" she writes. "That is why, stroke by faltering stroke, I've written all this down."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The geisha profession has been romanticized in literature, but Masuda exposes the underside of the geisha lifestyle. Masuda was sold to a geisha house in the hot-spring resort town of Suwa, far from the teahouses of Kyoto. Though she is educated at the geisha house, the housemother there is demanding and cruel. When Masuda interferes to help her friend Karuta, the only geisha who befriends her, the housemother throws her down the stairs for her troubles. Most of the other geishas are no kinder to her--they call her "low" because they believe her to be stupid. Her virginity is sold to a man known as Cockeye, who is three times her age. Cockeye eventually buys her contract from the geisha house, but when Masuda finds herself in love with a dashing soldier, she risks being banished from Cockeye's house to a life of even more uncertainty. Originally written in 1957 and now translated into English for the first time by Rowley, Masuda's memoir is a must-read for those interested in the lives of geishas. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
I loved it.
By Alison Rasmussen
An amazing autobiography, especially after reading several other books about geisha. If you've read Memoirs of a Geisha, this might be a shocking read for you. The story of this woman made me cry and laugh--I could hardly believe it was real. I wondered (just a little) if Arthur Golden had also spoken to the author as well as Mineko Iwasaki before writing his Memoirs. Ms Masuda writes her heartbreaking story in a personal way that I couldn't help feel her presence. I really loved this book.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A "Mini-Autobiography"
By JuJuBeans
Anyone who has read "Geisha, A Life" by Mineko Iwasaki probably knows how few autobiographies of Geisha exist in the world. Where Iwasaki's autobiography was that of a high-class geisha heavily invested in her art and also an atotori (one who will inherit the okiya after her mother), this autobiography is a stark contrast.
Sayo Masuda was an illegitimate child sold into the Hot-spring Geisha business like a slave. Hot Spring Geisha are different than their city-geisha counterparts in that sexual relations are an expectation. Masuda was disliked by many people right from the beginning and her journey to find acceptance and meaning in the world she was thrust into was full of hardship and heartbreak.
Overall, I would recommend Mineko Iwasaki's autobiography over this one if a person has an interest in learning about the day-to-day aspects about becoming a Geisha. This book was more of a broad scope of Masuda's life which included being an actually Geisha for only a part of the rather short memoir. As I said, however, it is an interesting and sad contrast to the life lead by the Geisha like Iwasaki. I do recommend this book as another perspective on the world of Geisha.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Autobiography of a Geisha...
By D. S. HARDEN
I stumbled upon this autobiography after finishing "The Blond Geisha" by Jina Bacarr. After finishing that work of fiction, I decided to get a non-fictional, true-life book on the life of a Geisha. Sayo Masuda's story didn't disappoint. What we are treated to is a person, who, in effect, was treated as a non-person. To come from such a background as she was, "sold" to a family, to be treated not much better than dirt, to be taunted, teased and abused, would wreck anyone's mind. Clearly, Ms. Masuda was "damaged goods." How she survived to become a Geisha, is beyond me.
Overall, I must say that I found Ms. Masuda's story a good read. Considering that this woman's educational level was no more than that of an early Elementary School child makes her story even more remarkable. She did what she felt she had to do to survive!
Dog-eat-dog comes to mind in the world of the Geisha. Behind all the smiles, instrument playing and dancing, it's a competition. After all, these Geisha were earning their keep. It struck me that while she was plying her trade, the emotion love had never, ever entered her mind, until she ended up taking care of her little brother, who tragically took his own life when he became turbucular (apparently, their Dad died of the same disease). Her brother's death really took a terrible toll.
Autobiography of a Geisha is a good, compelling, novel. Read this and get a glimpse of a real Geisha's world! Congratulations to G. G. Rowley for such an expert translation of this work into English for all of us to experience!
My rating for this book: 5 stars! (4 stars for the story, 1 extra star for the translation!)
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