Published in 1997, Memoirs of a Geisha is the story of a nine-year-old girl who grows up to be the most famous geisha in her time. Chiyo was the second daughter of a fisherman's. Her father was very old and her mother was his second wife. When their mother became deathly ill, their father knew […]
Arthur Golden
Arthur Golden, the author of Memoirs of a Geisha was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1956. He is a member of the Ochs - Sulzberger family. The Ochs - Sulzberger's are the owner of the New York Times. His grandfather was the publisher from 1935 till 1961. This was the paper's most productive time.
Arthur Golden graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Art History, specializing in Japanese Art. Then in 1980 he earned an M.A. in Japanese History at Columbia University. During this time he also learned to speak Mandarin.
Then Arthur spent a summer at Peking University in Beijing, China. Afterward, he worked in Tokyo for awhile. When Arthur returned to the United States, he attended Boston University, where he achieved an M. A. in English. Arthur now lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.
When Arthur set out to write a book it would stand to reason the book would be based on his favorite subject, the Japanese world. Arthur Golden released Memoirs of a Geisha in 1997 after spending six years working on it. He changed the point of view the book was written in three times. One of the sources Arthur used for the book was Mineko Iwasaki. She was a former geisha and is the inspiration for Sayuri.
A Japanese business woman, Mineko was the most famous and notable geisha of her time in Japan. During her time as a geisha, Mineko entertained celebrities and royalty, including Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles. She retired at the age of twenty-nine and was the heir of her okiya when she was just an apprentice. She had hoped that retiring would put more importance in education for young women, but when 70 other geisha followed her example, the geisha tradition started to die out. Although, the reforms Mineko and the other geisha had hoped would occur in the Gion district, didn't.
She was a former geisha and is the inspiration for Sayuri. A Japanese business woman, Mineko was the most famous and notable geisha of her time in Japan. During her time as a geisha, Mineko entertained celebrities and royalty, including Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles. She retired at the age of twenty-nine and was the heir of her okiya when she was just an apprentice. She had hoped that retiring would put more importance in education for young women, but when 70 other geisha followed her example, the geisha tradition started to die out. Although, the reforms Mineko and the other geisha had hoped would occur in the Gion district, didn't.
She had hoped that retiring would put more importance in education for young women, but when 70 other geisha followed her example, the geisha tradition started to die out. Although, the reforms Mineko and the other geisha had hoped would occur in the Gion district, didn't.
When Memoirs of a Geisha was released in Japanese, Mineko Iwasaki sued Arthur Golden and his publisher. Arthur had promised her he would not reveal any names because a geisha never tells secrets. No matter how many years pass, a geisha keeps the names and stories to herself. Because he acknowledged her in the Acknowledgment Section of the book, Mineko received death threats for violating the tradition of the geisha code of silence.
Since she settled with his publishers out of court, the truths and names were never confirmed. Later Mineko wrote her own autobiography, Geisha of Gion. Her plan in writing the book was to bring out more truths, whereas Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, put too much emphasis on sex, leaving out the traditional importance of geisha as a part of Japanese culture.
Arthur Golden seems to have not published anything since writing Memoirs of a Geisha. Although writing the book was difficult, and time-consuming, we hope that he is diligently working on something equally as entertaining.
