Geisha, A Life

A powerful and intimate memoir of a reallife geisha, Geisha, A Life reveals the hidden world of Kyotos traditional arts, Japanese tea ceremonies, and cultural secrets through the eyes of Japans most renowned and pioneering geisha.No woman in the threehundredyear history of the karyukai has ever come forward in public to tell her story. We have been constrained by unwritten rules not to do so, by the robes of tradition and by the sanctity of our exclusive calling...But I feel it is time to speak out.Celebrated as the most successful geisha of her generation, Mineko Iwasaki was only five years old when she left her parents home for the world of the geisha. For the next twentyfive years, she would live a life filled with extraordinary professional demands and rich rewards. She would learn the formal customs and language of the geisha, and study the ancient arts of Japanese dance and music. She would enchant kings and princes, captains of industry, and titans of the entertainment world, some of whom would become her dearest friends. Through great pride and determination, she would be hailed as one of the most prized geishas in Japans history, and one of the last great practitioners of this nowfading art form.In Geisha, a Life, Mineko Iwasaki tells her story, from her warm early childhood, to her intense yet privileged upbringing in the Iwasaki okiya (household), to her years as a renowned geisha, and finally, to her decision at the age of twentynine to retire and marry, a move that would mirror the demise of geisha culture. Mineko brings to life the beauty and wonder of Gion Kobu, a place that existed in a world apart, a special realm whose mission and identity depended on preserving the timehonored traditions of the past. She illustrates how it coexisted within postWorld War II Japan at a time when the country was undergoing its radical transformation from a postfeudal society to a modern one.There is much mystery and misunderstanding about what it means to be a geisha. I hope this story will help explain what it is really like and also serve as a record of this unique component of Japans cultural history, writes Mineko Iwasaki. Geisha, a Life is the first of its kind, as it delicately unfolds the fabric of a geishas development. Told with great wisdom and sensitivity, it is a true story of beauty and heroism, and of a time and culture rarely revealed to the Western world.