Memoirs Of A Geisha Review

This review is a little late, because I initially had no desire to read this book.  I picked it up while in a bookstore on a whim because it was on sale and I've had a fascination with tales of Japanese culture since I first read Shogun when I was young.  I was immediately hooked just reading the first couple of pages. The pace is quick and if drama is conflict then this is just loaded with drama.  I found myself so wrapped up in this young woman's story I couldn't put it down, There was something almost lyrical about it as well as having a depth of emotion as it followed her from her early and brief childhood in a fishing village to being sold into slavery to the okiya where she is to learn how to become a geisha. Sayuri is a protagonist in a world that is now vanished, but she brings it to life for us in full color.  I'm not generally a fan of love stories but this one is wrapped in history and culture the way Sayuri is wrapped in kimonos, rich and detailed and layered, and my heart went with her wherever she went and rooted for her. And it is a love story since her love for one man shapes some of the most important decisions in her life.  But more, it is an ode to innocence lost, not only in the way she becomes the property of others or in how her mizuage (virginity) is sold to the highest bidder, but with it's telling of the effects of war on a country and it's culture, and the way in particular that women are affected by a world in which their greatest power lies in how they cope and deal with what is thrown at them while often being at the mercy of it all.  She is in so many ways a pillar of strength and finds her personal power while still being the most feminine of women.  It is, even more than a love story or a tapestry of culture, a story of survival.  

Arthur Golden obviously did his research to give us such detailed pictures of life at that time and in that culture but to speak in such a convincing voice as a Japanese woman he had to have an understanding that comes from something other than just books and he truly deserves kudos for this work.