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ailsapeacock 's review for:
Geisha of Gion: The Memoir of Mineko Iwasaki
by Mineko Iwasaki, Rande Brown
"I believed that self-discipline was the key to beauty."
Mineko Iwasaki successfully sued Arthur Golden for modelling his novel Memoirs of a Geisha on her life. I can't really blame him. This memoir gets three stars solely due to how fascinating it is to see what it takes to become the most successful Geiko* of a generation.**
Geisha of Gion is far from a perfect read. My gripes, in no particular order:
1) Other reviewers suggest that Iwasaki had a ghost writer. If she did, she was robbed. There was no natural flow between her anecdotes. One sensational incident after another, with little insight to how in made her feel or how it affected her life.
2) I don't believe all of her stories. She claims to have slept only three hours a night for years on end. She claims to of had a premonition of a friend's death. (She has a lot of foreboding premonitions that turn out to be spot on.) This memoir begins when she is three years old. She claims to have an acute memory but it's a bit too much to swallow. I can't remember what happened last week as clearly as she recounts the events of her early childhood.
3) Her eldest sister (literally and symbolically) Yaeko is a cartoon villain. She must of been seriously unhinged. Why did the mother of the household hand her such an important responsibility over Mineko? It is never explained.
4) Mineko Iwasaki is easy to dislike. Being groomed from a young age to be a heiress must warp your personality somewhat, I'll admit. She was such a precocious child (and precocious adult) and she can't understand why she has no friends. She is often self-important and sanctimonious. When she is sitting next to Queen Elizabeth II at a dinner Iwasaki notices that she doesn't touch her dinner:
"I always try to eat whatever my host has been kind enough to serve me. To refuse would be discourteous and, if I were a visitor of state, it could even be construed as an affront to the nation, to say nothing of all the people who have worked so hard to prepare the meal."
Iwasaki avenges her nation (and the chef) by flirting with the Duke of Edinburgh. Cut her some slack, Mineko. She's just flown half way around the world to be at some boring state dinner. Japanese cuisine is an acquired taste. Especially in the 1970's when even sushi was completely exotic to the British palette.
5) Iwasaki always happens to be the best at everything and will tell you so herself. She takes up golf:
"I took private lessons for a few weeks and was soon scoring in the 80s and 90s. No one could believe it"
Whenever she visits Gion: "When I tell them my name is Mineko, they invariably fly into a tizzy and ask, 'Are you the real Mineko? The legend? It is wonderful to spend time with them."
No wonder all her peers had tall poppy syndrome.
6) While she goes into some detail about her dancing and the importance of kimono, sometimes she just throws a piece of info at you without context. For instance, once she was adopted she suckled her elder sister's breast to go to sleep... she continued to do this until she was over 10 years old... excuse me? Was this normal in Japan at that time? Or was it unique to Mineko? Why did everyone in your adopted family just go with it? Some elaboration would have been fantastic. At another point, she goes to get her face shaved which she has done regularly since she was a child. Is this still done in Japan? To what end?
Mineko Iwasaki is a formidable woman and her achievements are extraordinary. I just wish her tale was in the hands of an experienced biographer who could breathe some life into her story.
*Geisha can refer to men or women and simply means artist. In Kyoto, the term Geiko is used to describe what those in the West would describe as a Geisha.
** It also gets three stars because boo the patriarchy. Yay! for women telling their own stories.
Mineko Iwasaki successfully sued Arthur Golden for modelling his novel Memoirs of a Geisha on her life. I can't really blame him. This memoir gets three stars solely due to how fascinating it is to see what it takes to become the most successful Geiko* of a generation.**
Geisha of Gion is far from a perfect read. My gripes, in no particular order:
1) Other reviewers suggest that Iwasaki had a ghost writer. If she did, she was robbed. There was no natural flow between her anecdotes. One sensational incident after another, with little insight to how in made her feel or how it affected her life.
2) I don't believe all of her stories. She claims to have slept only three hours a night for years on end. She claims to of had a premonition of a friend's death. (She has a lot of foreboding premonitions that turn out to be spot on.) This memoir begins when she is three years old. She claims to have an acute memory but it's a bit too much to swallow. I can't remember what happened last week as clearly as she recounts the events of her early childhood.
3) Her eldest sister (literally and symbolically) Yaeko is a cartoon villain. She must of been seriously unhinged. Why did the mother of the household hand her such an important responsibility over Mineko? It is never explained.
4) Mineko Iwasaki is easy to dislike. Being groomed from a young age to be a heiress must warp your personality somewhat, I'll admit. She was such a precocious child (and precocious adult) and she can't understand why she has no friends. She is often self-important and sanctimonious. When she is sitting next to Queen Elizabeth II at a dinner Iwasaki notices that she doesn't touch her dinner:
"I always try to eat whatever my host has been kind enough to serve me. To refuse would be discourteous and, if I were a visitor of state, it could even be construed as an affront to the nation, to say nothing of all the people who have worked so hard to prepare the meal."
Iwasaki avenges her nation (and the chef) by flirting with the Duke of Edinburgh. Cut her some slack, Mineko. She's just flown half way around the world to be at some boring state dinner. Japanese cuisine is an acquired taste. Especially in the 1970's when even sushi was completely exotic to the British palette.
5) Iwasaki always happens to be the best at everything and will tell you so herself. She takes up golf:
"I took private lessons for a few weeks and was soon scoring in the 80s and 90s. No one could believe it"
Whenever she visits Gion: "When I tell them my name is Mineko, they invariably fly into a tizzy and ask, 'Are you the real Mineko? The legend? It is wonderful to spend time with them."
No wonder all her peers had tall poppy syndrome.
6) While she goes into some detail about her dancing and the importance of kimono, sometimes she just throws a piece of info at you without context. For instance, once she was adopted she suckled her elder sister's breast to go to sleep... she continued to do this until she was over 10 years old... excuse me? Was this normal in Japan at that time? Or was it unique to Mineko? Why did everyone in your adopted family just go with it? Some elaboration would have been fantastic. At another point, she goes to get her face shaved which she has done regularly since she was a child. Is this still done in Japan? To what end?
Mineko Iwasaki is a formidable woman and her achievements are extraordinary. I just wish her tale was in the hands of an experienced biographer who could breathe some life into her story.
*Geisha can refer to men or women and simply means artist. In Kyoto, the term Geiko is used to describe what those in the West would describe as a Geisha.
** It also gets three stars because boo the patriarchy. Yay! for women telling their own stories.