Regular marked price: $20.95Discount Price: $20.53
Cost Savings: $0.42 ( 2%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN num: 9780231129510
ISBN number: 0231129513
Label: Columbia University Press
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 216
Printing Date: May 11, 2005
Publishing house: Columbia University Press
Sale Popularity Level: 426628
Studio: Columbia University Press
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
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 very 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 very 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 very 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 humour as for its unromanticized candor. It is the superbly told tale of a woman whom fortune never favored yet never defeated.
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 very 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
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
I had no idea when I picked this book up for researching a paper that I would become entranced by it. Thankfully I read the forward by the translator first, she gives very nice backdrop about the author, her story, and why it was written in a plain-spoken style. Needless to say, I was hooked. The whole story is one of struggle. From her time as a child to her years as a grown woman in a geisha house, the trials and tribulations that this woman endured are hard to imagine. As another reviewer said...you really can feel the author. She's right, Masuda's emotion comes clearly through these pages. I found her words to be as true and real as any I've read. An amazing book, and I thank G.G. Rowley for translating it.
Rated by buyers -
This book almost brought me to tears. It really, really did. Sayo's life, as depicted in her memoir, was filled with such unhappiness and pain that I just can't figure out how she was able to live through it. And she did.
The book starts out with Sayo's earliest memories, working as a nursemaid, knowing no kindness, only sorrow and pain. Finally she is sold to a geisha house, where she is tormented by her Elder Sisters and the Mother of the house. She eventually has enough of the geisha life and heads out into the world, only to be stricken with poverty and more pain. The rest of the story weaves the tale of her becoming a prostitute, involved with a Korean gang, finding forbidden love, and her beloved brother's suicide. Even until the very end of the book, she has nothing and no one. It is only in the new epilogue do we find out that Sayo was able to make a fine living by becoming a chef and opening a bar/restaurant.
This book was so moving and touching. It shows that the life of geisha weren't all glamor, kimono, white faces, and popularity. This book actually shows the pain and suffering certain geisha went through. I think because of this, this book changed my life. It showed me how good my life is and how I should never take anything for granted. I should do everything in my power to help other people who are less fortunate than I am, which was a point stressed very much so by Sayo.
The writing was strong and fluid, never once wavering and I'm sure it stayed true to the power of the Japanese version. I felt for the characters in this book and how tragic their lives were. All in all, this was a great book. Heartwrenching, but great. It really, truly was.
Rated by buyers -
Although her writing style seems sparse, Sayo clearly illustrates the wretched life she lived from childhood into adulthood. Despite the many misconceptions of what geisha really are, this book showed another side of what it was like to be a geisha. Not all geishas lives were full of money, fame, and glamour. And I think that her story ought to be recognized among the readers of "Memoirs of a Geisha". I think that it'll give them a another, more realistic view of what it was like for most Japanese girls who were sold into being geisha.
Rated by buyers 
-
I was expecting a difference from Memoirs, but WOW! What an intresting and sad life for these women. Makes me more than ever to be proud to be born an AMERICAN woman!
Rated by buyers -
The flavor of a Japan gaijin -- and many locals -- never see. I've always loved the romanticized versions of geisha life, but this portrays the everyday, humdrum details as well as the not-so-pleasant aspects. I pay lots of lip service to the luck I had being born in the latter half of the twentieth century, with enough money to allow me to get an education and chart my own life. Reading this makes me realize again that, for many people, my life is beyond luxurious.
Find other books like this one:
