'This engrossing and very human story...offers the reader a compelling portrait' Arthur Golden
Sayo Masuda died in 2008. The translator G. G. Rowley teaches English and Japanese literature at Waseda University in Tokyo. She is the author of Yosano Akiko and The Tale of Genji.
This most recent geisha boom comes with a difference. While
Golden's novel skillfully utilises, and feeds into, clich-s of the
Madame Butterfly variety, these two new publications can be seen as
part of an attempt...to break the gendered orientalist gaze and
unravel some enduring stereotypes. Masuda's gripping, heart-rending
and humorous account is a gem, especially as it offers a view "from
below" of the untold social history of modern Japan
*Times Literary Review*
An unvarnished firsthand look into the world of a woman who
unflinchingly relates the bitter struggle of her geisha existence
in pre-World War II Japan. This is a fascinating and heart-rending
tale
*Liza Dalby*
Masuda's account of being a geisha in rural Japan at a hot springs
resort is at once intriguing and heartbreaking. While Arthur
Golden's fictional Memoirs of a Geisha continues to be the
yardstick against which all other books on the geisha world are
measured, Masuda's account is a worthy complement
*Publishers Weekly*
This most recent geisha boom comes with a difference. While
Golden's novel skillfully utilises, and feeds into, clich-s of the
Madame Butterfly variety, these two new publications can be seen as
part of an attempt...to break the gendered orientalist gaze and
unravel some enduring stereotypes. Masuda's gripping, heart-rending
and humorous account is a gem, especially as it offers a view "from
below" of the untold social history of modern Japan * Times
Literary Review *
An unvarnished firsthand look into the world of a woman who
unflinchingly relates the bitter struggle of her geisha existence
in pre-World War II Japan. This is a fascinating and heart-rending
tale -- Liza Dalby
Masuda's account of being a geisha in rural Japan at a hot springs
resort is at once intriguing and heartbreaking. While Arthur
Golden's fictional Memoirs of a Geisha continues to be the
yardstick against which all other books on the geisha world are
measured, Masuda's account is a worthy complement * Publishers
Weekly *
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