Memoirs Of A Geisha by Arthur Goldinge

From The Week of April 25, 2010

Though Memoirs Of A Geisha is fiction, it's extemporaneous structure, its wonderful narration, and its poignant characters leave me no choice but to believe that some measure of this remarkable story is true. The ring of authenticity may emanate from the retired geisha Mr. Golding interviewed for this book, or it may come from the author's inherent skill. In the end, it matters not. It feels real and, for fiction, that is a rare treat.

Mr. Golding's story concerns the transformation of a young, poor, Japanese girl into a powerful, exquisite geisha, all set against an early 20th century Japan ramping up to the Second World War. The sting of Nitta's impoverished childhood stays with us as we watch, first-hand, the dissolution of her family and her adoption into a training house for geisha, first as a servant and later as a young girl of note. Mr. Golding captures the acuteness of the rivalries that spring up among the girls. Some occur as a result of natural jealousy, spite given form, while others are artificially provoked by the necessities of hierarchical, geisha society where the successful are cruel to the new in order to maintain their status as the pinnacle. As the story evolves and Nitta grows into her own powers, we see how so much of the rivalries and feuds are a consequence of the strictures of geisha society, how their freedoms are simultaneously numerous and narrow, how their behavior is governed and exquisite. In such a confining environment, where the whole of ones world is a performance within the strata of a top-down society, feuds may be all one has, especially when age fades ones beauty and sends men in search for the newest, freshest girl.

Events in Memoirs Of A Geisha are told from well after the fact by a Nitta in her 70s who, in a series of interviews granted to the fictionalized translator of this book, lays out her life's story in intimate detail. The benefit of hindsight casts a quiet glow over the Japan of Nitta's youth, a Japan that drives itself so deeply into the deprivations of WWII that it loses much of its pre-war traditionalism which held the culture in stasis for so long. As the story of a woman's exceptional life, Mr. Golding has penned a success. But it's how his etchings of Japan bring that country to life, infusing his story with its bittersweet omnipresence, that his tale becomes art.(4/5 Stars)