MEMOIRS OF GEISHA by Arthur Golden
SUMMARY
In 1929, the nine-year-old Chiyo Sakamoto lives with her ailing mother, emotionally withdrawn father, and older sister Satsu in a small fishing village in Western Japan. One day, the wealthiest man in her village, Mr. Ichiro Tanaka, takes notices of Chiyo’s beautiful blue-grey eyes. After striking a deal with Chiyo’s father, Mr. Tanaka sells Chiyo to an okiya, which is a boarding house for geisha. Geisha are women trained to entertain men with conversation, dancing, and singing. At the okiya, Chiyo works as a maid while she trains to be a geisha. The other people living at the okiya are the young apprentice geisha Pumpkin, the greedy and materialistic Mother who runs the okiya, and the beautiful but cruel geisha Hatsumomo. A few months after arriving in the okiya, Chiyo becomes so homesick that she tries to run away to her home village. The doors to the okiya are locked at night, so Chiyo climbs to the roof, but she falls and breaks her arm. Enraged at Chiyo for trying to run away, Mother stops paying for Chiyo’s geisha education. Instead, she tells Chiyo that she will work as a maid in the okiya until Mother sees fit to release her. For two years, Chiyo works as a maid. One day, she goes on an errand and realizes that her life lacks purpose and direction. As Chiyo sits by a stream and begins to cry, a handsome man named the Chairman comforts her. Touched by his kindness, Chiyo decides that she must try to become a geisha so she can increase her standing in the world. Only then will she be able to surround herself with kind men instead of people like Hatsumomo and Mother. Not long after this encounter, a geisha named Mameha arrives at the okiya and takes notice of Chiyo’s beauty. Mameha convinces Mother to reinvest in Chiyo’s education by saying that she will take on Chiyo as a “little sister”—a geisha apprentice. Since Mameha is one of the city’s best geisha, Mother sees an opportunity to make money from Chiyo again and agrees to Mameha’s plan. Chiyo thinks that Mameha is only taking her on as a protégé in order to infuriate her rival Hatsumomo. Over the next two years, Chiyo completes her geisha training and makes her debut as an apprentice geisha. Following the geisha tradition of adopting a new name, Chiyo takes on the name Sayuri. At one event, Mameha introduces Sayuri to the wealthy businessmen Toshikazu Nobu and Chairman Ken Iwamura. Sayuri realizes that Chairman Iwamura is the man who comforted her years ago. However, Sayuri doesn’t get a chance to talk with the Chairman because Mameha tells her she must cultivate a relationship with Nobu instead. Mameha wants to make Sayuri a success in Kyoto by having Nobu and a doctor nicknamed “Dr. Crab” start a bidding war over Sayuri’s mizuage—the ceremonial taking of a young geisha’s virginity. After months of cultivating relationships with the two men, Dr. Crab ultimately pays a record amount for Sayuri’s mizuage. The plan works and Sayuri gains a reputation as a highly coveted geisha. As part of geisha traditions, Mother adopts Sayuri, because she becomes the highest-earning geisha in the okiya. Over the next few years, Nobu continues to ask for Sayuri’s company. Though she likes Nobu as a person, she wishes she could spend more time with the Chairman instead. When World War Two breaks out, the government closes the geisha districts so that the women can more actively contribute to the war effort. Nobu uses his influence to find Sayuri the safe and relatively easy job of sewing parachutes in a village outside of Kyoto. After the war, Nobu comes to find Sayuri. He says that he needs her to return to Kyoto and help him entertain a Japanese official named Sato. The American government wants to seize Nobu’s business assets, but Sato can use his connections to prevent this from happening. Sayuri agrees and returns to Kyoto. At a teahouse, Sayuri—along with Pumpkin and Mameha—entertain Sato, Nobu, and the Chairman. For the next year, they meet on a weekly basis and Sayuri feels her attraction to the Chairman growing. Sato successfully convinces the Americans not to bankrupt the business. With the business secure, Nobu proposes himself as Sayuri’s danna—a patron who gives a geisha lavish gifts in return for sexual privileges. Because Nobu provided her a safe place to live during the war, Sayuri feels as if she is in his debt. She reluctantly agrees, wishing that the Chairman could be her danna instead. To celebrate the good news, the group goes to an island near Okinawa for a weekend vacation. Sayuri realizes that if Nobu stumbles upon her sleeping with Sato, then Nobu will think that she has dishonored herself and withdraw his proposal to be her danna. Sayuri hopes that this will leave her free to pursue a relationship with the Chairman. Sayuri arranges to meet Sato at an abandoned theater and tells Pumpkin to bring Nobu at a set time. Pumpkin, however, brings the Chairman instead, who sees Sayuri and Sato having sex. Thinking that her chances are ruined with the Chairman, Sayuri feels crushed and utterly despondent. A few days after returning to Kyoto, Sayuri receives an invitation to meet the Chairman at a teahouse. At the teahouse, the Chairman confesses that he fell in love with Sayuri the moment he saw her as a young girl crying by the stream. Surprised that he even remembers her from that day, Sayuri says that she only slept with Sato in order to make Nobu give her up so that she could possibly have the Chairman as her danna. Overcome with emotion, the Chairman pulls her close and kisses her. A few weeks later, the Chairman becomes Sayuri’s danna. They live happily together over the next few years. Sayuri even gives birth to the Chairman’s son. Eventually they immigrate to New York City, where she recounts her memoirs to the Japanese history professor Jakob Haarhuis.
ANALYSIS: FEMINISM
The novel, "Memoirs of a Geisha", was written by Arthur Golden. It was published in the year 1997 in the United States.Also, it became the bestseller of the year. With this, a man named Steven Spielberg was amazed with the book that is why he made a film adaptation to it. In fact, he also became the director in his film adaptation but time goes by, he was too busy which led him to drop his title as a director. Furthermore, the novel revealed how the rights of women were denied to themselves by the society. In this analysis, the novel criticizes and analyzes the literary work that contains discrimination content in order to give information to the reader about feminist perspective. In other words, there was inequality of gender that happened in the novel. "Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden is a novel which tells about the struggle of a woman from the exploitation that fights and learns about all aspects of geisha life. They learn how to be beautiful woman, and are admired by many people. Geisha is seen as a woman of high social class who looks beautiful, elegant and behavioral", (Afif, S., n.d.). Feminism is a feminist movement that supports women's rights, interests and equality with men in all aspects such as in political, cultural, economic and social fields. Thus, in today's time women are given the right to do what men can do. Before, according to, Muhammad (n.d.) "it started during the French revolution, when the problem of a real feminine emancipation grew up in women's mind. In the past centuries women have always been in a lower position in front of their husbands. If they belonged to rich or well off families they had to stay at home and worry about its maintaining, the direction of domestic life and the growth of their children, while if they were poor they worked as much as men and at the same time had to look after all the domestic work. Men controlled women's life at home and in the social context, so they could never say to be free. Women, moreover, had not the right to vote, to participate to social life, and to express their opinion, for example, through the press, like men could ." These prove that women before were inferior in all aspects. However, it was changed through times since women empowerment break their silence.
Memoirs of a Geisha highlighted the life of Chiyo, a poor young girl who was sold into the life of geisha. The author wanted to say that women's right are not given but must be struggled for. As reflected in the novel, Chiyo had a struggling life before she became a geisha. In fact, she became a maid which led her to life difficulty to do the tasks she obliged to do, but Chiyo was no choice so, she was persevere to become a geisha that is why she sacrificed everything. Also, she had the struggling time when it comes to addressing her real affection towards the man she loved. Moreover, to be a geisha, it must be smart and talented and by this, Sayuri is interesting in terms of discussing the feminist point of view because she was a woman in the late twentieth century who tried to survive in a very strict society by deciding to be a geisha. In relation to this, we can find the gender biases that is being expressed in the novel. In fact, the biases are the following: stereotype, subordinate, marginalization, violence and burden. Widyayanti, D. (2013) stated that "the first was stereotype, Sayuri was stereotyped as a bad luck in the fishing place and she was stereotyped as a prostitute when she had conversation with western people. Second was subordinate, Sayuri became a geisha because she had no choice to get a better life. This happened because of the assumption that women cannot work as men. Third was marginalization, the geishas in this novel came from poor family. They could not get a better education to have better life and they need men to fulfill their needs. Fourth was violence, the men did not respect women as well. Lastly was burden, the burden expressed when Chiyo had to work since she was a little girl. The burden as the oldest daughter made her did the households things and work to support her family." Memoirs of a geisha proved that Sayuri's life as a woman was never been easy at all since she had been through a lot of hardships in fighting what things she deserved. With this, I can right away say that there was inequality when it comes to gender and this led women to find a hard time in bearing with the happenings around their own society.
Women empowerment is a great privilege to bring out what are the best things that women can do. It is a life challenge wherein they have the freedom to decide for the betterment of their living especially to their family. Indeed, people of today break the stigma that men should be the superior one in all aspects over women. Instead, women now have the rights as what men have. It means that this feminism approach is one way of giving awareness whether women are deprived from their rights or not. Memoirs of a geisha is an example of this, in which it depicts how life of a woman is being portrayed. Sayuri has nothing to be dreamed about but to live the life she deserves and with life contentment.
REFERENCES:
Afif, S. (n.d.). Woman Exploitation in Arthur Golden’s the Memoirs of a Geisha as Feminism Study. Retrived from https://www.unisbank.ac.id/ojs/index.php/fbib2/article/view/742
Muhammad, N. (n,d.). "Women's Position in Memoirs of a Geisha Written by Arthur Golden (1997)": A Feminist Approach. Retrieved from http://eprints.ums.ac.id/11761/4/File_2._Cover_and_Chapter_I.pdf
Widyayanti, D. (2013). “Memoirs of a Geisha Novel by Arthur Golden”: An Analysis on Feminist Literary Criticism Perspective. Retrieved from http://eprints.umm.ac.id/29347/
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