Memoirs of a Geisha Study Guide

Arthur Golden grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and then attended Harvard College, where he received a B.A. in art history with a specialization in Japanese art. In 1980, he earned an M.A. in Japanese history from Columbia University. After a summer at Peking University in Beijing, China, he began working in Tokyo. While there, he met a man whose mother was a retired geisha, prompting his interest in the subject. After returning to the United States in the mid-1980s, Golden began writing his first novel, Memoirs of a Geisha, which took him six years to complete. A runaway success, the novel was on the New York Times’ bestseller list for over two years, sold more than four million copies, and was translated into thirty-two languages. Golden currently lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with his wife and two children.

While the novel makes infrequent mention of world historical events, the majority of the plot occurs from the beginning of the Great Depression in Japan to the end of World War Two. During the 1930s, a global economic depression affected almost every developed country in the world, including Japan. Sayuri, however, does not experience the effects of the Depression, since she works as a prominent geisha serving the wealthy elites of Japanese society. Sayuri also makes passing mention of Japan’s militaristic expansion into neighboring countries. In 1931, Japan invaded and annexed Manchuria, a region in northeast China. Despite local resistance against the Japanese occupation, Japan held onto Manchuria until the end of World War Two. During World War Two, the Japanese government placed harsh restrictions on its civilians, rationing food and closing down all the geisha districts in Japan. Near the end of the novel, Sayuri briefly references Japan’s surrender to the United States in 1945 and the American occupation of the country that lasted until the early 1950s.

Written as if it were an actual memoir, Memoirs of a Geisha draws mostly from a nonfiction, autobiographical tradition. Golden has acknowledged that while writing the novel, he did extensive research and delved deeply into the history of geisha culture. Specifically, Golden draws from Liza Dalby’s memoir Geisha, which recounts the author’s experiences as the only American woman ever to become a geisha. Since Golden’s novel masquerades as a true memoir, it also belongs to the relatively recent literary tradition of novels written in the guise of memoirs or autobiographies. One of the earliest and most prominent examples of this form is Gertrude Stein’s 1933 book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. The success of Golden’s novel also motivated the former geisha Mineko Iwesawa – whom Golden interviewed as a source for his novel – to write her own autobiography, Geisha: A Life, which refutes Golden’s sexualized portrayal of geisha culture.