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Got home last night, settled on the couch with a book for a while, and realize I had absolutely no desire to get online, so I IGNORED ALL OF YOU and (a) read and (b) updated my podcasts and (c) made kanzashi and (d) watched television. And (e) entertained the cat, but that goes without saying.
One of the books I read is Sayo Masuda's Autobiography of a Geisha
, checked out of the library when I realized that we had it (it had been on my Amazon wishlist). Masuda was born around 1925 to a poor family and sent to work as a nursemaid at the age of 5. When she was 12, her mother took her back and sold her to a geisha house run by an abusive woman.
This isn't the sort of geisha that we think of nowadays, who preserves and practices dances and other artistic endeavors and are not prostitutes (although they may become mistresses). This was a much lower-class area in the sticks, and geisha in this area at this time practiced prostitution - they were one step above a brothel, because they also performed dances and played instruments at teahouses, like modern geisha do, but unlike modern geisha they had no ability to refuse sex to customers. She became the mistress of a local gang leader, then a factory worker, and scrabbled as hard as she could to stay alive and to support her younger brother and pay for his schooling during the postwar years -- she didn't learn to read and write until she was an adult, and she wanted him to be able to hold a job.
The original form of this book was an article she wrote and sent to a women's magazine competition. It was brought to the attention of a publisher, who helped her expand it into a fuller book. It was originally published in the late 1950s, when she was in her 30s and had managed to find a measure of peace. Not happiness, but peace. The English edition was published in 2002, and a translator's note mentions that she was still alive at the time, at 75, and living in an obscurity she wanted - she'd had to move after the book was originally published in Japan and her neighbors found out about her past, and desired no fame.
It was a good book, and a fascinating glimpse into an area and time period I know almost nothing of, although quite depressing and painful at times. Not something I'd want to read when depressed or in a bad mood.
One of the books I read is Sayo Masuda's Autobiography of a Geisha
, checked out of the library when I realized that we had it (it had been on my Amazon wishlist). Masuda was born around 1925 to a poor family and sent to work as a nursemaid at the age of 5. When she was 12, her mother took her back and sold her to a geisha house run by an abusive woman. This isn't the sort of geisha that we think of nowadays, who preserves and practices dances and other artistic endeavors and are not prostitutes (although they may become mistresses). This was a much lower-class area in the sticks, and geisha in this area at this time practiced prostitution - they were one step above a brothel, because they also performed dances and played instruments at teahouses, like modern geisha do, but unlike modern geisha they had no ability to refuse sex to customers. She became the mistress of a local gang leader, then a factory worker, and scrabbled as hard as she could to stay alive and to support her younger brother and pay for his schooling during the postwar years -- she didn't learn to read and write until she was an adult, and she wanted him to be able to hold a job.
The original form of this book was an article she wrote and sent to a women's magazine competition. It was brought to the attention of a publisher, who helped her expand it into a fuller book. It was originally published in the late 1950s, when she was in her 30s and had managed to find a measure of peace. Not happiness, but peace. The English edition was published in 2002, and a translator's note mentions that she was still alive at the time, at 75, and living in an obscurity she wanted - she'd had to move after the book was originally published in Japan and her neighbors found out about her past, and desired no fame.
It was a good book, and a fascinating glimpse into an area and time period I know almost nothing of, although quite depressing and painful at times. Not something I'd want to read when depressed or in a bad mood.