Real Geisha, Real Story

Feb. 15, 1965, was the first day of Mineko Iwasaki's life as a geisha. Wrapped in a turquoise-and-orange satin kimono, hair piled atop her head and secured with red silk bands, face covered in a wash of white makeup, the young maiko, or novice geisha, was ready—and she wasn't the only one. When Iwasaki stepped outside her home, she was greeted by applause and congratulations from a swarm of admirers who had come for a glimpse of the young geisha's debut.

Almost four decades later, Iwasaki is having a new debut—and this one has been just as anticipated. Iwasaki was a primary source for Arthur Golden's hugely successful 1997 novel, Memoirs of a Geisha. Now she has published her story—which she characterizes as the real memoirs of a geisha. Golden's glimpse into the mysterious geisha world delighted readers and was bought by Hollywood for big bucks. (At one point, Steven Spielberg planned to direct the film version.) But that book—despite the "memoirs of" moniker—was fiction. Geisha, a Life, written by Iwasaki with Rande Brown, is supposed to be all that Golden's book wasn't: the geisha's life story, straight from her mouth.

And what a story it is. Born in 1950, Iwasaki says she knew by the age of three that she wanted to become a geisha and, at the age of five, left her family and moved for training into an okiya, or geisha household. Years of schooling in dance, music, pouring sake and performing the tea ceremony followed, and at the age of 15 she turned pro.

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