Autobiography of a Geisha by Sayo Masuda
Sayo Masuda's Autobiography of a Geisha presents the first full-length memoir of a hot-springs-resort geisha, offering an unromanticized look at a life rarely documented. Unlike the glamorous big-city geisha familiar to many readers, Masuda chronicles the harsh realities of rural geisha houses where young women lived in poverty, indentured by desperate families.
A Life of Hardship and Survival
Sent to work as a nursemaid at age six, Masuda was sold to a geisha house at twelve. She worked as a servant while training in dance, song, shamisen, and drum before making her debut as a geisha in 1940 at sixteen. Her memoir details the brutal conditions of geisha house life, where women were routinely expected to engage in sex for payment and where untreated venereal disease claimed lives. Upon completing their indenture, many geisha found themselves without means of survival, with marriage or becoming a mistress representing their best prospects.
Postwar Japan Through Unflinching Eyes
Masuda's narrative extends beyond her geisha years, painting a vivid panorama of grinding poverty among the rural poor in wartime and postwar Japan. After leaving the geisha house, she survived through odd jobs and hard labor, experiencing life on society's margins alongside prostitutes, gangster mistresses, black-market traders, and abandoned mothers. Her encounters with Korean gangsters and her struggles to eke out an existence provide rare insight into a Japan seldom portrayed in literature.
Wit, Humor, and Compassion
Despite barely being able to write, Masuda's years of training in entertainment made her an accomplished storyteller. Autobiography of a Geisha is remarkable for its wit and humor alongside its candid depiction of suffering. Throughout her hardships, Masuda remained compassionate, helping others when possible and sharing her story in hopes that others might not suffer as she had. This is the tale of a woman whom fortune never favored yet never defeated.
About the Author: Sayo Masuda died in 2008.
Translated by G. G. Rowley, who teaches English and Japanese literature at Waseda University in Tokyo and authored Yosano Akiko and The Tale of Genji. Published by Columbia University Press.
