15 Japan – Autobiography of a geisha – Sayo Masuda – September 2014 (Score 7.83)

 At the  start of the book Sayo is a very young girl looking after even younger children. She has been badly treated, starved and beaten. Then she is collected by her uncle and taken to start training as a geisha – at 12 years old. These are what are known as “country geisha”.

She is sent to an okiya (geisha house) called Takenoya (House of Bamboo). She gave herself the name Tsuru (crane – the bird). On page 24, a “koku” is the annual quantity of rice given by a lord to a samurai to feed himself and his family. The okiya is in the province of Suwa, near Lake Suwa which is a particularly beautiful area.

In chapter 2, the words “okaasan” and “otoosan” are the honorific words for Mother and father respectively. The doubling of the vowels in English transcription signifies a doubling of the length of the vowel sound. This is important in the Japanese language. The “o” is an honorific, as is the “san”.

On page 118 Sayo’s acceptance of, and friendship with the Koreans is interesting. In Japan Koreans, even several generations after arrival in the country, tend to be a despised minority. They, and other minorities, are extremely unlikely to be able to marry into a Japanese family because of the “suitability searches” conducted as part of the marriage process...

On page 119 we have another example of the beautiful ways in which Japanese names are frequently put together. “Inohanayama” means “The mountain of the well of flowers” literally translated as “well of flowers mountain. My Japanese teacher was called Inoue Mikkiko “Above the well Third little girl tree”.

On page 141 there is discussion of “a six-mat room”. In Japan, room sizes a given in the number of tatami, or reed mats.

This book gave me a great insight into sections of Japanese life and culture which I had not come across in my reading of Japan related things. In particular it makes clear that, at least in the geisha houses in Suwa, to be a geisha meant to be a slightly higher grade prostitute, especially when it could mean the difference between eating and starving.

I scored the book at 8.0.