And so Mineko is gently, but firmly, prised away from her parents to embark on an extraordinary profession, of which she will become the best. Madam Oima is mesmerised by the child's black hair and black eyes: she has found her successor. I had just turned three.'Įmerging shyly from her hiding place, Mineko encounters Madam Oima, the formidable proprietress of a prolific geisha house in Gion. 'I can identify the exact moment when things began to change. ' eloquent and innovative memoir' The Times 'A glimpse into the exotic, mysterious, tinged-with-eroticism world of the almost mythical geisha' Val Hennessy, Daily Mail “From what we understand of the allegations, they are utterly baseless and totally without merit.The extraordinary, bestselling memoir from Japan's foremost geisha. Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House, said neither the company nor Golden have been served with any papers in the case. The suit charges Golden then gave interviews promoting the book in which he named Iwasaki as his chief inspiration. Her lawyer said Golden broke that promise when he wrote in the book’s acknowledgment: “I am indebted to one individual above all others. Iwasaki, a former geisha girl who lives in Kyoto, talked to Golden for two weeks in 1992, but only on the condition that she and her family not be identified, the lawsuit claims. The $10 million lawsuit against Golden, publisher Knopf and parent company Random House, says the author conducted extensive interviews with Iwasaki under a verbal agreement she would never be identified. Federal Court in Manhattan that she retired in 1980 after becoming one of the most famous geishas in Kyoto’s most prestigious geisha district.

to the virtually unknown world of the geisha,” the suit charges. The customs and rituals of a geisha house are highly secretive and the book gave “unprecedented access. Geisha are young women in Japan trained to entertain men as a hired companion. “He has said in public the story is based on her, and that has affected her life negatively since a lot of the stories he’s portrayed were not accurate.” “She feels terrible that he said that,” said Weber, who says Golden also lied when he told interviewers Iwasaki’s parents sold her into the geisha world.

“The selling of her virginity, that rite of passage, did not happen,” said the woman’s lawyer, Dorothy Weber. Mineko Iwasaki, a former geisha girl, says she was most hurt by author Arthur Golden’s claims that as a young girl, her virginity was “auctioned to the highest bidder” – which she says is false. A Japanese woman sued the best-selling author of “Memoirs of a Geisha” yesterday – saying the novelist broke a promise not to identify her, and then fabricated scandalous stories about her life.

Mineko iwasaki geisha