NTUT Undergraduate
Notes to Memoirs of a Geisha: Reality, Illusion, Fantasy, and Post-Modern Orientalism
The film was based on the book Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (whose book was inspired by interviews with an authentic Geisha named Mineko Iwasaki (who herself wrote a book about her life as a Geisha because she was betrayed by Mr. Goldman. I do not like Mr. Goldman, as you will see. He is the typical stereotyped “ugly American”: crude, selfish and disloyal)). Goldman’s Memoirs sold 4 million copies and was a NY Times bestseller for 58 weeks; the film was directed by Rob Marshall, director of the film Chicago and was co-produced by Steven Spielberg. The film made USD$57 million even before DVD release.
“Agony and beauty for us live side-by-side”
US Soldier: “Back home a bath is a quick shower on cold tiles. Here you turn everything into a ritual.”
Sayuri: “That is the art of turning habit into pleasure.”
Nobu: “These Geisha are expert in the art of deceit.”
“You have ruined me. Before we met I was a disciplined man.”
“I do not like things held up before me that I cannot have.”
“It is not for a Geisha to want. It is not for a Geisha to feel.”
The term “Geisha” is made up of two characters: (gei) meaning “art and (sha) meaning
“person who performs or does something”. The Geisha is thus a “performance artist”. In fact, the Geisha is considered in Japan to be a living work of art whose exact place within Japanese society is very, very difficult to determine—even for the Japanese. Both traditionally and today the two main cities where Geisha culture existed have been Kyoto and Tokyo. In Kyoto (where our film takes place) another term for Geisha is Geiko. The latter term came into use to distinguish authentic Geisha from the prostitutes who imitated them, imitated their kimono style, and imitated some of their mannerisms and some of their skills. The prostitute-Geisha is distinguished from the Geiko-Geisha in that they (the protitutes) wear their sash (obi) in front and they do not wear nearly as many layers of fabric for the practical reason that they need to dress und undress quickly several times a day. The Geiko-Geisha will take hours to put their clothes on even with the assistance of a servant.
True Geishas, both in Tokyo and Kyoto, are trained in music, dance, makeup, hairstyling, dress, manners and conversation skills for up to a several years. As apprentices in Kyoto, to-be Geisha are called Maiko, meaning “child dancer” although in fact not all Geisha pass through this stage. Those that do pass through this stage, however, are held in greater esteem and can command higher prices. It is known that Tokyo Geisha tend to be older that their Kyoto counterparts and may even hold university degrees. The number of Geisha practicing today is not known, and the numbers today are considered to be much fewer than from the time of our film owing to the dramatic changes in Japanese society particularly since WW II. (Wikipedia estimates that 1,000 to 2,000 Geisha do still practice their art in Japan.)
Geisha traditionally begin training at a young age, as in our film, and they do begin as servants to full Geisha in difficult work and discipline. The Japanese slogan was and still is: “break them and re-make them”, exactly like ancient Sparta or the modern US Marine Corps. At this time in their training they are called shikomi. This rigorous and painful training in fact does still exist. Once skilled in some of the required arts, the shikomi pass to the stage called minarai, during which time they give up household duties and accompany full Geisha to banquets and teahouses. In English we would call this “training in the field”. This stage lasts only about a month or so until they are ready to become the well-known maiko and apply white makeup to their faces, necks, and upper torso. (It is actually the maiko image that Westerners associate with the real thing, the full, established Geisha who in fact may or may not wear the white makeup. The truly established Geisha’s appearance is normally more subtle and subdued.) The maiko are now “understudies” to a full Geisha for, sometimes, years. From her mistress or teacher, the maiko learn all of the skills she will need to possess as a full Geisha. Maiko receive a professional name and develop distinct mannerisms. Kyoto Geisha are known to be demure and soft spoken (submissive, slavish) while their Tokyo counterparts are known for being sassy and outgoing. (Why did Goldman and the filmmakers choose the Kyoto Geisha? Because perhaps they conform to a cliché, a stereotype, as we have discussed).
After up to five years the Maiko finally graduate to being full Geisha and can charge full price for their time. I have found nothing that confirms that Maiko undergo a ritual auctioning off of their virginity. This appears to be author Arthur Golden’s fantasy (based, possibly, on Louis Malle’s popular 1978 film Pretty Baby in which a teenage New Orleans prostitute has her virginity auctioned off). In the book (which I, unfortunately, read), the scene of “deflowering” was written in explicit pornographic detail. In fact, in the book a concerted effort is made to make Dr. Crab (and nearly every Japanese man in the book) appear as repugnant as possible. (I myself could not even read the sex passages completely (and there are several sex scenes even though Mr. Golden has professed to know that Geisha culture is not sexualized). I found the sexuality in the novel gratuitous and odious, and I consider both the book and its now wealthy author to be worthless, or worse than worthless. (That’s just my opinion!)
Both traditional and modern Geisha have lived in houses called okiya. Some successful and wealthy Geisha have and do live independently. Nowadays, women who wish to become Geisha (and some still do!) begin training in such houses either after junior high school, high school, or even (as in the case of Tokyo Geisha) after university. So, a Geisha is not necessarily, and in fact is rarely, “driven” into the profession by poverty, as in the book and the film. Today, Geisha culture is stronger in Kyoto than Tokyo, and there are now Geisha in the resort town of Atami, but only largely to amuse the tourists.
What, exactly, is the nature of the Geisha’s profession? As in the film they are not wives, nor courtesans, nor prostitutes, nor secret lovers. They are entertainers. They entertain men, their danna, with dance, music, conversation, attentiveness, and flirting—for which men pay a lot of money: a lot! Geisha really do “get rich off men”. But exactly how? What is it that the men desire, and what is the desire that Geisha satisfy? After all, Japanese women do not pay to be entertained by Geisha! Even the Japanese find it difficult to define. So, I will merely venture the following hypotheses (which you are free to reject if you like):
1-- What the Geisha provide men with, and “satisfy” men with, is an illusion. In historical fact, the very first Geisha, in the 17th century, were men! It was not until a century later that women took over the Geisha illusion and learned all of the skills that the Geisha-men had developed. The Geisha persona, both traditionally and today, is, in short an illusion of Woman created by Man, which brings us back to the great line in David Cronenberg’s film M. Butterfly: “I’m a man who loved a woman created by a man. Everything else just falls short.” Everything else: the reality of a woman, her actual sexuality and appeal as wife or lover—all fall short of the illusion that, also as was said in Cronenberg film: “Only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act.” The Geisha is a professional performer of (the illusion of) Woman (who does not exist (as I have said, quoting the great French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan)--or who exists only in the imagination of a man).
2-- Shall we say that the successful Geisha creates the rapport, the climate, or the tense but enjoyable atmosphere that precedes a real love affair? Shall we say that the whole art of Geisha is to get a man’s attention (to “stop a man in his tracks with a single glance” as was said in the film) and then to indefinitely postpone consummation. Shall we say that Geisha elicit a man’s desire and then manage paradoxically to satisfy that desire precisley by leaving it unsatisfied (because, to love a Geisha is forbidden, impossible as every Geisha and every danna knows)? To keep a man’s desire unsatisfied is a way of mastering it, a way of keeping his desire alive, a way to “bring a man to his knees” (as Sayuri says, late in the film). But what of the Geisha’s desire? What if she “falls” for the guy? Well: “It is not for a geisha to want. It is not for a Geisha to feel”. A true Geisha has extinguished desire like the Holy man from Black Narcissus.
Geisha were and are expected to remain single and to “attach” themselves only to a patron (as wealthy and prestigious as possible) called a danna, as in the film. In our film there is the touching love story of the girl and the wealthy “Chairman” whom she loves and whom she wishes to be a part of in some way. The true Geisha does not fall in love, though she may inspire love, devotion, and adoration. In actual fact, though, Geisha can pursue personal relationships, but in doing so she (as in the film) gravely risks her reputation and livelihood. She would have to be extremely discreet, because should her danna discover or be told that his Geisha has a real-life lover, the consequences for the Geisha could be severe. She may lose her danna (the source of her money) and her own reputation.
The novel itself was unfortunately a sensation in America. It was, and still is, taken to be culturally accurate as I read in an article by a Japanese professor teaching at a university in Florida. The book achieves the impression of accuracy through the literary gimmick of a fictional scholar to whom a real-life Geisha tells her sad story. Further, it provokes in readers the desire that it be true through the equally literary gimmick of a long suffering heroine with a “heart of gold” whose only wish in life is to love and to be loved by a kind man despite her rags-to-riches career success as “the most famous of all Geisha in Japan”. The so-called “memoir” is in fact a surreptitious and lazy romance novel based on a children’s fairy-tale: Cinderella. Yet, even American university students, who are supposedly trained in skepticism, trained in the art of separating fact from fiction, reality from illusion, feel or want to believe that this book really “is how it is” for a Geisha, so effective was Mr. Goldman with his cheap gimmicks. The film was not as successful as the book and has generally received lukewarm reviews, but it did win three Oscars. In Japan the book went unsold on bookstore shelves, and the film was (rightly, in my opinion) despised. In fact, the film is far less poisonous than the book which manages to convey the impression that, underneath their hard-working, efficient, family-oriented, tradition-honoring, and overly polite and aesthetisized surface, the Japanese (both men and women) are a race of heartless, calculating sadists. In contrast, in the novel, Americans come off quite well: “All the stories about invading American soldiers raping and killing us had turned out to be wrong; and in fact, we gradually came to realize that the Americans on the whole were remarkably kind”, Golden has one of the characters say [349].
What is disheartening for me, or for anyone who is rational and who tries to be culturally sophisticated, is that this novel has enjoyed global success. It has been translated into 32 (mostly western) languages and thus spreads its ersatz [fake, fabricated] “Japan” to every corner of the western world. The Japan of Arthur Goldman, Rob Marshall, and Steven Spielberg does not exist except in their imaginations.
Goldman was sued by Iwasaki, who was his principal source of any authenticity the book or film has, because he had promised her that if she would agree to be interviewed her remarks would be held in confidence. In the preface to the novel, he credits her with being a “source”. In fact he revealed details of her private life in the novel. Because of that betrayal, she had to write her own version of her life—something that she never wanted to do. Coward that he is, Goldman defended himself in court by saying that his book is “fiction” and thus cannot in principle reveal any fact (because everything in a novel, everything in a fiction, is in principle fiction and must be fiction—even if the fiction might be “based on” fact). He cannibalized and distorted Iwasaki’s words—which she believed herself to be giving in confidence to someone who merely wanted to get the right impression of the life of an actual Geisha—and her own book (which I would urge you to read if you are interested in Geisha culture) never became a bestseller in the West.
In the film three very good Chinese actresses (who I thought were outstanding in the film) play lead parts, adding to the perversion both the book and the film Memoirs are. The entire film was intended (by Spielberg) to be shot on location in Kyoto in Japanese with all the principal parts played by Japanese actors. But Kyoto has become so modernized that it was impossible to use a location, so the film was shot on a movie set in Los Angeles, California and Chinese actresses who are well known in Hollywood were substituted. This film joins a fairly long list of films that have been devoted to the “mysteries” of the Geisha. This film and its success testify to the enduring fascination the West (and not only the West) has had with Geisha culture. There apparently will always be a market for films and books about Geisha (both Western and Japanese) as well as a market for Geisha women themselves. The films include:
Sisters of the Gion Japan 1936, Mizoguchi
Geisha Girl USA 1952, Breakstone
A Geisha Japan 1958, Mizoguchi
The Teahouse of the August Moon USA 1956, Mann
My Geisha USA 1962, Cardiff
In the Realm of the Senses Japan 1976, Oshima
American Geisha USA 1986, Philips
The Geisha House Japan 1999, Fukasaku
Fighter in the Wind China 2004, Yun-ho
Memiors of a Geisha USA 2005, Marshall
Wakeful Nights Japan 2005, Tsugawa
Maiko Haaaan!!! Japan 2007, Mizuta
To this list we should add that there are numerous novels and short stories about Geisha and of course what is perhaps the western world’s most beloved opera: Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
What is really extraordinary is that both Japanese and Westerners (and even Chinese) are simply fascinated by the Geisha phenomenon. And nobody really understands what is going on “between” the danna and their Geisha. But that is the essence of fascination is it not? I don’t understand but I cannot help but be interested; I don’t know if what I am interested is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘true’ or ‘false’ but I cannot turn away from it. This fascination is evidence of something beyond (or below) understanding, that is to say, fascination attests to something that consciousness cannot grasp. Everything I have read as research confirms that the Japanese—both the ordinary Japanese who have nothing to do with Geisha and also the danna—all understand that Geisha is not about sex, romance, or courtship. There have always been plenty of women in Japan to marry, to flirt with, to have affairs with, or just to have sex with, or just to fantasize about “having”. But in addition—and this simply does not exist in the West, or at least I cannot think of a cross-cultural equivalent—there is this other attraction. And this other attraction attracts both men and women (because books and films about Geisha are popular with both, and because there are still—even in our post-modern, rational, globalized world—women who want to be Geisha (even though it really is still a difficult training), and there are men who still want Geisha). Is it fascination with the fact that a man may be (in love?) with a woman and make her rich? But why? It seems crazy! Because he likes the way she pours tea or sake? Lights his cigarette? Plays an antiquated musical instrument? Flirts? Walks? What is fascinating (and this is my 3rd hypothesis) is that the danna has been captivated by a woman he can never have and that no one—in principle—can ever have—exactly like a work of art! I a can buy a work of art, but the artwork itself was not created exclusively for me just because I bought it. The work of art exists both for everyone and no one. The work of art, like the Geisha, by its/her very nature, always escapes my grasp. The Geisha is a living work of art: “she” becomes “that”—that which excites desire and that which escapes possession… And this is what upsets and destroys Nobu: he is accustomed to getting what he wants…but no one can possess a work of art.
Post-Modern Orientalism
Orientalism is another tool we can use to evaluate how the West perceives and misperceives the East. The term was re-invented by a literary critic named Edward Said. Prior to Said, there were “orientalists” who were professors in western universities. Said read their works and then completely re-invented the profession of Orientalism because he saw that the studies by these previous Orientalists were as much (or more) western fantasy, projection, and ideology as they were reality. They were as much (or more!) a reflection of Western racism and sexism as they were genuine descriptions of the East. After Said, Orientalism has never been the same.
The West began to learn about the East beginning with Marco Polo. The first stories he told of China were considered fantastic, too fantastic to be believed, but fascinating nonetheless. By the time of Hegel more accounts of the East had come to the West and many accounts confirmed what Marco Polo had said. The very first impression of the East for a Westerner was that it was/is “fabulous”, “fantastic”. This is an impression that has lasted for centuries. But also by the time of Hegel actual Chinese texts had been translated, so a more sophisticated understanding of the East became possible, which we read in Hegel’s notes on Chinese History. Certain characteristics about China, and then Japan, Korea, and so on became more and more recurrent until a more complete picture of the East could emerge. By the time of our film and the novel it was based upon, thousands of artworks, novels, stories, an opera, pictures and so on of the East were known in the West. Inundated with images of the East it (the East)—in a strange way—did not become more and more realistic. Counter-intuitively, the more information about the East that became available, the less sophisticatedly Westerners viewed the East. Said argues that the East became fabulous all over again: It became a cultural commodity: partly true, partly (or mostly) projected Western fantasies.
As you can tell, I dislike the film and dislike the novel even more. Golden was perfectly aware that the East had become a commodity, so, in order to retain his racist and sexist understanding of Geisha he created the fiction that the novel is not fiction, that it is essentially factual, that Westerners fantasies about the East were essentially true because the novel was based on interviews with an authentic Geisha. But in court he persuaded the judge that, no, the novel is essentially fiction, essentially neither true nor not true. That’s why I think of him so badly; he is a hypocrite. In effect, he is attempting a post-modern strategy: to eliminate the difference between fantasy and reality. He is not the only one. Said had to update Orientalism in order to take this new phenomenon into account. In American politics there has long been a slogan that “images are reality” and not the traditional images as “images of reality”. An obscurantism has occurred that clouds reasoning.
For example: Barack Obama first became known to most Americans through the media, through TV pictures of him speaking, through newspaper accounts not only of what he said but also of how he presented himself (usually as calm, articulate, thoughtful, as ‘no drama Obama’). Now, Obama knew this and so, whenever he went to a new town to give a speech at a political rally, did he not have to conform to the image of him that had been created. What has happened? We could say that Obama really is like the image of him; or we could say that Obama is himself imitating an image that he and the press “created”; or we could say “what difference does it make because the image and the real are now the same: neither one precedes the other!”). As I say, this post-modern situation clouds reasoning which would traditionally ask: How accurate is the image when we compare it to the reality. But, if a reality has copied an image…then how do we sort out the Truth? Is it not true that in the recent Olympics in Beijing, China consciously presented an image of itself as both Traditional and also Progressive. Did they not re-construct Beijing to conform to an image of themselves that they have been promoting? So, the questions now—What is the East really like? China really like? Japan? America? And so on—Cultural communication has become much, much more difficult to discuss. As a result, we have to become much, much more sophisticated thinkers.
As for Golden, although he has used some post-modern strategies, I think he is not so sophisticated. He has merely re-packaged some commodities that he knew would make money: A Cinderella story set in Japan; Western fascination with the so-called “mysterious” far East and with Geisha culture; Sex; Intrigue. The film then had Marshall and Spielberg to create an impressive aesthetic look for the audience (it is an impressively beautiful-looking film!). The elements of post-modernism are there but, in my opinion, there is also just plain dishonesty. What would have been much better is that the real story, by the Geisha herself, Mineko Iwasaki, should have been the bestseller and a film made by a Japanese director sensitive to Geisha culture which could have been really interesting for everybody fascinated by the Geisha phenomenon.
In conclusion, at this point in the course we should be aware that any cross-cultural communication is extremely complicated—complicated by fantasy, stereotypes, clichés, ideology, projection, psychological factors, fascination, post-modern globalism and indeed what may result is this: cultural amnesia. I have spoken to businessmen from the West who tell me that when you go to work in China these days, you would never know it was China. Modern cities in China look like modern cities anywhere in the world. They tell me that they tell their friends that it is more likely they will experience (traditional) China in Taiwan (with its numerous temples, markets, foods, fortune tellers, medicines, and traditional Chinese characters) than in China itself. Likewise, very recently, the governor of the state of Texas in the USA said that his state had a “right” to secede from [to leave, to withdraw from] the Union. The governor said that! Has he not heard of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln? No state has a “right” to secede from the union! A war was fought over that question and the question was settled. So, possibly, even people from their own culture and traditions do not know or practice or even correctly remember their traditions, their history, their beliefs! Recently I watched the “additional features” to a movie set in the mid-west of the United State where many Swedes has immigrated two or three generations ago. An actor in the film was from today’s Sweden. He said that during filming he visited the 2nd and 3rd generation Swedes in the area, and he began to weep because they—not real Swedes living in Sweden today—they (Swedes living in America) had kept alive traditional Swedish culture while “real” Swedes had not! (Indeed, my grandparents were Swedes and they kept alive Swedish tradition for our family. When they went back to Sweden after many years, they were astonished at how Sweden “wasn’t Sweden anymore”.) This complicates things even further in this global, post-modern world. I will end by noting a conversation I had with Dr. Hannes Bergthaller. I am American; he is Austrian and has studied in Germany. He is an Americanist and knows my country, culture, literature and traditions as well as or even better than I do. I am a specialist in Continental Literature and Philosophy, and I know German philosophy, literature and culture as well as or maybe better than he. I love, am interested in and have studied that culture as much as or more than he; and vice versa. So, if you really want to know about America or if you really want to know about Germany: whom do you go to?
Thank you for your attention…
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