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News From Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop

not-for-profit - a workers'co-op - committed to social justice | 96 Bold Street, Liverpool L1 4HY - 0151 708 7270

Autobiography of a Geisha

by Sayo Masuda - £12.99  Vintage (2004)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9780099462040 | ISBN 10: 0099462044

The glamourous world of Kyoto's geisha is familiar to many readers, but Sayo Masuda's tale tells a different story.
 
Masuda was a geisha at a rural hot-springs resort where the realities of sex for sale were unadorned by the trappings of wealth and power. Sent to work as a nursemaid at the age of six she was then sold to a geisha house at the age of twelve. When she made her debut as a geisha in 1940 she was sixteen. Although she had barely learned to write, Masuda was determined to set down her story, motivated by the desire to tell the truth about life as a geisha and explode the myths surrounding their secret world.
 
Remarkably frank and incredibly moving, this is the record of one woman's survival on the margins of Japanese society.

"An engrossing and very human story of survival... a compelling portrait."
(Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha)

(Price & availability last checked: May 2018)

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In booklists: Prostitution and Sex Work, Japan, Women in Asia,
In categories: Feminism & Women, Sexuality / Relationships, Violence & Abuse,

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