Memoirs of a Geisha

Memoirs of a Geisha is both a historical novel and a fictional memoir. It is narrated by Sayuri Nitta (whose name at birth was Chiyo Sakamoto), a fictional apprentice geisha (or maiko) living in Gion, an entertainment district in the Japanese city of Kyoto, during the early decades of the 20th century. The story is presented as a memoir by an older Sayuri, who recounts the events of her life to an interviewer, Jakob Haarhuis (who is also fictional.) In the opening pages of the novel, Sayuri notes that she has told very few people about her own background and upbringing: 

I wasn’t born and raised to be a Kyoto geisha. I wasn’t even born in Kyoto. I’m a fisherman’s daughter from a little town called Yoroido on the Sea of Japan. In all my life I’ve never told more than a handful of people anything at all about Yoroido, or about the house in which I grew up, or about my mother and father, or my older sister—and certainly not about how I became a geisha, or what it was like to be one. 

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