Memoirs of the Geisha novelist

The first time I read Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha was in 1997 when it was first published. I bought a copy at Barnes & Noble in New York and I hardly slept a wink during the long Cathay Pacific flight from New York to Vancouver to Hong Kong to Manila, buried as I was in the pages of the engrossing 428-page novel about mysterious, intriguing and captivating world of geisha, focused on the story of a girl named Chiyo who’s plucked from her fishing-village home as a girl and groomed into a geisha renamed Sayuri.

Since then, I looked forward to the day when I would meet Golden in person. I did realize that dream in November last year during the press junket for Columbia Pictures’ movie version of the book, co-produced with Steven Spielberg (of DreamWorks Pictures) who gave way to Rob Marshall (of Chicago fame) as director.

The first Hollywood movie with Asian actors as main players, Memoirs stars Ziyi Zhang as Chiyo/Sayuri, Gong Li as Hatsumomo, Michelle Yeoh as Mameha and Ken Watanabe as The Chairman.

Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that the round of interviews was scheduled at a function room of the Waldorf-Astoria where, according to the novel’s Translator’s Note, "For her remaining 40 years, Sayuri was a resident (of New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Towers) where she created for herself an elegant Japanese-style suite on the 32nd floor. Even then her life continued at its frenetic pace. Her suite saw more than its share of Japanese artists, intellectuals, business figures – even cabinet ministers and gangsters or two."

How fascinating Sayuri’s life must have been!

My room was at the 40th floor of the same Towers but I made it a point to stop by 32nd floor where, I imagined, Sayuri must have walked with the dainty footsteps of the famous geisha that she had been.

From the press kit, I learned that Golden was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and educated at Harvard College where he received a degree in art history, specializing in Japanse art. In 1980, he earned a Master’s Degree in Japanese history from Columbia University where he also learned Mandarin Chinese. Following a summer at Beijing University, Golden worked for a time in Tokyo. After returning to the US, he earned a Master’s Degree in English from Boston University. In 1994, after six years of work, he began the manuscript that would eventually become his first published novel, Memoirs of a Geisha which was released in 1997 and landed in the New York Times best-seller list where it stayed for two years. Translated into 32 languages, the novel has sold more than four million copies so far. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children.

How do you feel about the success of the book?

Well, I cannot account for the success of the book. But I must admit that I wasn’t prepared for it. What I was prepared for was, I thought, "I’m gonna do the best I can and I’ll make sure I’ll get it right by my standards." After that, I didn’t have control of what would happen. My mother read the book and she was happy and that’s about it.

How do you feel that your book is now a movie?

It’s so exhilarating! I wanted to take a vacation from Geisha after I finished the book because it was such a long process of writing it and for two years talking about it constantly. It was nice to go back to my life and work on my next novel. But suddenly, here came Geisha again. It’s kind of fun. It feels like a visit from somebody you haven’t seen for a while. It took this long for whatever complicated reasons there are but to me what matters is the end result. I’m very pleased with the movie version of Geisha that Rob Marshall has come up with. The movie is very beautiful, very faithful to the book. I couldn’t ask for more, really.

Did you visit the set?

I did visit the set. I took my wife and our kids, and we hung out for a couple of days. It was fun. People might think that the director doesn’t necessarily want to hear from the writer. The truth is that Rob is a very collaborative guy who is open and interested in hearing the truth from the writer. I didn’t have anything to add, though. But he did have on the set an American who was once a geisha as a consultant.

How would the movie have turned out if the characters were portrayed by American actors and it was directed by a Chinese or a Japanese?

I don’t know. You ask me an abstract question like "How does a woman feel when she wakes up in the morning?" and I’ll tell you, "What woman? What morning?" I’ll have to say, "What actors? What director?" What’s important is for the director and the actors, regardless of nationality, to understand what a geisha really is. Rob has an understanding of a geisha from the inside. There are Japanese directors who know geisha from personal experience and they would have brought into the film a different set of concerns that might not necessarily make for a better film.

Did you have any say in the choice of actors?

Quite honestly, no. The truth is that my agent gave me some good advice early on. She told me, "When you sell a product like this to Hollywood, the budget to make a movie is enormous and they’re not gonna put an outsider into the planning, and you are an outsider." No, I didn’t have any hand at all in the choice of actors.

Could you tell me how you went into the world of the geisha before you started writing the book?

Well, I began with the book in an oblaque and unexpected way because when I was living in Japan in 1981 I met a guy whose mother was a geisha. What interested me was that his father was a famous businessman. When I got back to the United States I wanted to write a fiction about a Japanese businessman whose wife was a geisha. But then, I came upon a book about the geisha by Liza Dolby, the consultant on the set I mentioned earlier, and I thought it was too good as material to pass up. Then, I wrote a draft of the novel but I had no idea how long it would be. It was only when I was finishing the draft that a friend of mine in Japan who knew what I was doing and was concerned for me said, "I found you some geisha who’s willing to talk to you." But I did find one geisha in New York – the real thing, a Tokyo geisha – and I took her to dinner and sort of investigated the world of the geisha through her eyes. Through her, I got a picture of what a geisha really is.

Why did you live in Japan?

I studied in Japan. I had an enduring interest in language. I wanted to learn Japanese. I worked for an English-language magazine and Japanese was the language spoken in the office. We were going over English manuscripts but were talking Japanese all day.

Do you have any favorite writers?

Over the years, I’ve gone through fascinations with different writers from Charles Dickens to Henry James to Jane Austen to several others. But I don’t really worship anybody. When I read a good book or see a good movie, I’m fascinated to look at the craft – you know, how the book or the movie is done.

Any favorite directors?

Rob Marshall tops my list. I’m saying that not because he’s the director of Geisha but because I really believe in his talent as a director. You know, my daughter went to see Chicago (Marshall’s first movie-directorial work which won the Best Picture Oscar and the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Catherine Zeta-Jones in 2002) before I did. She said, "Daddy, this movie was made for you!" I’m also a huge David Lean fan.

After the interview, I asked Golden to autograph my second copy of the book, this time with an extreme close-up picture of Ziyi Zhang as a geisha on the cover (my first copy had an unidentified geisha on the cover).

"You know what," Golden said, smiling. "When I was in Denmark, a woman approached me with a copy of the book (the original edition) and asked, "Are you the one on the cover?" I laughed and said, "I wish I were!" Of course, she must be joking."

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