We follow the life of Sayuri, who begins as a peasant in a fishing village, as she becomes a geisha. The real interest of this book is in the first half – her training and schooling. After that, the book devolves into a rather standard romance-novel-type plot concerning Sayuri’s love for the Chairman, an important figure in her life. Ivy, Resident Scholar The story of a Japanese girl with unusual grey eyes that is taken away from her poor fishing village at the age of nine to be taken into slavery and be trained to become a geisha. Nitty Sayuri faces the many hardships of the art of becoming a geisha and her rival who adds to her burden. The arts of wearing a kimono, putting on makeup, pouring sake, having her virginity auctioned to the highest bidder.
A real well thought and informative story. It really makes you cry. A national bestseller. Marjorie Lampe rein, Resident Scholar Sayuri started life in a small fishing village but was sold to be a geisha in Kyoto and went on to be one of the most successful geisha’s of the time. Rivalry with an older geisha almost destroys her career.
Sayuri is tormented and inspired by love for a man who she believes she cannot have. The story covers the period of the second world war – the end of an era for Japan. Bryn Colvin, Resident Scholar Chiyo, a small town girl in Japan, is sent to become a geisha in the big town of Gion. Things take a bad turn, however, when she runs a fowl of the ok iya’s chief geisha.
Now, Chiyo must face Hatsumomo’s wrath, and the busy world of Gion, to become a geisha. Lyon Sabre, Resident Scholar Sayuri is taken to become a geisha while her mother is dying. She is separated from her sister and has to struggle against Mother and Auntie as well as her the woman teaching her the ways of the geisha. She also has to come to terms with the fact that she cannot be with the man she loves. Jen, Resident Scholar Sayuri is just a normal little girl in a fishing town in Japan. With a sick mother, and a quickly aging father, it seems as thought Sayuri and her sister, Satsu, may soon be alone in this world.
However, a man soon visits their village and takes the sisters away — for a price — and soon they are introduced to a whole new world. Sayuri and Satsu are separated not long after being removed from their hometown. Sayuri does not know what happens to her sister, but what happens to Sayuri is something she never even imagined. Sayuri is sent to the geisha district of Gion to live in an ok iya (a geisha house) so that she may become a geisha someday. Throughout the book, Sayuri goes through geisha school, the death of her real parents, being tortured by the geisha who lives in her ok iya, living as a maid, paying off all her debts by the age of twenty, having her virginity sold to a near-stranger, falling in love with someone whom she cannot have, and much, much more. Jen, Resident Scholar.