Status Updates From Storia proibita di una geis...

Shutting down the geisha districts during the war is an interesting topic between Iwasaki & Golden’s books. Mineko’s family is well off and wouldn’t have suffered as hard but I’m curious of the people who didn’t have money or family to return to. Factory life must’ve been miserable but Iwasaki family didn’t have to experience it.

I love the gender swap here with babies being born in the okiya. They prized girls and shunned men for the same reason it happens vice versa, for heirs. Men need boys to carry on their name in the same way these women need girls to carry on their business.

Another Arthur Golden misstep. The baron is mentioned here as a person Mineko has heard of sponsoring a geiko but sexual favors are not expected. They may happen naturally but it’s not the way dhanna were described in Memoirs of a Geisha. I have to wonder whether Iwasaki is covering things up. She is the first woman in 300 years to speak of this because they were barred from it, maybe she’s not entirely honest.

So her parents are visiting and giving her gifts but she speaks about how Yaeko calls them “baby sellers.” Interesting because Yaeko is being painted as a villain and vicious by Mineko but is she hiding something. She hasn’t specifically said how old her sisters were or whether they were sold into it. Are all of these children being sold into this and was Mineko the child Yaeko is speaking?

I don’t know how I feel about Mineko suckling her sister and the auntie of the okiya’s breasts to fall asleep. Especially at five years old.

Yaeko IS the mother of the boys she dropped off at Mineko’s house.

After the first visit at the okiya is described in detail Iwasaki uses a sentence to describe that she kept visiting for longer periods of time until she stayed. Yet after her first visit she says she never wanted to return. She’s so young but “chose” to live there. It’s glazed by so quickly I’m curious if that’s really true.