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 The
film version of Arthur Golden's "Memoirs
of a Geisha" recently hit the theaters and at about the same time I
observed in our traffic logs that there were a number of referrals to the
page at Ariki Art that features
Juan Coronado's painting of the geisha Mameha, one of the protagonists
in Golden's book. The visitors were coming from an online book club
I'd never heard of before, lantech.geekvenue.net.
Upon visiting the source I discovered what all the buzz
was about: was Arthur Golden's novel fact or fiction, and specifically, was
the geisha Memeha a real person? It all started out with a posting
from "Art" who was curious to see what Mameha looked like, asking forum
readers if they knew of a website where he could see the tourism poster
referred to in the novel. According to the novel, the beautiful geisha
Mameha was featured on the poster under the banner "Come and Visit the Land
of the Rising Sun".
About 5 weeks of silence passed, presumably while readers
crawled the web in search of the poster, before finally a member by the name
of "Lyndallia Morden" posted a comment to the effect that she was of the
opinion that the book was fiction. It was only 3 days later that
Raquel retorted "This definitely isn't fiction, that's why it's called
memoirs. I am very curious to see the poster also so I will be searching
also."
Another 3 weeks of silence before Kelly chimes in "It
is definitely fiction. The author used different accounts of the life of the
geisha and infused in into Sayuri, Hatsumomo and Mameha."
A month passes before we hear from Brittany who writes: "The
story is not fiction. Read pg. 1 and you will see, it is a translation
directly from Chiyo from a tape recorder. pg 4 states "Whenever possible I
have left names unchanged, though Sayuri did hide the identities of certain
men even from me through the convention, rather common among geisha.... etc.""
Well that should settle it once and for all right?
It's right there in the book! All the while I'm staring at the cover
of my copy of the book which I've had since 1997 and see the title says
"Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel". It beats me why someone isn't
pointing out the meaning of the word "novel"?
Things are heating up now as it's only 3 days later that
"TM" chimes in a rather scholarly fashion: "Sorry ... though a beautiful
story, it definitely IS fiction. If you go into any bookstore you will find
it in the "Fictional Literature" section. In fact, the newer editions have
"Fictional Literature" printed right on the cover. When the author describes
having recorded Chiyo's memoirs, he is using a literary technique to engage
the reader, not relating actual events. Also, notice that the author's name
is not the same as the translator's."
Several more posts and the true believers gradually fall
by the wayside, consoling themselves with comments to the effect that even
if it was fiction, the story and the characters in it certainly were and are
"real" for them.
One final post I have to share, only because it proves
that Americans are not alone in their poor geography and general knowledge.
Raimundo demonstrated that the score for geography may be even lower in
Chile in his post (with some grammar/spelling corrections on my part):
Hi
I have fallen in love with Sayuri, because she is so real but certainly I
got disappointed when I found a mistake in the book. I cannot remember the
page, but you see, I am from Chile (South America) and we are in summer in
Xmas and in the New Year time...just like in Japan, and in the book there is
a description of a New Year's-eve with snow (!?). Weird! I
didn't know what to think, because I thought it was a real story, and from
that page my doubts about the veracity of the book started to grow in me, so
if you want to write a Japanese story, remember that the seasons are changed
for you.
Finally someone by the name of Tanja shared with the forum that the image of
Mameha was to be found at Ariki Art. We here at Ariki Art have known
for some time that all the characters in Memoirs of a Geisha are real,
having been brought to life by Juan Coronado's paint brush almost 2 years
ago now. Just look here to see the
image of the real Mameha!
Juan Coronado
also painted two other characters from the novel:
Sayuri and
Kabocha (Pumpkin). Mameha is the only unsold original.
Giclee prints on paper or canvas are available for all three of the geisha
paintings. Contact us for details.
Listen to an interview with Arthur Golden
author of Memoirs of a Geisha
Here's a link to an
audio interview with
Arthur Golden the author of Memoirs of a Geisha conducted by Linda
Wertheimer of National Public
Radio (NPR) in November of 1997
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