Sayo masuda autobiography of a geisha

Autobiography of former Japanese geisha Sayo Masuda

Autobiography of a Geisha (芸者、苦闘の半生涯, Geisha, kutō no hanshōgai, "Geisha, Half a Lifetime of Pain and Struggle") is a book by Sayo Masuda (増田 小夜, Masuda Sayo).

It was first published in Japan in 1957, and the English translation by G. G. Rowley was published in 2003.

Sayo masuda autobiography of a geisha

Masuda wrote her autobiography between the years of 1956 and 1957 in response to a magazine ad for a non-fiction women's writing competition.^[1] Having never learned to read kanji, Masuda wrote the entire book in hiragana, with her editors carefully working to convert her writing into standard kanji while preserving the feeling of her original writing.

Autobiography

Early life

As a child, Masuda lived as a nurse-maid in a large farming household near Shiojiri, where she suffered under little food, poor sleeping quarters and frequent punishment.

Masuda initially spent most of her ti