Taylor - American Geisha

AMERICAN GEISHA

Come and be my geisha. Responding to her solider husbands invitation, an American woman arrives in 1950s Japan and encounters something very different to the world of Madame Butterfly and Lafcadio Hearn she is expecting. Entertaining and insightful, this memoir captures the challenge and mutual incomprehension she experiences as she strives to learn about another culture and people, while they struggle to understand her. Written with tremendous zest and good humour, American Geisha is a timeless example of how to live abroad successfully in an increasingly global world, as well as a fascinating account of everyday life in Japan in the immediate post-war years.

THE KEGAN PAUL JAPAN LIBRARY

The Japanese Enthronement Ceremonies D. C. Holtom
Ainu Creed and Cult Neil Gordon Munro
Japan: its Architecture, Art and Art Manufactures Christopher Dresser
Home Life in Tokyo Jukichi Inouye
An Artists Letters from Japan John La Farge
The Kwaidan of the Lady of Tamiya James S. de Benneville
The Haunted House James S. de Benneville
We Japanese Frederic de Garis and Atsuhara Sakai
The Nightless City of the Geisha J. F. de Becker
The Gardens of Japan Jiro Harada
History of Japanese Thought Hajime Nakamura
Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings Edward S. Morse
Japanese Buddhism Charles Eliot
Lafcadio Hearns Gleanings in Buddha Fields Lafcadio Hearn
In Far Japan Frank H. Hedges
Beauty in Japan Samuel W. Wainwright
Behind the Japanese Mask Robert Craigie
The Flowers and Gardens of Japan Florence Du Cane and Ella Du Cane
Learning the Sacred Way of the Emperor Yutaka Hibino
Japanese Marks and Seals James Lord Bowes
Japan and Its Art Marcus B. Huish
The Last Genro Bunji Omura
Japanese Names and How to Read Them A.J. Koop and Hogitaro Inada
The Theory of Japanese Flower Arrangements Josiah Conder
Traveller from Tokyo John Morris
Diaries of the Court Ladies of Old Japan Annie Shepley Omori and Koichi Doi
The Art of Japanese Gardens Loraine F. Kuck
The Religion of the Samurai Kaiten Nukariya
Ancestor-Worship and Japanese Law Baron Nobushige Hozumi
In the Bamboo Lands of Japan Katharine Schuyler Baxter
Human Bullets Todayoshi Sakurai
Japan: Aspects and Destinies W. Petrie Watson
Japan and Things Japanese Mock Joya
The Tale of Lady Ochikubo Translated by Wilfred Whitehouse and Eizo Yanagisawa.
Japanese Nation Inazo Nitob
The Honorable Picnic Thomas Raucat
American Geisha Marion Taylor

AMERICAN GEISHA

MARION TAYLOR

First published 2006 by Kegan Paul Limited

Published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Kegan Paul, 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electric, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying or recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

ISBN 978-0-415-66621-3 (bpk)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

T his book is not intended to be anything more than a series of impressions, honestly told, about a land of delicate beauty and charm. While perhaps only a fool would rush in where Lafcadio Hearn has so faultlessly trod, this fool, like the Ancient Mariner pinning down the helpless Wedding Guest, must needs tell her tale and spoil white paper.

And the books she has consulted to help spoil the white paper? Some that were recommended by her friend, the scholarly Muragishi-san of the American Cultural Center in SapporoOreste and Enko Vaccaris English-Japanese Conversation Dictionary, Seiji Miyazakis The Japanese Dictionary, the Japan Travel Bureaus Japan, the Pocket Guide, Atsuharu Sakais Japan in a Nutshell (which the little old author sold her himself in the lobby of the Fujiya Hotel), Frank B. Fishers Fact, Fables, Fiction of Hokkaido, Japan, the article on Japan in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1946 Edition), the various guide-books sold in such places as Nikko, Kyoto and Tokyo; the rest of the volumes put out by the Japan Travel Bureau, such as Isstei Nishikawas Floral Art of Japan, Tourist Library 3 ; Matsunosuke Tatsui, Japanese Gardens, Tourist Library 5; Shtar Miyake, Kabuki Drama, Tourist Library 7; Aya Kagawa, Japanese Cookbook, Tourist Library 11 ; to name only a few.

But mostly she has tried to use her eyes, her ears and her feelings to help you enjoy Japan as much as she did.

T he Chinese have a saying that the longest journey in the world begins with the first step. But my longest journey began with the first letter. Survey for army completed. Am being transferred to Japan. How would you and Johnny like to come over and be my Geishas? wrote my soldier husband, air mail, special delivery, six cents due.

Johnny is a funny sex for a Geisha, but when can we start? I air-mailed back, no cents due. And dont be picking up any other Geishas until we get there.

Am spending all my time trying to finish up my findings on. Korea and other points east and west, so how can I be spending my time picking up Geishas? But as soon as I arrive in the land of the Rising Sun, Ill send for you, my husband air-mailed back, three cents due.

And now, after many letters, and many steps, my son Johnny and I were standing on the battleship-grey deck of an army transport, looking out across steel-grey waters into the yarn-grey mists that were knitting a scarf that completely muffled Yokohama. Tears of frustration stung my eyes. That view of the superb harbour of Japan, that first precious glimpse of Fujiyama I had dreamed of for so longwere they all to be swallowed up by fog?

But at our feet lay a sight not even the clouds could destroy. Three small fishing boats pirouetted toward us in water that was suddenly incredibly blue. Oriental sampans with matting sails, their decks swarming with small, yellow-skinned men wearing sacks for coats and towels for hats. Then ships began sliding through the banks of fogthe Haugoland of Sweden, the Chester of England, ships with names ending in Maru flying the flag of Japan.

But the fog rang down again like a curtain and began to wring out drops of rain.

Then suddenly docks appeared and a band played The Star Spangled Banner. Far-off blurs of khaki waited in the April rain, loaded with flowers. Much closer, yellow faces studied us curiously, under toadstool hats, above rows and rows of sheaves of straw.

Japanese dock hands in their raincoats, explained a voice near me at the rail. They use rice straw for everything.

I gazed at the dark, slanting eyes, the yellow skins, and thought these are the faces of Asia I signed up to live with for at least a year. I shivered with the strangeness of it all.