Autobiographical Self & Truth in Mineko Iwasaki’s Geisha of Gion
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The 2001 lawsuit between Arthur Golden, the author of Memoirs of a Geisha, and Mineko Iwasaki, the consultant of Golden’s novel as a former geisha, reveals a vexed problem regarding the identity of the author in the autobiographical discourse. Iwasaki sued Golden for breach of contract of confidentiality and defamation of character. To repudiate Golden’s novel, Iwasaki published her autobiography in 2002, entitled Geisha of Gion, which soon became a world bestseller. To this day, Iwasaki’s autobiography is characterized as a “real” memoir of a geisha that reclaims a history tarnished by a white male author. Among the issues surrounding the lawsuit, I find it an implausible claim that Golden’s novel should adhere to the governing rules of autobiography as a nonfiction narrative. As I discuss the unwisdom of the link between the identity of the novelist and the fictional story of a novel, I will argue that 1) the notion of “realness” advertised for Geisha of Gion should be understood as autobiographical truth, rather than historically verifiable truth, and that 2) Iwasaki as the flesh-and-blood author is a different subject from an autobiographical self, who is discovered, created, and constructed through the act of writing.
Abstract
The 2001 lawsuit between Arthur Golden, the author of Memoirs of a Geisha, and Mineko Iwasaki, the consultant of Golden’s novel as a former geisha, reveals a vexed problem regarding the identity of the author in the autobiographical discourse. Iwasaki sued Golden for breach of contract of confidentiality and defamation of character. To repudiate Golden’s novel, Iwasaki published her autobiography in 2002, entitled Geisha of Gion, which soon became a world bestseller. To this day, Iwasaki’s autobiography is characterized as a “real” memoir of a geisha that reclaims a history tarnished by a white male author. Among the issues surrounding the lawsuit, I find it an implausible claim that Golden’s novel should adhere to the governing rules of autobiography as a nonfiction narrative. As I discuss the unwisdom of the link between the identity of the novelist and the fictional story of a novel, I will argue that 1) the notion of “realness” advertised for Geisha of Gion should be understood as autobiographical truth, rather than historically verifiable truth, and that 2) Iwasaki as the flesh-and-blood author is a different subject from an autobiographical self, who is discovered, created, and constructed through the act of writing.
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