MINEKO IWASAKI - from GEISHA to MISTRESS OF A FAMOUS ACTOR to WIFE and MOTHER and ARTIST

Born in 1949, Mineko was the mistress of actor Shintaro Katsu, called Toshio, a relationship that went on for several years.

What do we really know about Geisha?

To the point: Are they prostitutes or are they not? The word Geisha translates to artist or woman artist. Girls take classes and train seriously for many years, singing, dancing, playing instruments, conducting tea ceremonies, communicating diplomatically with just about anyone; they are entertaining.  But do they also have to have sex with clients?

The Iwasaki geisha house was a world of women located in the Gion Kobu district of Kyoto, Japan, and according to Mineko Iwasaki, the most famous and traditional kayukai of them all, the place where she spent her entire career, first as a young girl who had to legally choose to be adopted and change her name to the house, then as a Maiko or young dancer, and finally as an accomplished adult woman dancer and entertainer, the most famous who would earn millions of dollars.

But this is what we want to know. Even if they are not sex workers too, aren't they supposed to attract and be kept by a rich patron or two? To become Mistresses? Are they desirable as wives? Maybe the ritualistic aspect of their lives and the emphasis on their artistry and beauty detracts from a form of sexual servitude or sex work?  Or perhaps it depends on how beautiful the woman or how reputable her house or if she is lucky enough to have a loving, very rich patron. Falling in love can be a problem, especially if it is someone who cannot marry you, or cannot admit to knowing you, or who is poor. (Though we are sure the entertaining girl must pretend to very much like a man or love him even if she does not!) 

Having a girl baby is not a problem and single motherhood is not taboo, but having a boy baby may mean going to live elsewhere to raise him.

We learn through films and books that some girls were often given over to this life by parents who could not afford them or who felt there might be a better life ahead for them if they did. The young woman is, we hear, kept innocent of the sexual nature of the life ahead for her.

WHAT WAS MINEKO IWASAKI's experience?

First, I want to get to something that is very important to Mineko and her memoir, called GEISHA, A LIFE.  The film, which greatly impressed me due to its artistry as well as the story, called MEMOIR OF A GEISHA, has a scene in which a geisha's virginity is sold to the highest bidder, as a way of paying back her house for her years of being supported and trained, called misuage. The innocent girl lays back fully dressed in her elaborate kimono and hairstyle and silently awaits what will happen to her.  After this, maybe it's an assumption, but sex might be part of her entertaining.

Apparently, and I say this after reading internet sites and postings around Mineko Iwasaki and her book, is that the author of the novel, Memoirs of a Geisha : a Novel, Arthur Golden, from which the film was based, was sued by Mineko for breaking a verbal agreement to keep her name out of it. He ran her name in a thank you. Both parties were hurt and upset and incredulous. He says he interviewed other geisha or ex-geisha too. One site I read on the Internet said that Mineko had told Golden that her deflowering had sold for $850,000, a record. She was provoked to write her own memoir, you could say to set the record straight.

In her book she denies that Geishas were ever prostitutes or sex workers and makes no mention of her deflowering. Could this be because she never uses the term Geisha on herself, and the name she does use Geiko, is specific to her Kyoto house, in the Gion Kobu district? : maybe in her house deflowerings were not sold to the highest bidder?

Mineko does write in her memoir about being almost raped by her older sister's son when she was about twelve years old, which lead to her older sister's banishment as well as suffering from what we call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, though she does not use that term.  She also recalls being subject to an attack by drunken men on the street and other attempts at molestation that she fought off vigorously. As I read about her night terrors and having to be closely watched over by others as she slept, I couldn't help but wonder if she was ruined. She felt that this experience and her lifestyle to that point in Japan had done something to her that would make it impossible for her to love or be loved and also that not having experienced passionate love, she could not use that experience in her dancing, which was what kept her going, her love of dance.  Certainly with all that there would be room for admitting to this or not.

It may also be that based on beauty and talent or heritage, that some young women were spared the ritualistic deflowering, which I personally have come to believe happened in at least some geisha traditions or houses, but also that such experiences and rituals do not automatically mean it's the beginning of sex work or prostitution. In other words, having to have sex with men not of one's choosing.

Are Geisha raised to be independent women?  So independent that they do not need men?

In this book, which has a wonderfully simply but eloquent language to it, there is much to learn about the tradition, the opportunity it was, as well as Mineko's own life.  She came from a familyin which old broke aristocracy and more recent business acumen did not support a family of thirteen children.  She was the youngest and the fourth daughter to be given over to the same house.

Perhaps this story is different because it takes place in the second half of the 20th century.

Perhaps there were various levels of sex work, just as there is today in the West.  Certainly the film indicates this, as the beautiful child is separated from her less desirable sister who is being used as a child prostitute with no future ahead of her. In our culture, a woman can be pimped out by a man who abuses her, a child can be sex trafficked or at 18 a woman can work for a legal Nevada brothel and pay for her own college education with the money. There are the super models rumored to charge $10,000 for an evening in Los Angeles and the beauties who work film festivals and - it's said - earn more in a day then some people earn all year.  The question of being groomed for this life or choosing it is a huge one.

Some people think of courtesans as prostitutes', but I think the traditional definition of Courtesans is a bit closer to that of a geisha, though it's said that a courtesan chooses who will Keep her, perhaps both the courtesan and the geisha have a chance of seducing the man they want.

I have the idea that because Mineko Iwasaki, born in 1949 and given the name Masako by her parents, was born to a family with a heritage of nobility and wealthy, unable to afford their large family though they were, that she may have been treated exceptionally well from the beginning.  Indeed she was promised to become the Atotori, or heir to the entire house, worth in the millions of dollars.

But let's get over that  intriguing "did she or didn't she?" question and go to something of possibly more interest here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot. Mineko's culture of Japan, where so many marriages were arranged, was quite accepting of a wealthy man having a woman who was or had been a geisha as what we would call a Mistress, a Kept woman.  All her honed talents for charm make for a rather desirable and prestigious Mistress, or Wife.

Mineko writes that she had to force herself to be outgoing and she has long lived quietly as an artist with her artist husband, Jinichiro Sato. 

However she does tell about  first becoming the long time Mistress of a married Japanese actor, stage name Shintaro Katsu, who she called Toshio. Introduced at 15 briefly, and then reintroduced at 18, he persued her after she turned 20.  At the time she was receiving offers of marriage, none which interested her. First she expected him to prove himself to her by showing up at performances every night for three years, which he did!  Having proven his sincerity, she then kept her part of the bargain and became his Mistress. Though there was a protocol of discretion, she traveled with him. He had also claimed he would leave his wife, which he did not.  Mineko finally realized that he was devoted to his wife, as well as possibly having other women as affairs.  She ended the relationship after being humiliated and realizing that she wanted and needed more in a relationship with a man.  She married at age 29 to a man of equal age and she married him very quickly.

The financial aspects of being a Geisha Mistress are usually arranged between the owner of the house, the reigning Atotori, and the man. It was acceptable and she wasted no time worrying about the ethics or morality of it.  A man could have more than one geisha Mistress.  And visa versa. But as time went on, Mineko looked to this man to be true to her.

At the age of 29, she decided to retire at the top of her profession, both acclaimed and wealthy in her own right.  Within her culture and the tradition it was shocking, but Mineko found she wanted more and did not agree with the way things were. She knew she had worked long hours in violation of child labor laws. She wanted the women to be allowed more and better educational opportunities and was disillusioned, considering her life archaic. Dozens of other geisha followed her lead and quit after she did. True to her tradition, she continued financial support of some of the other women of her house as she would have if she had gone on to run it, which had been the plan all along. 

Then she met and married - less than a month after meeting him, the artist, Jinichiro Sato, whose work she was taken with, and lives the life of a wife, mother, householder, as well as a professional artist herself.

Throughout this month, I will feature some excerpts from Mineko Iwasaki's memoir, her own words, focusing on the interplay of women and men in the life she lead as one of the most famous geisha in modern times.

Of interest to my readers is that one of the men who came to see her was someone I wrote about last summer, Aldo Gucci, who was in Japan on fashion business.  In chapter 29, page 18 0f 25 of the e-book, she tells that he ruined her kimono when he signed the red silk with a "flourish of black ink." She hoped to give him the kimono one day since she paid between $5000 and $7000 for a kimono!


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Interested in other "Asian" Mistresses?
Check out these women in my archives!


Evey - Mistress of singer songwriter James Taylor - June 2017
Chinese Empress Dowager CIXI - September 2015
Marilyn Young and Miyoko Watei and the Chess Champ Bobby Fischer - September 2013
May Pang - Mistress of ex-Beatle John Lennon - April 2012


or use a word search such as Japan
And to learn more about Aldo Gucci, who had daughter Patricia Gucci with his mistress, Bruna Palombo, our Mistress of the Month in August 2017.