The geisha is certainly an exotic creature even today, but the reality of the geisha's position in modern Japanese society is far different from what it was in the 19th and 18th centuries, when geishas numbered in the tens of thousands and played an integral role in Japanese culture. Today, true geishas are rare and the geisha experience is the privilege of a wealthy few, with the price of s dinner party ranging upwards of five hundred dollars for the evening. On the other hand, the geisha is not an "ancient" Japanese tradition at all, but a relatively late refinement of the licensed prostitution that developed in the Yoshiwara ...
In Yoshie's work, “Gender in Early Classical Japan: Marriage, Leadership, and Political Status in Village and Palace (2005),” she takes the example of Toji, women known to have played a m...
Saikaku, Ihara. Life of a Sensuous Woman. The Longman Anthology of World Literature. (Vol. D) Ed. Damrosch. New York: Pearson, 2004. 604-621. [Excerpt.]
Golden, Arthur. Memoirs of a Geisha. Vintage Contemporaries Edition, 1999 ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Print.
Saikaku, Ihara. Life of a Sensuous Woman. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 3rd Ed. Volume D. Ed. Martin Puchner. New York: Norton, 2013. 591-611. Print.
Other research has devoted to unveiling the origins and the development of their stereotyping and put them among the historical contextual frameworks (e.g., Kawai, 2003, 2005; Prasso, 2005). Research has shown that those stereotypes are not all without merits. The China doll/geisha girl stereotype, to some degree, presents us with a romanticized woman who embodies many feminine characteristics that are/ were valued and praised. The evolving stereotype of the Asian martial arts mistress features women power, which might have the potentials to free women from the gendered binary of proper femininity and masculinity. Nevertheless, the Western media cultural industry adopts several gender and race policing strategies so as to preserve patriarchy and White supremacy, obscuring the Asian women and diminishing the positive associations those images can possibly imply. The following section critically analyzes two cases, The Memoirs of a Geisha and Nikita, that I consider to typify the stereotypical depictions of Asian women as either the submissive, feminine geisha girl or as a powerful yet threatening martial arts lady. I also seek to examine
This book depicts how Japanese behaved both before and after the World War II. In this book, it describes how Japanese military slaves (a.k.a. comfort women) was made, what motivated Japan to do these abuses.
The Fifteen-Year War was a time of great turmoil and uncertainty in Japan. Various facets of the country were tested and driven to their limits. During the occupation, race and gender began to evolve in ways that had not exactly be seen before. War had a tremendous impact on every part of the life of a Japanese citizen. Both men and women began to fill roles that were completely novel to them. Race became a part of the definition of who people were. As the war progressed and American troops landed on Japanese soil for occupation, more drastic changes occurred. Economic hardship and rations befell the people of the Land of the Rising Sun. Prostitution began to rear its ugly head and rape transpired. Through memory, research, and vivid creativity, the evolution of Japan during the Fifteen-Year War can be analyzed with great scrutiny.
Saikaku, Ihara. “Life of a Sensuous Woman.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Ed. Puchner, Martin, and Suzanne Akbari, eds. Vol. D. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print. 6 vols.
Ogawa, D. (1993) The Japanese of Los Angeles. Journal of Asian and African Studies, v19, pp.142-3.