CNN.com - Author betrayed me, says geisha

TOKYO, Japan -- A geisha who is suing the author of the best-seller "Memoirs of a Geisha" says she feels betrayed by the writer for breaking a promise not to reveal her identity.

Mineko Iwasaki filed a lawsuit in a Manhattan court this week accusing author Arthur Golden and his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, of defamation, breach of contract and copyright violation.

The book depicts the female entertainers, renowned for centuries for dancing and singing, as little more than the playthings of men motivated merely by money, said Iwasaki.

"I told him many things about the geisha world," Iwasaki said from her home in the ancient capital of Kyoto in central Japan. "I did everything I could for him."

"But the condition was that he would not use my name or my family's name in the book -- it was based on this that I agreed to talk with him. In the end, all those promises were broken."

Iwasaki is seeking an unspecified percentage of the $10 million in sales generated by the book as damages for using her life story as its basis and breaking promises not to reveal her name.

The suit alleges Golden named Iwasaki by her first name in the book's acknowledgements, saying he was "indebted to one individual above all others . . . Mineko."

Iwasaki was one of the most famous Geishas in Kyoto upon her retirement in 1980.

According to the lawsuit, Iwasaki met Golden in 1992 and agreed to be interviewed on the condition of complete anonymity for her and her family, and total confidentiality regarding her personal stories and her family's experiences.

Golden had agreed not to use any personal information supplied by Iwasaki in the more than 100 hours interviews.

But Golden broke his promise, the suit alleges, and also disparages her reputation in interviews to promote the book, which remained on the best-seller list for 58 weeks.

Iwasaki said she was outraged.

"He made the promise that my name and my family's name would not be mentioned anywhere. But he broke this again and again," she said.

A spokesman for Random House Inc. said on Tuesday that while it had not yet received the court papers, from what it had been told the allegations were "totally baseless and completely without merit."

Once in a century

Geishas are female entertainers in a centuries-old tradition, renowned for their colorful kimonos, elaborate white make-up and the traditional dancing and singing for which they are hired to perform in exclusive teahouses and expensive restaurants.

Kyoto is the center of this dwindling tradition, known as the "flower and willow world," with geishas from its Gion district regarded as the among the most prestigious. Only a few hundred remain in all of Japan.

It was in Gion that Iwasaki worked from 1965 to 1980, so skilled that she reportedly garnered a reputation as the kind of geisha who only appears "once in a hundred years."

"Memoirs of a Geisha" tells the story of Sayuri, a girl from a poor rural village sold by her parents to a Kyoto geisha house. She eventually becomes one of the city's most famous and sought-after geishas.

There are only a few hundred Geishas in all of Japan.

Insulting to women

Golden has said his book is wholly fictional. Iwasaki says she understands this, but is annoyed at its mix of fact and what she terms "distorted facts", which she fears give birth to misunderstandings.

She is angry at its portrayal of geishas as little more than playthings of men, arguing that while geishas are paid for their services, they work hard to earn this. To tell what she says is the true story of her life as a geisha, she has written her memoirs, to be published in July. "This book makes women look stupid," she said of Golden's novel. "All they do is go from man to man, followed around by money."

"Actually, the geisha system aims at allowing women to achieve independence. We are artists. We dance and perform music -- this is how we earn our living. It is not about sex," she said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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