4 ideas
Nine-year-old Chiyo and her sister Satsu are sold from the fishing village of Yoroido. Chiyo goes to a Gion okiya, and Satsu is sent to a brothel. Years later her mentor Mameha stages a bidding war for Chiyo's virginity (mizuage) between Dr. Crab and the Baron, and it closes at a record 11,500 yen, which pays off Chiyo's debt and changes her standing in the house overnight.
The okiya charges the girl for her purchase price, lessons, kimono, food and even a doctor's visits, so she starts her career owing more than she can easily repay. Each act of defiance adds to the debt, for example Chiyo's failed escape attempt and the kimono Hatsumomo tricks her into ruining.
As a despairing child, Chiyo is shown kindness by the Chairman, and she organizes her life around becoming a geisha to reach him. Near the end she learns that he secretly asked Mameha to take her on as a younger sister. The self-authored ascent she narrates was partly arranged by the man she thought she was pursuing.
Mineko Iwasaki, the retired geisha Golden interviewed, sued him for breach of confidence because he named her as a source. She also objected that he portrayed geisha, and her own mizuage, as sold sexuality. The case settled, and she published her own memoir, Geisha, a Life, to reclaim the account. Read this way, the book's vivid first-person authenticity is a construction by an outside author, built from a source who disputes what was made of her testimony.