There’s a reason why some stories should not be told by people outside their world. In the case of Arthur Golden’s 1997 novel “Memoirs of a Geisha,” adapted into a hit 2005 eponymously titled film, the Orientalism whitewashing was in full flower. Golden’s novel, set in the late 1920’s, roughly 25 years later than the events of Kiyoko Murata’s “A Woman of Pleasure,” told basically the same story. A daughter is sold into prostitution to cover her family’s debts. Both novels take pains in describing the minutiae of the women’s lives, the ranking of courtesans, and the naming systems of brothels.

The place where Golden diverges from an ethical telling of a sad story based on true elements story comes by his misrepresentation of a geisha’s life and occupation. Geisha’s roles were more elevated, more in keeping with that of a performance artist rather than sex worker, and primary source documentation tells us that the lives of geisha and courtesans rarely mixed. Golden’s story and the subsequent film adaptation left the heroine adrift and alone in circumstances outside of her control. Life and fate happened around the geisha, leaving free agency and autonomy mere unattainable dreams. Golden whitewashed and mansplained his tragic heroine. He famously divulged the identity of the former geisha he used as a source. In his efforts to produce a commodity as marketable as “M Butterfly” or “Flower Drum Song,” he added nothing progressive or advanced to the narratives about this time or portrayals in general of Asian women in the first half of the 20th century.

Kiyoko Murata’s “A Woman of Pleasure,” first published in Japan in 2013 and available in English through a thrillingly fresh 2024 English translation by Juliet Winters Carpenter, is equal parts brutally graphic in its portrayal of women as commodities and at times almost joyous in the energy and independence of its fifteen year old heroine Aoi Ichi. In the brief time frame of the novel, 1903-1904, Ichi never lets go of the perseverance grown from life on her rocky volcanic island home. It was “the sort of place where stumbling upon a folkloric demon would come as no surprise.” The women of her family and home were strong, resilient swimmers who made their livings through catching fish and shellfish. When Ichi is sold to an exclusive brothel as a way to pay off her family’s debt, the die is cast. In no uncertain terms, especially through the first few pages, the reader understands that these women are now chattel to be managed and moved at will:
“The girls weren’t put to work right away. They were like vegetables fresh from the field, still muddy: before they could be served, they needed to have the dirt shaken off, have unsightly leaves removed, and be washed clean.”

If this gives the sense that Ichi’s new home, a brothel named Shinonome, was a finishing school, that’s indicative of the brilliant balancing act Murata manages here. Ichi is irascible, rebellious, a typical teenager of any era or culture. She will not go down without a fight. This is ostensibly her story to be told, but two other narratives are prominently featured. Shinonome, the brothel’s top courtesan and its namesake, makes it her mission to cultivate a respectable prostitute from this primitive island girl. Testuko, Ichi’s teacher, makes it her point to foster reading, composition, and calligraphy skills into her students so that they may more effectively communicate with their clients. This literacy skill also allows women to read their own promissory notes to keep track of their financial debts to the brothel. The women are also taught Japanese flower arrangement and Tetsuko believes had they not taken such classes and become prostitutes, these uncivilized girls “would have gone their whole lives not knowing how to write, never straining to find words to express the beauty of flowers.”

It’s this duplicity of tone and plot that can sometimes be jarring. The reader knows on every page what’s happening to these women, how they’re being treated, how their debt will never fully be erased. At the same time, there’s a sense of reform happening beneath the surface. As their lives become more untenable and gloomy, their solidarity becomes stronger. They protect each other, wash each other’s backs, and they learn that an employee strike such as ones they had heard about in distant shipyards was a viable solution to their problems. The Prostitute Liberation Law of 1872 had proposed reform and free agency, but it wasn’t happening. As a result, at the novel’s climax we read of the Shinonome strike, inspired by a strike at a nearby Nagasaki shipyard, in which working conditions and equity rose to the surface. Readers might find the positive post-brothel living potential unrealistic, but the strength in numbers is stirring at this point in the narrative. These women had done what they were trained to do, had endured humiliation and degradation at the hands of their male clients, and the chance of better lives was palpable.

The strengths of “A Woman of Pleasure” rest in the fact that Murata seems less concerned with prurient interests and scatalogical descriptions than she is in developing a treatise of feminism. Tetsuko, the brothel teacher and default dispenser of all knowledge, espouses the ideas of Fukuzawa Yukichi, whose assertions that girls should also be allowed to study physics and other hard sciences prove refreshing. Reading deeper, she learns Yukichi believes only a woman of “refinement” deserves to be called “a proper lady.” He dismisses brothel employees as “refined” ladies “because they are not human to begin with.”
“A Woman of Pleasure” is a novel of discussions, considerations, and dialogues. When one of Shinonome’s higher class courtesans becomes pregnant, a considerable amount of time is spent wondering whether the state of pregnancy itself is always a defeat. After all, it’s the ultimate nine month commitment of conceiving of and growing to a completion another human being inside your body. The other question, about the level of dignity in married women as opposed to prostitutes, is also given ample consideration. Shinonome, the courtesan from whom all hard fought knowledge is dispensed, is very clear to Ichi about the differences:
“…A prostitute entertains a client only for an agreed upon time…When that time is up, the client leaves…The rest of her time belongs to her and so does her body…there’s nobody in the world as free as a prostitute.”
As for wives, Shinonome is equally clear:
“[They] have to wait on their husbands constantly. The husband pushes his wife down whenever he feels like it and doesn’t pay her a penny. She’s forced to bear children and works like a pack animal. Pack animals get no pay…How is your mother at home any different from a horse or a cow?”
Ichi’s periodic journal entries are a mixture of innocence and tragedy, presented like poetry with the poor grammar of an uneducated teenager. Learning her father is coming to visit, Ichi reflects:

“When he sees me what face will he make?

Its all I think about.

I won’t be able to sleep tonight.

There are lots of men

But only one I love-

My one and only pa.”

Later, knowing she will leave the brothel and join the others in a strike that will mean liberation and at least the hope of a better future, Ichi writes in her journal a farewell to her possessions, the ants in the garden and creatures in the pond. It’s this childlike innocence that proves truly heartbreaking, and Murata sensitively renders it for the reader. Modern life and reform quickly, inevitably enters the narrative by the end of “A Woman of Pleasure.” The Salvation Army enters the picture and offers an alternative for the brothel employees that can bring them away from the life of a servitude in which they have no control over their earnings.

At the very end, Ichi is free from the shackles of Shinonome. She dreams of life swimming with seven-tailed sea turtles from Watatsumi Palace, back with her female-centered family of fisherwomen, making their living getting fish and crabs from the depths of the ocean. It’s a pleasant and warm way to end a novel that’s equal parts harrowing, historic, feminist, and dreamlike.