Mineko Iwasaki

, born Masako Tanaka on November 2, 1949 in Kyoto, was Japan's number one  geiko (geisha) until she retired at the age of 29. She entertained many important people when they visited Japan, like Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles. She retired because she was tired of the profession, and wanted to start a family.

Author Arthur Golden did an interview to her and used her as inspiration for his book Memoirs of a Geisha, that was later made a movie. Iwasaki later said that the book was full of lies, and that nothing that Golden said ever happened to her. She put a lawsuit against Golden for this, and they solved it out of court in 2003. After the publication of Memoirs of a Geisha, Iwasaki wrote her autobiography, Geisha, A Life.

Related pages
 Geisha
 Kyoto

Other websites
"Q & A: Remaking a Memoir" (interview by Tamara Wieder, from The Boston Phoenix, October 10-17, 2002)

Iwasaki, Mineko
Category:Japanese autobiographers
Category:1949 births
Category:Living people
Category:People from Kyoto Prefecture