Masuda Sayo

(1925 - 2008)

Having spent much of her childhood working as a nursemaid on a farm near Shiojiri, in Nagano Prefecture, Masuda Sayo was sold to a geisha house by her impoverished parents when she was twelve years old. Four years later she made her debut as “a fully fledged geisha.” In the 1950s she came across a magazine ad for a women’s writing contest; her submission, an autobiography of her life as a geisha, was published in 1957.