Arthur Golden's talent for writing would've been wonderful if he hadn't used it to embellish Mineko Iwasaki's story when she directly told him not to; he could've made a beautiful story without equating geisha with prostitutes and by genuinely commenting on the transformation of a respected art form as a result of an imperialised nation imposing their beliefs on another culture. Oddly, he doesn't discuss how the military industrial complex or the media, run predominantly by white men, made that possible; he just perpetuates it.