- Liza Dalby
Liza Crihfield Dalby (born 1950) is an American
anthropologist and novelist specializing inJapanese culture .She is a 1972 graduate of
Swarthmore College , received her Masters in 1974 and received her Ph.D. fromStanford University in 1978. The title of her dissertation is "The Institution of the Geisha in Modern Japanese Society". Upon receiving her Ph.D. she accepted her first teaching position at theUniversity of Chicago . She is married to Michael Dalby, managing director of Stylus LLC. They have 3 children: Marie, Owen and Chloë, and live inBerkeley, California .In 1975 she went to Japan on a Fulbright scholarship to research geisha for ther Ph.D. thesis. Her book "Geisha" (filmed as "
American Geisha ") is based on her experiences with thegeisha community inKyoto 's Pontochō.Her unique experience in the geisha community led her to serve as a consultant for
Arthur Golden 's 2005 film "Memoirs of a Geisha" starringZhang Ziyi . Golden acknowledges her assistance in the novel and describes her as "the only American woman ever to become a geisha."She is currently working on a novel, "The Hidden Buddha."
American "Geisha"
Liza Dalby has been referred to as the only non-Japanese woman to ever be a
geisha . She accompaniedgeiko on many engagements from 1975-76, becoming popular with both customers and geisha. Of course, she never went through the formal processes of becoming a geiko herself, nor was she formally associated with any of theokiya or ochaya inKyoto . She was often requested by customers, but note that clients were not billed for her attendance, since she had no formal association. Especially popular was her skill on the Japaneseshamisen , a stringed instrument.Dalby states: "I wrote my Ph.D. thesis, and subsequent book Geisha on this topic, and became known as the world’s only non-Japanese geisha. And that’s how I was represented in the Japanese media: aoi-me no geisha, 'the blue-eyed geisha.'" [http://lizadalby.com/Geisha%20tea-eyes.html]
Bibliography
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*External links
* [http://www.lizadalby.com/ Home page]
*worldcat id|lccn-n79-92386
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