Young Iwasaki Mineko, age 7, begins training in the Gion area of Kyoto, 1956, with a geisha mentor. Iwasaki, in time one of Japan's most famous geisha, is the first to tell her story in public and to illustrate the continuation of Geisha culture in postwar Japan.

From: Iwasaki, Mineko and Brown, Rande. Geisha, A Life. New York: Atria Books, 2002.