I am a bit behind the times with this article. Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha came out in , with a movie of the same name back in I recently read the autobiography of the woman Memoirs was based upon, Mineko Iwasaki. In her book, Geisha, a Life, Iwasaki paints a very different picture from what Golden write in his fiction. Yes, Memoirs of a Geisha is fiction, so the author can.