Dalby's research, done as part of her Ph.D studies at Stanford University, was presented in her dissertation, and became the basis for her first book, Geisha, about the culture of the geisha community. In 1975, she returned to Japan for a year to research the geisha community, as part of her anthropology fieldwork. In 2007 she wrote a memoir, East Wind Melts the Ice, which was followed two years later by a second work of fiction, Hidden Buddhas.ĭalby is considered an expert in the study of the Japanese geisha community, and acted as consultant to novelist Arthur Golden and filmmaker Rob Marshall for the novel Memoirs of a Geisha and the film of the same name.Īs a high school student, Dalby visited Japan in a student exchange program there she learned to play the shamisen, the traditional three stringed Japanese guitar. This was followed with a fictional account of the Heian era noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu, titled The Tale of Murasaki. The next book, Kimono: Fashioning Culture is about traditional Japanese clothing and the history of the kimono. Her first book, Geisha, was based on her early research. Since that time, she has written five books.

dissertation, entitled The institution of the geisha in modern Japanese society. For her graduate studies, Dalby studied and performed fieldwork in Japan of the geisha community of Ponto-chō, which she wrote about in her Ph.D. Liza Crihfield Dalby (born 1950) is an American anthropologist and novelist specializing in Japanese culture. Kikuko (name given to Dalby as a teenager living in Japan), Ichigiku ( 市菊) : 105 (name given when informally working as a geisha in the 1970s)Īnthropologist and novelist specializing in Japanese culture

Geisha books fiction