<P> Sayuri peacefully retires from being a geisha when the Chairman becomes her danna . It is heavily implied that they have an illegitimate son together . Foreseeing the consequences this could have regarding the inheritance of Iwamura Electric, she relocates to New York City and opens her own small tea house for entertaining Japanese men on business in the United States . Sayuri severs her links to the Nitta okiya and in effect, Japan . The Chairman remains her danna until his death and the story concludes with a reflection on Sayuri and her life . </P> <P> Much of the novel is set in the popular geisha district of Gion in Kyoto, and contains references to actual places frequented by geisha and their patrons, such as the Ichiriki Ochaya . Part of the story is also set in the Amami Islands, and Sayuri narrates the story from her suite in the Waldorf towers in New York City . </P> <P> After the Japanese edition of the novel was published, Arthur Golden was sued for breach of contract and defamation of character by Mineko Iwasaki, a retired geisha he had interviewed for background information while writing the novel . The plaintiff asserted that Golden had agreed to protect her anonymity if she told him about her life as a geisha, due to the traditional code of silence about their clients . However, Golden listed Iwasaki as a source in his acknowledgments for the novel, causing her to face a serious backlash, to the point of death threats . In his defense, Arthur Golden countered that he had tapes of his conversations with Iwasaki . Eventually, in 2003, Golden's publisher settled with Iwasaki out of court for an undisclosed sum of money . </P> <P> Iwasaki later went on to write an autobiography, which shows a very different picture of twentieth - century geisha life than the one shown in Golden's novel . The book was published as Geisha, a Life in the U.S. and Geisha of Gion in the U.K. </P>

Who was memoirs of a geisha based on