Set in Japan and China 1939-1946, Confessions of a Kamikaze Geisha is a satire of jingoistic nationalism, an allegory of one nation's tragic love affair with militarism, an absurd retelling of the Greater East Asia War from the Japanese point of view.
When the narrator, Suzukaze, makes her debut as an apprentice geisha in 1939 at the age of 15, it is expected that her maidenhood will be sold to a well-off patron for a substantial sum. On her very first night of entertainment, however, she falls madly in love with a young lieutenant, upsetting the plans for her future and putting her on the perilous road that will lead her to one day become the "Kamikaze Geisha."
From the opening:
You must remember, my dear Suzu, that all of history is a myth, a fable, simply the telling of a tale, and what is passed down always depends
on who is doing the telling.
"That's what the Colonel wrote in one of his letters. It was during the war, and he was at the front, in Burma. I didn't give his words much thought at the time. That's just the way the Colonel was. He was a very intelligent man, and he had his own peculiar way of doing and saying things. As I sit down to write this memoir, however- this history of my life- the Colonel's words have come back to me. Where to start? And how much to tell you, the reader? And how to tell you? And what to say about those whose lives crossed with my own?"