On a flight to Japan, the British writer Lesley Downer was surprised when her seat companion started berating her, mid-conversation. He was upset when he heard that she was writing a book on geisha. Better she write about the real Japan, rather than promote foreign stereotypes, the Japanese businessman told her.

Downer tactfully dropped the subject of geisha, thinking it better not to try to enlighten her seat companion as to her motives. The year was 1999, and Arthur Golden's best-selling novel "Memoirs of a Geisha" was enjoying worldwide popularity. Regardless of the fanfare, Downer believed there was a geisha story remaining to be told. She wanted to write a nonfiction book that revealed the real world of the cultured artisans of love and pleasure.

Downer was no newcomer to Japan. She had been living here on and off and writing about Japanese culture for nearly 15 years. She first arrived in 1978 as one of the original 22 participants in the Wolfers Scheme, the forerunner to the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme. She wasn't particularly interested in Japan at the time, or writing for that matter, but coming to Japan sounded like a good way to make some money to get back to India, where she had traveled after first graduating from Oxford.