New York - Ms Mineko Iwasaki, who was the inspiration for the novel Memoirs of a Geisha, is suing its author, Arthur Golden, claiming that he "tarnished her reputation, breached an unwritten contract not to reveal her identity and unjustly enriched himself through the novel".
Ms Iwasaki (50) wants an "appropriate percentage" of the $10 million which she estimates the book has earned. The case entered in the Manhattan federal court says that Mr Golden's book "repeatedly stated that Ms Iwasaki was sold into the geisha world as a child by her parents and that her virginity was auctioned to the highest bidder when she came out as a geisha".
"Both stories are patently untrue and Golden has falsely represented them as fact," it is alleged.