Liza Dalby

Liza Crihfield Dalby (born 1950) is an American anthropologist and novelist specializing in Japanese culture. 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. dissertation, entitled ''The institution of the geisha in modern Japanese society''. Since that time, she has written five books. Her first book, ''Geisha'', was based on her early research. The next book, ''Kimono: Fashioning Culture'' is about traditional Japanese clothing and the history of the kimono. This was followed with a fictional account of the Heian era noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu, titled ''The Tale of Murasaki''. 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''.

Dalby 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. Provided by Wikipedia