Geisha in Rivalry (腕くらべ, Ude kurabe, 1916-1917), also translated under the title of Rivalry: A Geisha’s Tale, was first published in Japanese in 1918 and was first translated into English in 1963. The author, Nagai Kafu, a Japanese novelist, was born in 1879 and died in 1959. Kafu was an editor of literary magazines before investigating Tokyo's geisha world and writing novels. Rivalry is set in the early twentieth century (it begins around 1912) in Tokyo's Shimbashi geisha district. Rivalry aims to capture the lives of Shimbashi geisha at a historically popular time for geisha.