Help on essay intro ? 'memoirs of geisha'?

I like the introductory paragraph, but there are a few errors. The second sentence is 'run-off'. "In Japan, the geisha industry was once a big success; however, the population of these performers have diminished over the year." (Need a semi-colon before however, since it is an adverb in this sense). In your last sentence, I don't quite understand it, needs to be re-phrased.