nger enduring it. 

On the afternoon when the Chairman and I drank sake together in a ceremony at the Ichiriki 
Teahouse, something peculiar happened. I don't know why, but when I sipped from the 
smallest of the three 

cups we used, I let the sake wash over my tongue, and a single drop of it spilled from the 
corner of my mouth. I was wearing a five-crested kimono of black, with a dragon woven in 
gold and red encircling the hem up to my thighs. I recall watching the drop fall beneath my 
arm and roll down the black silk on my thigh, until it came to a stop at the heavy silver 
threads of the dragon's teeth. I'm sure most geisha would call it a bad omen that I'd spilled 
sake; but to me, that droplet of moisture that had slipped from me like a tear seemed almost 
to tell the story of my life. It fell through empty space, with no control whatsoever over its 
destiny; rolled along a path of silk; and somehow came to rest there on the teeth of that 
dragon. I thought of the petals I'd thrown into the Kamo River shallows outside Mr. Arashino's 
workshop, imagining they might find their way to the Chairman. It seemed to me that, 
somehow, perhaps they had. 

In the foolish hopes that had been so dear to me since girlhood, I'd always imagined my life 
would be perfect if I ever became the Chairman's mistress. It's a childish thought, and yet I'd 
carried it with me even as an adult. I ought to have known better: How many times already 
had I encountered the painful lesson that although we may wish for the barb to be pulled 
from our flesh, it" leaves behind a welt that doesn't heal? In banishing Nobu from my life 
forever, it wasn't just that I lost his friendship; I also ended up banishing myself from Gion. 

The reason is so simple, I ought to have known beforehand it would happen. A man who has 
won a prize coveted by his friend faces a difficult choice: he must either hide his prize away 
where the friend will never see it-if he can-or suffer damage to the friendship. This was the 
very problem that had arisen between Pumpkin and me: our friendship had never recovered 
after my adoption. So although the Chairman's negotiations with Mother to become my 
danna dragged out over several months, in the end it was agreed that I would no longer work 


as a geisha. I certainly wasn't the first geisha to leave Gion; besides those who ran away, 
some married and left as wives; others withdrew to set up teahouses or okiya of their own. In 
my case, however, I was trapped in a peculiar middle ground. The Chairman wanted me out 
of Gion to keep me out of sight of Nobu, but he certainly wasn't going to marry me; he was 
already married. Probably the perfect solution, and the one that the Chairman proposed, 
would have been to set me up with my own teahouse or inn-one that Nobu would never have 
visited. But Mother was unwilling to have me leave the okiya; she would have earned no 
revenues from my relationship with the Chairman if I had ceased to be a member of the Nitta 
family, you see. This is why in the end, the Chairman agreed to pay the okiya a very 
considerable sum each month on the condition that Mother permit me to end my career. I 
continued to live in the okiya, just as I had for so many years; but I no longer went to the little 
school in the mornings, or made the rounds of Gion to pay my respects on special occasions; 
and of course, I no longer entertained during the evenings. 

Because I'd set my sights on becoming a geisha only to win the affections of the Chairman, 
probably I ought to have felt no sense of loss in withdrawing from Gion. And yet over the 
years I'd developed many rich friendships, not only with other geisha but with many of the 
men I'd come to know. I wasn't banished from the company of other women just because I'd 
ceased entertaining; but those who make a living in Gion have little time for socializing. I 
often felt jealous when I saw two geisha hurrying to their next engagement, laughing together 
over what had happened at the last one. I didn't envy them the uncertainty of their existence; 
but I did envy that sense of promise I could well remember, that the evening ahead might yet 
hold some mischievous pleasure. 

I did see Mameha frequently. We had tea together at least several times a week. 
Considering all that she had done for me since childhood-and the special role she'd played in 
my life on the Chairman's behalf-you can imagine how much I felt myself in her debt. One 
day in a shop I came upon a silk painting from the eighteenth century showing a woman 
teaching a young girl calligraphy. The teacher had an exquisite oval face and watched over 
her pupil with such benevolence, it made me think of Mameha at once, and I bought it for her 
as a gift. On the rainy afternoon when she hung it on the wall of her dreary apartment, I 
found myself listening to the traffic that hissed by on Higashi-oji Avenue. I couldn't help 
remembering, with a terrible feeling of loss, her elegant apartment from years earlier, and the 
enchanting sound out those windows of water rushing over the knee-high cascade in the 
Shirakawa Stream. Gion itself had seemed to me like an exquisite piece of antique fabric 
back then; but so much had changed. Now Mameha's simple one-room apartment had mats 
the color of stale tea and smelled of herbal potions from the Chinese pharmacy below-so 
much so that her kimono themselves sometimes gave off a faint medicinal odor. 

After she'd hung the ink painting on the wall and admired it for a while, she came back to the 
table. She sat with her hands around her 

steaming teacup, peering into it as though she expected to find the words she was looking 
for. I was surprised to see the tendons in her hands beginning to show themselves from age. 
At last, with a trace of sadness, she said: 

"How curious it is, what the future brings us. You must take care, Sayuri, never to expect too 
much." 

I'm quite sure she was right. I'd have had an easier time over the following years if I hadn't 
gone on believing that Nobu would one day forgive me. In the end I had to give up 
questioning Mameha whether he'd asked about me; it pained me terribly to see her sigh and 
give me a long, sad look, as if to say she was sorry I hadn't known better than to hope for 
such a thing. 


In the spring of the year after I became his mistress, the Chairman purchased a luxurious 
house in the northeast of Kyoto and named it Eishin-an-"Prosperous Truth Retreat." It was 
intended for guests of the company, but in fact the Chairman made more use of it than 
anyone. This was where he and I met to spend the evenings together three or four nights a 
week, sometimes even more. On his busiest days he arrived so late he wanted only to soak 
in a hot bath while I talked with him, and then afterward fall asleep. But most evenings he 
arrived around sunset, or soon after, and ate his dinner while we chatted and watched the 
servants light the lanterns in the garden. 

Usually when he first came, the Chairman talked for a time about his workday. He might tell 
me about troubles with a new product, or about a traffic accident involving a truckload of 
parts, or some such thing. Of course I was happy to sit and listen, but I understood perfectly 
well that the Chairman wasn't telling these things to me because he wanted me to know 
theni. He was clearing them from his mind, just like draining water from a bucket. So I 
listened closely not to his words, but to the tone of his voice; because in the same way that 
sound rises as a bucket is emptied, I could hear the Chairman's voice softening as he spoke. 
When the moment was right, I changed the subject, and soon we were talking about nothing 
so serious as business, but about everything else instead, such as what had happened to 
him that morning on the way to work; or something about the film we may have watched a 
few nights earlier there at the Eishin-an; or perhaps I told him a funny story I might have 
heard from Mameha, who on some evenings came to join us there. In any case, this simple 
process of first draining the Chairman's mind and then relaxing him with playful conversation 
had the same effect water has on a towel that has dried stiffly in the sun. When 
he first arrived and I washed his hands with a hot cloth, his fingers felt rigid, like heavy twigs. 
After we had talked for a time, they bent as gracefully as if he were sleeping. 

I expected that this would be my life, entertaining the Chairman in the evenings and 
occupying myself during the daylight hours in any way I could. But in the fall of 1952,1 
accompanied the Chairman on his second trip to the United States. He'd traveled there the 
winter before, and no experience of his life had ever made such an impression on him; he 
said he felt he understood for the first time the true meaning of prosperity. Most Japanese at 
this time had electricity only during certain hours, for example, but the lights in American 
cities burned around the clock. And while we in Kyoto were proud that the floor of our new 
train station was constructed of concrete rather than old-fashioned wood, the floors of 
American train stations were made of solid marble. Even in small American towns, the movie 
theaters were as grand as our National Theater, said the Chairman, and the public 
bathrooms everywhere were spotlessly clean. What amazed him most of all was that every 
family in the United States owned a refrigerator, which could be purchased with the wages 
earned by an average worker in only a month's time. In Japan, a worker needed fifteen 
months'wages to buy such a thing; few families could afford it. 

In any case, as I say, the Chairman permitted me to accompany him on his second trip to 
America. I traveled alone by rail to Tokyo, and from there we flew together on an 