
and the notes went up and down like a boat on the waves, without ever settling down where 
they were supposed to be. Soon the classroom was full of girls with their shamisens, spaced 
out as neatly as chocolates in a box. I kept an eye on the door in the hopes that Satsu would 
walk through it, but she didn't. 

A moment later the teacher entered. She was a tiny old woman with a shrill voice. Her name 
was Teacher Mizumi, and this is what we called her to her face. But her surname of Mizumi 
sounds very close to nezumi-"mouse"; so behind her back we called her Teacher Nezumi-
Teacher Mouse. 

Teacher Mouse knelt on a cushion facing the class and made no effort at all to look friendly. 
When the students bowed to her in unison and told her good morning, she just glowered 
back at them without speaking a word. Finally she looked at the board on the wall and called 
out the name of the first student. 

This first girl seemed to have a very high opinion of herself. After she'd glided to the front of 
the room, she bowed before the teacher and began to play. In a minute or two Teacher 
Mouse told the girl to stop and said all sorts of unpleasant things about her playing; then she 
snapped her fan shut and waved it at the girl to dismiss her. The girl thanked her, bowed 
again, and returned to her place, and Teacher Mouse called the name of the next student. 

This went on for more than an hour, until at length Pumpkin's name was called. I could see 
that Pumpkin was nervous, and in fact, the moment she began to play, everything seemed to 
go wrong. First Teacher Mouse stopped her and took the shamisen to retune the strings 
herself. Then Pumpkin tried again, but all the students began looking at one another, for no 
one could tell what piece she was trying to play. Teacher Mouse slapped the table very 


loudly and told them all to face straight ahead; and then she used her folding fan to tap out 
the rhythm for Pumpkin to follow. This didn't help, so finally Teacher Mouse began to work 
instead on Pumpkin's manner of holding the plectrum. She nearly sprained every one of 
Pumpkin's fingers, it seemed to me, trying to make her hold it with the proper grip. At last she 
gave up even on this and let the plectrum fall to the mats in disgust. Pumpkin picked it up 
and came back to her place with tears in her eyes. 

After this I learned why Pumpkin had been so worried about being the last student. Because 
now the girl with the disheveled hair, who'd been rushing to the school as we'd left for 
breakfast, came to the front of the room and bowed. 

"Don't waste your time trying to be courteous to me!" Teacher Mouse squeaked at her. "If 
you hadn't slept so late this morning, you might have arrived here in time to learn something." 

The girl apologized and soon began to play, but the teacher paid no attention at all. She just 
said, "You sleep too late in the mornings. How do you expect me to teach you, when you 
can't take the trouble to come to school like the other girls and sign up properly? Just go 
back to your place. I don't want to be bothered with you." 

The class was dismissed, and Pumpkin led me to the front of the room, where we bowed to 
Teacher Mouse. 

"May I be permitted to introduce Chiyo to you, Teacher," Pumpkin said, "and ask your 
indulgence in instructing her, because she's a girl of very little talent." 

Pumpkin wasn't trying to insult me; this was just the way people spoke back then, when they 
wanted to be polite. My own mother would have said it the same way. 

Teacher Mouse didn't speak for a long while, but just looked me over and then said, "You're 
a clever girl. I can see it just from looking at you. Perhaps you can help your older sister with 
her lessons." 

Of course she was talking about Pumpkin. 

"Put your name on the board as early every morning as you can," she told me. "Keep quiet in 
the classroom. I tolerate no talking at all! And your eyes must stay to the front. If you do 
these things, I'll teach you as best I can." 

And with this, she dismissed us. 

In the hallways between classes, I kept my eyes open for Satsu, but I didn't find her. I began 
to worry that perhaps I would never see her again, and grew so upset that one of the 
teachers, just before beginning the class, silenced everyone and said to me: 

"You, there! What's troubling your1" 

"Oh, nothing, ma'am. Only I bit my lip by accident," I said. And to make good on this-for the 
sake of the girls around me, who were staring-I gave a sharp bite on my lip and tasted blood. 

It was a relief to me that Pumpkin's other classes weren't as painful to watch as the first one 
had been. In the dance class, for example, the students practiced the moves in unison, with 
the result that no one stood out. Pumpkin wasn't by any means the worst dancer, and even 
had a certain awkward grace in the way she moved. The singing class later in the morning 
was more difficult for her since she had a poor ear; but there again, the students practiced in 


unison, so Pumpkin was able to hide her mistakes by moving her mouth a great deal while 
singing only softly. 

At the end of each of her classes, she introduced me to the teacher. One of them said to me, 
"You live in the same okiya as Pumpkin, do you?" 

"Yes, ma'am," I said, "the Nitta okiya," for Nitta was the family name of Granny and Mother, 
as well as Auntie. 

"That means you live with Hatsumomo-san." 

"Yes, ma'am. Hatsumomo is the only geisha in our okiya at present." 

"I'll do my best to teach you about singing," she said, "so long as you manage to stay alive!" 

After this the teacher laughed as though she'd made a great joke, and sent us on our way. 

Chapter five 

That afternoon Hatsumomo took me to the Gion Registry Office. I was expecting something 
very grand, but it turned out to be nothing more than several dark tatami rooms on the 
second floor of the school building, filled with desks and accounting books and smelling 
terribly of cigarettes. A clerk looked up at us through the haze of smoke and nodded us into 
the back room. There at a table piled with papers sat the biggest man I'd ever seen in my life. 
I didn't know it at the time, but he'd once been a sumo wrestler; and really, if he'd gone 
outside and slammed his weight into the building itself, all those desks would probably have 
fallen off the tatami platform onto the floor. He hadn't been a good enough sumo wrestler to 
take a retirement name, as some of them do; but he still liked to be called by the name he'd 
used in his wrestling days, which was Awajiumi. Some of the geisha shortened this playfully 
to Awaji, as a nickname. 

As soon as we walked in, Hatsumomo turned on her charm. It was the first time I'd ever seen 
her do it. She said to him, "Awaji-san!" but the way she spoke, I wouldn't have been 
surprised if she had run out of breath in the middle, because it sounded like this: 'Awaaa-jiisaaaannnnnnnn!" 

It was as if she were scolding him. He put down his pen when he heard her voice, and his 
two big cheeks shifted up toward his ears, which was his way of smiling. 

"Mmm . . . Hatsumomo-san," he said, "if you get any prettier, I don't know what I'm going to 
do!" 

It sounded like a loud whisper when he spoke, because sumo wrestlers often ruin their voice 
boxes, smashing into one another's throats the way they do. 

He may have been the size of a hippopotamus, but Awajiumi was a very elegant dresser. He 
wore a pin-striped kimono and kimono trousers. His job was to make certain that all the 
money passing through Gion flowed where it was supposed to; and a trickle from that river of 
cash flowed directly into his pocket. That isn't to say that he was stealing; it was just the way 
the system worked. Considering that Awajiumi had such an important job, it was to every 
geisha's advantage to keep him happy, which was why he had a reputation for spending as 
much time out of his elegant clothes as in them. 

She and Awajiumi talked for a long time, and finally Hatsumomo told him she'd come to 
register me for lessons at the school. Awajiumi hadn't really looked at me yet, but here he 


turned his giant head. After a moment he got up to slide open one of the paper screens over 
the window for more light. 

"Why, I thought my eyes had fooled me," he said. "You should have told me sooner what a 
pretty girl you brought with you. Her eyes . . . they're the color of a mirror!" 

"A mirror?" Hatsumomo said. "A mirror has no color, Awaji-san." 

"Of course it does. It's a sparkly gray. When you look at a mirror, all you see is yourself, but I 
know a pretty color when I find it." 

"Do you? Well, it isn't so pretty to me. I once saw a dead mar fished out of the river, and his 
tongue was just the same color as heij eyes." 

"Maybe you're just too pretty yourself to be able to see it elsej where," Awajiumi said, 
opening an account book and picking up his pen. "Anyway, let's register the girl. Now . . . 
Chiyo, is it? Tell me youij full name, Chiyo, and your place of birth." 

The moment I heard these words, I had an image in my mind ofj Satsu staring up at 
Awajiumi, full of confusion and fear. She must have been in this same room at some time or 
other; if I had to register, surel} she'd had to register too. 

"Sakamoto is my last name," I said. "I was born in the town of! Yoroido. You may have heard 
of it, sir, because of my older sister! Satsu?" 

I thought Hatsumomo would be furious with me; but to my surprise she seemed almost 
pleased about the question I'd asked. 

"If she's older than you, she'd have registered already," Awajiumi said. "But I haven't come 
across her. I don't think she's in Gion at all." 

Now Hatsumomo's smile made sense to me; she'd known in advance what Awajiumi would 
say. If I'd felt any doubt