s whether she really had spoken to my sister as she claimed, I felt 
them no longer. There were other geisha districts in Kyoto, though I didn't know much about 
them. Satsu was somewhere in one of them, and I was determined to find her. 

When I returned to the okiya, Auntie was waiting to take me to the bathhouse down the 
street. I'd been there before, though only with the elderly maids, who usually handed me a 
small towel and a scrap of soap and then squatted on the tile floor to wash themselves while 
I did the same. Auntie was much kinder, and knelt over me to scrub my back. I was surprised 
that she had no modesty whatever, and slung her tube-shaped breasts around as if they 
were nothing more than bottles. She even whacked me on the shoulder with one several 
times by accident. 

Afterward she took me back to the okiya and dressed me in the first silk kimono I'd ever 
worn, a brilliant blue with green grasses all around the hem and bright yellow flowers across 
the sleeves and chest. Then she led me up the stairs to Hatsumomo's room. Before going in, 
she gave me a stern warning not to distract Hatsumomo in any way, or do anything that 
might make her angry. I didn't understand it at the time, but now I know perfectly well why 
she was so concerned. Because, you see, when a geisha wakes up in the morning she is 
just like any other woman. Her face may be greasy from sleep, and her breath unpleasant. It 
may be true that she wears a startling hairstyle even as she struggles to open her eyes; but 
in every other respect she's a woman like any other, and not a geisha at all. Only when she 
sits before her mirror to apply her makeup with care does she become a geisha. And I don't 


mean that this is when she begins to look like one. This is when she begins to think like one 
too. 

In the room, I was instructed to sit about an arm's length to the side of Hatsumomo and just 
behind her, where I could see her face in the tiny dressing mirror on her makeup stand. She 
was kneeling on a cushion, wearing a cotton robe that clung to her shoulders, and gathering 
in her hands a half dozen makeup brushes in various shapes. Some of them were broad like 
fans, while others looked like a chopstick with a dot of soft hair at the end. Finally she turned 
and showed them to me. 

"These are my brushes," she said. "And do you remember this?" She took from the drawer of 
her makeup stand a glass container of stark white makeup and waved it around in the air for 
me to see. "This is the makeup I told you never to touch." 

"I haven't touched it," I said. 

She sniffed the closed jar several times and said, "No, I don't think you have." Then she put 
the makeup down and took up three pigment sticks, which she held out for me in the palm of 
her hand. 

"These are for shading. You may look at them." 

I took one of the pigment sticks from her. It was about the size of a baby's finger, but hard 
and smooth as stone, so that it left no trace of color on my skin. One end was wrapped in 
delicate silver foil that was flecking away from the pressure of use. 

Hatsumomo took the pigment sticks back and held out what looked to me like a twig of wood 
burned at one end. 

"This is a nice dry piece of paulownia wood," she said, "for drawing my eyebrows. And this is 
wax." She took two half-used bars of wax from their paper wrapping and held them out for 
me to see. 

"Now why do you suppose I've shown you these things?" 

"So I'll understand how you put on your makeup," I said. 

"Heavens, no! I've shown them to you so you'll see there isn't any magic involved. What a 
pity for you! Because it means that makeup alone won't be enough to change poor Chiyo into 
something beautiful." 

Hatsumomo turned back to face the mirror and sang quietly to herself as she opened a jar of 
pale yellow cream. You may not believe me when I tell you that this cream was made from 
nightingale droppings, but it's true. Many geisha used it as a face cream in those days, 
because it was believed to be very good for the skin; but it was so expensive that 
Hatsumomo put only a few dots around her eyes and mouth. Then she tore a small piece of 
wax from one of the bars and, after softening it in her fingertips, rubbed it into the skin of her 
face, and afterward of her neck and chest. She took some time to wipe her hands clean on a 
rag, and then moistened one of her flat makeup brushes in a dish of water and rubbed it in 
the makeup until she had a chalky white paste. She used this to paint her face and neck, but 
left her eyes bare, as well as the area around her lips and nose. If you've ever seen a child 
cut holes in paper to make a mask, this was how Hatsumomo looked, until she dampened 
some smaller brushes and used them to fill in the cutouts. After this she looked as if she'd 
fallen face-first into a bin of rice flour, for her whole face was ghastly white. She 


looked like the demon she was, but even so, I was sick with jealousy and shame. Because I 
knew that in an hour or so, men would be gazing with astonishment at that face; and I would 
still be there in the okiya, looking sweaty and plain. 

Now she moistened her pigment sticks and used them to rub a reddish blush onto her 
cheeks. Already during my first month in the okiya, I'd seen Hatsumomo in her finished 
makeup many times; I stole looks at her whenever I could without seeming rude. I'd noticed 
she used a variety of tints for her cheeks, depending on the colors of her kimono. There was 
nothing unusual in this; but what I didn't know until years later was that Hatsumomo always 
chose a shade much redder than others might have used. I can't say why she did it, unless it 
was to make people think of blood. But Hatsumomo was no fool; she knew how to bring out 
the beauty in her features. 

When she'd finished applying blush, she still had no eyebrows or lips. But for the moment 
she left her face like a bizarre white mask and asked Auntie to paint the back of her neck. I 
must tell you something about necks in Japan, if you don't know it; namely, that Japanese 
men, as a rule, feel about a woman's neck and throat the same way that men in the West 
might feel about a woman's legs. This is why geisha wear the collars of their kimono so low 
in the back that the first few bumps of the spine are visible; I suppose it's like a woman in 
Paris wearing a short skirt. Auntie painted onto the back of Hatsumomo's neck a design 
called sanbon-ashi-"three legs." It makes a very dramatic picture, for you feel as if you're 
looking at the bare skin of the neck through little tapering points of a white fence. It was years 
before I understood the erotic effect it has on men; but in a way, it's like a woman peering out 
from between her fingers. In fact, a geisha leaves a tiny margin of skin bare all around the 
hairline, causing her makeup to look even more artificial, something like a mask worn in Noh 
drama. When a man sits beside her and sees her makeup like a mask, he becomes that 
much more aware of the bare skin beneath. 

While Hatsumomo was rinsing out her brushes, she glanced several times at my reflection in 
the mirror. Finally she said to me: 

"I know what you're thinking. You're thinking you'll never be so beautiful. Well, it's perfectly 
true." 

"I'll have you know," said Auntie, "that some people find Chiyo-chan quite a lovely girl." 

"Some people like the smell of rotting fish," said Hatsumomo. And with that, she ordered us 
to leave the room so she could change into her underrobe. 

Auntie and I stepped out onto the landing, where Mr. Bekku stood waiting near the full-length 
mirror, looking just as he had on the day he'd taken Satsu and me from our home. As I'd 
learned during my first week in the okiya, his real occupation wasn't dragging girls from their 
homes at all; he was a dresser, which is to say that he came to the okiya every day to help 
Hatsumomo put on her elaborate kimono. 

The robe Hatsumomo would wear that evening was hanging on a stand near the mirror. 
Auntie stood smoothing it until Hatsumomo came out wearing an underrobe in a lovely rust 
color, with a pattern of deep yellow leaves. What happened next made very little sense to me 
at the time, because the complicated costume of kimono is confusing to people who aren't 
accustomed to it. But the way it's worn makes perfect sense if it's explained properly. 

To begin with, you must understand that a housewife and a geisha wear kimono very 
differently. When a housewife dresses in kimono, she uses all sorts of padding to keep the 
robe from bunching unattractively at the waist, with the result that she ends up looking 
perfectly cylindrical, like a wood column in a temple hall. But a geisha wears kimono so 


frequently she hardly needs any padding, and bunching never seems to be a problem. Both 
a housewife and a geisha will begin by taking off their makeup robes and tucking a silk slip 
around the bare hips; we call this a koshimaki-"hip wrap." It's followed by a short-sleeved 
kimono undershirt, tied shut at the waist, and then the pads, which look like small contoured 
pillows with strings affixed for tying them into place. In Hatsumomo's case, with her traditional 
small-hipped, willowy figure, and her experience of wearing kimono for so many years, she 
didn't use padding at all. 

So far, everything the woman has put on will be hidden from the eye when she is fully 
dressed. But the next item, the underrobe, isn't really an undergarment at all. When a geisha 
performs a dance, or sometimes even when she walks along the street, she might raise the 
hem of her kimono in her left hand to keep it out of the way. This has the effect of exposing 
the underrobe below the knees; so, you see, the pattern and fabric of the underrobe must be 
coordinated with the ki