g and complex, I think only because my senses were so heightened. If I 
were a geisha like the one named Izuko, I thought, a man like the Chairman might spend 
time with me. I'd never imagined myself envying a geisha. I'd been brought to Kyoto for the 
purpose of becoming one, of course; but up until now I'd have run away in an instant if I 
could have. Now I understood the thing I'd overlooked; the point wasn't to become a geisha, 
but to })e one. To become a geisha . . . well, that was hardly a purpose in life. But to be a 
geisha ... I could see it now as a stepping-stone to something else. If I was right about the 
Chairman's age, he was probably no more than forty-five. Plenty of geisha had achieved 
tremendous success by the age of twenty. The geisha Izuko was probably no more than 
twenty-five herself. I was still a child, nearly twelve . . . but in another twelve years I'd be in 
my twenties. And what of the Chairman? He would be no older by that time than Mr. Tanaka 
was already. 

The coin the Chairman had given me was far more than I'd needed for a simple cone of 
shaved ice. I held in my hand the change from the vendor-three coins of different sizes. At 
first I'd thought of keeping them forever; but now I realized they could serve a far more 
important purpose. 

I rushed to Shijo Avenue and ran all the way to its end at the eastern edge of Gion, where 
the Gion Shrine stood. I climbed the steps, but I felt too intimidated to walk beneath the great 
two-story entrance gate with its gabled roof, and walked around it instead. Across the gravel 
courtyard and up another flight of steps, I passed through the torii gate to the shrine itself. 
There I threw the coins into the offertory box-coins that might have been enough to take me 
away from Gion- and announced my presence to the gods by clapping three times and 
bowing. With my eyes squeezed tightly shut and my hands together, I prayed that they 
permit me to become a geisha somehow. I would suffer through any training, bear up under 
any hardship, for a chance to attract the notice of a man like the Chairman again. 

When I opened my eyes, I could still hear the traffic on Higashi-Oji Avenue. The trees hissed 
in a gust of wind just as they had a moment earlier. Nothing had changed. As to whether the 
gods had heard me, I had no way of knowing. I could do nothing but tuck the Chairman's 
handkerchief inside my robe and carry it with me back to the okiya. 

Chapter ten 

One morning quite some months later, while we were putting away the ro underrobes-the 
ones made of lightweight silk gauze for hot weather-and bringing out the hitoe underrobes 
instead-the ones with no lining, used in September-I came upon a smell in the entry-way so 
horrible that I dropped the armload of robes I was carrying. The smell was coming from 
Granny's room. I ran upstairs to fetch Auntie, because I knew at once that something must 
be terribly wrong. Auntie hobbled down the stairs as quickly as she could and went in to find 
Granny dead on the floor; and she had died in a most peculiar manner. Granny had the only 
electric space heater in our okiya. She used it every single night except during the summer. 
Now that the month of September had begun and we were putting away the summer-weight 
underrobes, Granny had begun to use her heater again. That doesn't mean the weather was 
necessarily cool; we change the weight of our clothing by the calendar, not by the actual 
temperature outdoors, and Granny used her heater just the same way. She was 


unreasonably attached to it, probably because she'd spent so many nights of her life 
suffering miserably from the cold. 

Granny's usual routine in the morning was to wrap the cord around the heater before pushing 
it back against the wall. Over time the hot metal burned all the way through the cord, so that 
the wire finally came into contact with it, and the whole thing became electrified. The police 
said that when Granny touched it that morning she must have been immobilized at once, 
maybe even killed instantly. When she slid down onto the floor, she ended up with her face 
pressed against the hot metal surface. This was what caused the horrible smell. Happily I 
didn't see her after she'd died, except for her legs, which were visible from the doorway and 
looked like slender tree limbs wrapped in wrinkled silk. 

For a week or two after Granny died, we were as busy as you can imagine, not only with 
cleaning the house thoroughly-because in Shinto, death is the most impure of all the things 
that can happen-but with preparing the house by setting out candles, trays with meal 
offerings, lanterns at the entrance, tea stands, trays for money that visitors brought, and so 
on. We were so busy that one evening the cook became ill and a doctor was summoned; it 
turned out her only problem was that she'd slept no more than two hours the night before, 
hadn't sat down all day, and had eaten only a single bowl of clear soup. I was surprised too 
to see Mother spending money almost unrestrainedly, making plans for sutras to be chanted 
"on Granny's behalf at the Chion-in Temple, purchasing lotus-bud arrangements from the 
undertaker- all of it right in the midst of the Great Depression. I wondered at first if her 
behavior was a testament to how deeply she felt about Granny; but later I realized what it 
really meant: practically all of Gion would come tramping through our okiya to pay respects to 
Granny, and would attend the funeral at the temple later in the week; Mother had to put on 
the proper kind of show. 

For a few days all of Gion did indeed come through our okiya, or so it seemed; and we had to 
feed tea and sweets to all of them. Mother and Auntie received the mistresses of the various 
teahouses and okiya, as well as a number of maids who were acquainted with Granny; also 
shopkeepers, wig makers, and hairdressers, most of whom were men; and of course, dozens 
and dozens of geisha. The older geisha knew Granny from her working days, but the 
younger ones had never even heard of her; they came out of respect for Mother-or in some 
cases because they had a relationship of one kind or another with Hatsumomo. 

My job during this busy period was to show visitors into the reception room, where Mother 
and Auntie were waiting for them. It was a distance of only a few steps; but the visitors 
couldn't very well show themselves in; and besides, I had to keep track of which faces 
belonged to which shoes, for it was my job to take the shoes to the maids' room to keep the 
entryway from being too cluttered, and then bring them back again at the proper moment. I 
had trouble with this at first. I couldn't peer right into the eyes of our visitors without seeming 
rude, but a simple glimpse of their faces wasn't enough for me to remember them. Very soon 
I learned to look closely at the kimono they wore. 

On about the second or third afternoon the door rolled open, and in came a kimono that at 
once struck me as the loveliest I'd seen any of our visitors wear. It was somber because of 
the occasion-a simple black robe bearing a crest-but its pattern of green and gold grasses 
sweeping around the hem was so rich-looking, I found myself imagining how astounded the 
wives and daughters of the fishermen back in Yoroido would be to see such a thing. The 
visitor had a maid with her as well, which made me think perhaps she was the mistress of a 
teahouse or okiya-because very few geisha could afford such an expense. While she looked 
at the tiny Shinto shrine in our entryway, I took the opportunity to steal a peek at her face. It 
was such a perfect oval that I thought at once of a certain scroll in Auntie's room, showing an 
ink painting of a courtesan from the Heian period a thousand years earlier. She wasn't as 


striking a woman as Hatsumomo, but her features were so perfectly formed that at once I 
began to feel even more insignificant than usual. And then suddenly I realized who she was. 

Mameha, the geisha whose kimono Hatsumomo had made me ruin. 

What had happened to her kimono wasn't really my fault; but still, I would have given up the 
robe I was wearing not to run into her. I lowered my head to keep my face hidden while I 
showed her and her maid into the reception room. I didn't think she would recognize me, 
since I felt certain she hadn't seen my face when I'd returned the kimono; and even if she 
had, two years had passed since then. The maid who accompanied her now wasn't the same 
young woman who'd taken the kimono from me that night and whose eyes had filled with 
tears. Still, I was relieved when the time came for me to bow and leave them in the reception 
room. 

Twenty minutes later, when Mameha and her maid were ready to leave, I fetched their shoes 
and arranged them on the step in the entryway, still keeping my head down and feeling every 
bit as nervous as I had earlier. When her maid rolled open the door, I felt that my ordeal was 
over. But instead of walking out, Mameha just went on standing there. I began to worry; and 
I'm afraid my eyes and my mind weren't communicating well, because even though I knew I 
shouldn't do it, I 
let my eyes flick up. I was horrified to see that Mameha was peering down at me. 

"What is your name, little girl?" she said, in what I took to be a very stern tone. 

I told her that my name was Chiyo. 

"Stand up a moment, Chiyo. I'd like to have a look at you." 

I rose to my feet as she had asked; but if it had been possible to make my face shrivel up 
and disappear, just like slurping down a noodle, I'm sure I would have done it. 

"Come now, I want to have a look at you!" she said. "Here you are acting like you're counting 
the toes on your feet." 

I raised my head, though not my eyes, and then Mameha let out a long sigh and ordered m