." 

Mameha walked around the corner, leaving me alone in the quiet alleyway. A moment later 
she strolled out and walked right past me with her eyes to one side. I had the impression she 
felt afraid of what might happen if she looked in my direction. 

"Now, if you were a man," she said, "what would you think?" 

"I'd think you were concentrating so hard on avoiding me that you couldn't think about 
anything else." 

"Isn't it possible I was just looking at the rainspouts along the base of the houses?" 

"Even if you were, I thought you were avoiding looking at me." 

"That's just what I'm saying. A girl with a stunning profile will never accidentally give a man 
the wrong message with it. But men are going to notice your eyes and imagine you're giving 
messages with them even when you aren't. Now watch me once more." 

Mameha went around the corner again, and this time came back with her eyes to the ground, 
walking in a particularly dreamy manner. Then as she neared me her eyes rose to meet mine 
for just an instant, and very quickly looked away. I must say, I felt an electric jolt; if I'd been a 
man, I would have thought she'd given herself over very briefly to strong feelings she was 
struggling to hide. 

"If I can say things like this with ordinary eyes like mine," she told me, "think how much more 
you can say with yours. It wouldn't surprise me if you were able to make a man faint right 
here on the street." 

"Mameha-san!" I said. "If I had the power to make a man faint, I'm sure I'd be aware of it by 
now." 


"I'm quite surprised you aren't. Let's agree, then, that you'll be ready to make your debut as 
soon as you've stopped a man in his tracks just by flicking your eyes at him." 

I was so eager to make my debut that even if Mameha had challenged me to make a tree fall 
by looking at it, I'm sure I would have tried. I asked her if she would be kind enough to walk 
with me while I experimented on a few men, and she was happy to do it. My first encounter 
was with a man so old that, really, he looked like a kimono full of bones. He was making his 
way slowly up the street with the help of a cane, and his glasses were smeared so badly with 
grime that it wouldn't have surprised me if he had walked right into the corner of a building. 
He didn't notice me at all; so we continued toward Shijo Avenue. Soon I saw two 
businessmen in Western suits, but I had no better luck with them. I think they recognized 
Mameha, or perhaps they simply thought she was prettier than I was, for in any case, they 
never took their eyes off her. 

I was about to give up when I saw a delivery boy of perhaps twenty, carrying a tray stacked 
with lunch boxes. In those days, a number of the restaurants around Gion made deliveries 
and sent a boy around during the afternoon to pick up the empty boxes. Usually they were 
stacked in a crate that was either carried by hand or strapped to a bicycle; I don't know why 
this young man was using a tray. In any case, he was half a block away, walking toward me. 
I could see that Mameha was looking right at him, and then she said: 

"Make him drop the tray." 

Before I could make up my mind whether she was joking, she turned up a side street and 
was gone. 

I don't think it's possible for a girl of fourteen-or for a woman of any age-to make a young 
man drop something just by looking at him in a certain way; I suppose such things may 
happen in movies and books. I would have given up without even trying, if I hadn't noticed 
two things. First, the young man was already eyeing me as a hungry cat might eye a mouse; 
and second, most of the streets in Gion didn't have curbs, but this one did, and the delivery 
boy was walking in the street not far from it. If I could crowd him-so that he had to step up 
onto the sidewalk and stumble over the curb, he might drop the tray. I began by keeping my 
gaze to the ground in front of me, and then tried to do the very thing Mameha had done to 
me a few minutes earlier. I let my eyes rise until they met the young man's for an instant, and 
then I quickly looked away. After a few more steps I did the same thing again. By this time he 
was watching me so intently that probably he'd forgotten about the tray on his arm, much 
less the curb at his feet. When we were very close, I changed my-course ever so slightly to 
begin crowding him, so that he wouldn't be able to pass me without stepping over the curb 
onto the sidewalk, and then I looked him right in the eye. He was trying to move out of my 
way; and just as I had hoped, his feet tangled themselves on the curb, and he fell to one side 
scattering the lunch boxes on the sidewalk. Well, I couldn't help laughing! And I'm happy to 
say that the young man began to laugh too. I helped him pick up his boxes, gave him a little 
smile before he bowed to me more deeply than any man had ever bowed to me before, and 
then went on his way. 

I met up with Mameha a moment later, who had seen it all. 

"I think perhaps you're as ready now as you'll ever need to be, she said. And with that, she 
led me across the main avenue to the apartment of Waza-san, her fortune-teller, and set him 
to work finding auspicious dates for all the various events that would lead up to my debut-
such as going to the shrine to announce my intentions to the gods, and having my hair done 
for the first time, and performing the ceremony that would make sisters of Mameha and me. 


I didn't sleep at all that night. What I had wanted for so long had finally come to pass, and oh, 
how my stomach churned! The idea of dressing in the exquisite clothing I admired and 
presenting myself to a roomful of men was enough to make my palms glisten with sweat. 
Every time I thought of it, I felt a most delicious nervousness that tingled all the way from my 
knees into my chest. I imagined myself inside a teahouse, sliding open the door of a tatami 
room. The men turned their heads to look at me; and of course, I saw the Chairman there 
among them. Sometimes I imagined him alone in the room, wearing not a Western-style 
business suit, but the Japanese dress so many men wore in the evenings to relax. In his 
fingers, as smooth as driftwood, he held a sake cup; more than anything else in the world, I 
wanted to pour it full for him and feel his eyes upon me as I did. 

I may have been no more than fourteen, but it seemed to me I'd lived two lives already. My 
new life was still beginning, though my old life had come to an end some time ago. Several 
years had passed since I'd learned the sad news about my family, and it was amazing to me 
how completely the landscape of my mind had changed. We all know that a winter scene, 
though it may be covered over one day, with even the trees dressed in shawls of snow, will 
be unrecognizable the following spring. Yet I had never imagined such a thing could occur 
within our very selves. When I first learned the news of my family, it was as though I'd been 
covered over by a blanket of snow. But in time the terrible coldness had melted away to 
reveal a landscape I'd never seen before or even imagined. I don't know if this will make 
sense to you, but my mind on the eve of my debut was like a garden in which the flowers 
have only begun to poke their faces up through the soil, so that it is still impossible to tell how 
things will look. I was brimming with excitement; and in this garden of my mind stood a 
statue, precisely in the center. It was an image of the geisha I wanted to become. 

Chapter fourteen 

I've heard it said that the week in which a young girl prepares for her debut as an apprentice 
geisha is like when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. It's a charming idea; but for the life of 
me I can't imagine why anyone ever thought up such a thing. A caterpillar has only to spin its 
cocoon and doze off for a while; whereas in my case, I'm sure I never had a more exhausting 
week. The first step was to have my hair done in the manner of an apprentice geisha, in the 
"split peach" style, which I've mentioned. Gion had quite a number of hairdressers in those 
days; Mameha's worked in a terribly crowded room above an eel restaurant. I had to spend 
nearly two hours waiting my turn with six or eight geisha kneeling here and there, even out 
on the landing of the stairwell. And I'm sorry to say that the smell of dirty hair was 
overpowering. The elaborate hairstyles geisha wore in those days required so much effort 
and expense that no one went to the hairdresser more than once a week or so; by the end of 
that time, even the perfumes they put in their hair weren't of much help. 

When at last my turn came, the first thing the hairdresser did was put me over a large sink in 
a position that made me wonder if he was going to chop off my head. Then he poured a 
bucket of warm water over my hair and began to scrub it with soap. Actually "scrub" isn't a 
strong enough word, because what he did to my scalp using his fingers is more like what a 
workman does to a field using a hoe. Looking back on it, I understand why. Dandruff is a 
great problem among geisha, and very few things are more unattractive and make the hair 
look more unclean. The hairdresser may have had the best motives, but after a while my 
scalp felt so raw, I was almost in tears from the pain. Finally he said to me, "Go ahead and 
cry if you have to. Why do you think I put you over a sink!" 

I suppose this was his idea of a clever joke, because after he'd said it he laughed out loud. 

When he'd had enough of scraping his fingernails across my scalp, he sat me on the mats to 
one side and tore a wooden comb through my hair until the muscles of my neck were sore 
from pulling against him. At length he satisfied himself that the knots were gone, and then 


combed camellia oil into my hair, which 