gave it a lovely sheen. I was starting to think the 
worst was over; but then he took out a bar of wax. And I must tell you that even with camellia 
oil as a lubricant and a hot iron to keep the wax soft, hair and wax were never meant to go 
together. It says a great deal about how civilized we human beings are, that a young girl can 
willingly sit and allow a grown man to comb wax through her hair without doing anything 
more than whimpering quietly to herself. If you tried such a thing with a dog, it would bite you 
so much you'd be able to see through your hands. 

When my hair was evenly waxed, the hairdresser swept the forelock back and brought the 
rest up into a large knot like a pincushion on the top of the head. When viewed from the 
back, this pincushion has a split in it, as if it's cut in two, which gives the hairstyle its name of 
"split peach." 

Even though I wore this split-peach hairstyle for a number of years, there's something about 
it that never occurred to me until quite some time later when a man explained it. The knot-
what I've called the "pincushion"-is formed by wrapping the hair around a piece of fabric. In 
back where the knot is split, the fabric is left visible; it might be any design or color, but in the 
case of an apprentice geisha-after a certain point in her life, at least-it's always red silk. One 
night a man said to me: 

"Most of these innocent little girls have no idea how provocative the 'split peach' hairstyle 
really is! Imagine that you're walking along behind a young geisha, thinking all sorts of 
naughty thoughts about what you might like to do to her, and then you see on her head this 
split-peach shape, with a big splash of red inside the cleft . . . And what do you think of?" 

Well, I didn't think of anything at all, and I told him so. 

"You aren't using your imagination!" he said. 

After a moment I understood and turned so red he laughed to see it. 

On my way back to the okiya, it didn't matter to me that my poor scalp felt the way clay must 
feel after the potter has scored it with a sharp stick. Every time I caught a glimpse of myself 
in the glass of a shop, I felt I was someone to be taken seriously; not a girl anymore, but a 
young woman. When I reached the okiya, Auntie made me model my hair for her and said all 
sorts of kind things. Even Pumpkin couldn't resist walking once around me admiringly-though 
Hatsumomo would have been angry if she'd known. And what do you suppose Mother's 
reaction was? She stood on her tiptoes to see better-which did her little good, because 
already I was taller than she was-and then complained that I probably ought to have gone to 
Hatsumomo's hairdresser rather than Mameha's. 

Every young geisha may be proud of her hairstyle at first, but she comes to hate it within 
three or four days. Because you see, if a girl comes home exhausted from the hairdresser 
and lays her head down on a pillow for a nap just as she did the night before, her hair will be 
flattened out of shape. The moment she awakens, she'll have to go right back to the 
hairdresser again. For this reason, a young apprentice geisha must learn a new way of 
sleeping after her hair is styled for the first time. She doesn't use an ordinary pillow any 
longer, but a taka-makura-which I've mentioned before. It's not so much a pillow as a cradle 
for the base of the neck. Most are padded with a bag of wheat chaff, but still they're not much 
better than putting your neck on a stone. You lie there on-your futon with your hair 
suspended in the air, thinking everything is fine until you fall asleep; but when you wake up, 
you've shifted somehow so that your head has settled back on the mats, and your hairstyle is 
as flat as if you hadn't bothered to use a tall pillow in the first place. In my case, Auntie 
helped me to avoid this by putting a tray of rice flour on the mats beneath my hair. Whenever 
my head drooped back while I slept, my hair sank into the rice flour, which stuck to the wax 


and ruined my hairstyle. I'd already watched Pumpkin go through this ordeal. Now it was my 
turn. For a time I woke up every morning with my hair ruined and had to wait in line at the 
hairdresser for my chance to be tortured. 

Every afternoon during the week leading up to my debut, Auntie dressed me in the complete 
regalia of an apprentice geisha and made me walk up and down the dirt corridor of the okiya 
to build up my strength. In the beginning I could scarcely walk at all, and worried that I might 
tip over backward. Young girls dress much more ornately than older women, you see, which 
means brighter colors and showier fabrics, but also a longer obi. A mature woman will wear 
the obi tied in back in a manner we call the "drum knot," because it makes a tidy little box 
shape; this doesn't require very much fabric. But a girl younger than around twenty or so 
wears her obi in a showier fashion. In the case of an apprentice geisha, this means the most 
dramatic fashion of all, a darari-obi-"dangling obi"-knotted almost as high as the shoulder 
blades, and with the ends hanging nearly to the ground. No matter how brightly colored a 
kimono might be, the obi is nearly always brighter. When an apprentice geisha walks down 
the street in front of you, you notice not her kimono but rather her brilliantly colored, dangling 
obi-with just a margin of kimono showing at the shoulders and on the sides. To achieve this 
effect the obi must be so long that it stretches all the way from one end of a room to the 
other. But it isn't the length of the obi that makes it hard to wear; it's the weight, for it's nearly 
always made of heavy silk brocade. Just to carry it up the stairs is exhausting, so you can 
imagine how it feels to wear it-the thick band of it squeezing your middle like one of those 
awful snakes, and the heavy fabric hanging behind, making you feel as if someone has 
strapped a traveling trunk to your back. 

To make matters worse, the kimono itself is also heavy, with long, swinging sleeves. I don't 
mean sleeves that drape over the hand onto the ground. You may have noticed that when a 
woman is wearing kimono and stretches out her arms, the fabric below the sleeve hangs 
down to form something like a pocket. This baggy pocket, which we call the/wn, is the part 
that's so long on the kimono of an apprentice geisha. It can easily drag along the ground if a 
girl isn't careful; and when she dances, she will certainly trip over her sleeves if she doesn't 
wrap them many times around the forearm to keep them out of the way. 

Years later a famous scientist from Kyoto University, when he was very drunk one night, said 
something about the costume of an apprentice geisha that I've never forgotten. "The mandrill 
of central Africa is often considered the showiest of primates," he said. "But I believe the 
apprentice geisha of Gion is perhaps the most brilliantly colored primate of all!" 

Finally the day came when Mameha and I were to perform the ceremony binding us as 
sisters. I bathed early and spent the rest of the morning dressing. Auntie helped me with the 
finishing touches on my makeup and hair. Because of the wax and makeup covering my 
skin, I had the strange sensation of having lost all feeling in my face; every time I touched my 
cheek, I could feel only a vague sense of pressure from my finger. I did it so many times 
Auntie had to redo my makeup. Afterward as I studied myself in the mirror, a most peculiar 
thing happened. I knew that the person kneeling before the makeup stand was me, but so 
was the unfamiliar girl gazing back. I actually reached out to touch her. She wore the 
magnificent makeup of a geisha. Her lips were flowering red on a stark white face, with her 
cheeks tinted a soft pink. Her hair was ornamented with silk flowers and sprigs of un-husked 
rice. She wore a formal kimono of black, with the crest of the Nitta okiya. When at last I could 
bring myself to stand, I went into the hall and looked in astonishment at myself in the full-
length mirror. Beginning at the hem of my gown, an embroidered dragon circled up the 
bottom of the robe to the middle of my thigh. His mane was woven in threads lacquered with 
a beautiful reddish tint. His claws and teeth were silver, his eyes gold-real gold. I- couldn't 
stop tears from welling up in my eyes, and had to look straight up at the ceiling to keep them 
from rolling onto my cheeks. Before leaving the okiya, I took the handkerchief the Chairman 
had given me and tucked it into my obi for good luck. 


Auntie accompanied me to Mameha's apartment, where I expressed my gratitude to 
Mameha and pledged to honor and respect her. Then the three of us walked to the Gion 
Shrine, where Mameha and I clapped our hands and announced to the gods that we would 
soon be bound as sisters. I prayed for their favor in the years ahead, and then closed my 
eyes and thanked them for having granted me the wish I'd pleaded for three and a half years 
earlier, that I should become a geisha. 

The ceremony was to take place at the Ichiriki Teahouse, which is certainly the best-known 
teahouse in all of Japan. It has quite a history, partly because of a famous samurai who hid 
himself there in the early 17005. If you've ever heard the story of the Forty-seven Ronin- who 
avenged their master's death and afterward killed themselves by seppuku-well, it was their 
leader who hid himself in the Ichiriki Teahouse while plotting revenge. Most of the first-class 
teahouses in Gion are invisible from the street, except for their simple entrances, but the 
Ichiriki is as obvious as an apple on a tree. It sits at a prominent corner of Shijo Avenue, 
surrounded by a smooth, apricot-colored wall with its own tiled roof. It seemed like a palace 
to me. 

We were joined there by two of Mameha's younger