oment I set eyes on this man I felt a strange stillness 
settling over me. He was talking with someone in another box, so that I could see only the 
back of his head. But he was so familiar to me that for a moment I could make no sense of 
what I saw. All I knew was that he was out of place there in the Exhibition Hall. Before I could 
even think why, I saw an image in my mind of him turning toward me on the streets of our 
little village . . . 

And then I realized: it was Mr. Tanaka! 

He'd changed in some way I couldn't have described. I watched him reach up to smooth his 
gray hair and was struck by the graceful way he moved his fingers. Why did I find it so 
peculiarly soothing to look at him? Perhaps I was in a daze at seeing him and hardly knew 
how I really felt. Well, if I hated anyone in this world, I hated Mr. Tanaka; I had to remind 
myself of this. I wasn't going to kneel beside him and say, "Why, Mr. Tanaka, how very 
honored I am to see you again! What has brought you to Kyoto?" Instead I would find some 
way of showing him my true feelings, even if it was hardly the proper thing for an apprentice 
to do. Actually, I'd thought of Mr. Tanaka very little these last few years. But still I owed it to 
myself not to be kind to him, not to pour his sake into his cup if I could spill it on his leg 
instead. I would smile at him as I was obliged to smile; but it would be the smile I had so 
often seen on Hatsumomo's face; and then I would say, "Oh, Mr. Tanaka, the strong odor of 
fish ... it makes me so homesick to sit here beside you!" How shocked he would be! Or 
perhaps this: "Why, Mr. Tanaka, you look . . . almost distinguished!" Though in truth, as I 
looked at him-for by now we'd nearly reached the box in which he sat-he did look 
distinguished, more distinguished than I could ever have imagined. Mameha was just 
arriving, lowering herself to her knees to bow. Then he turned his head, and for the first time I 
saw his broad face and the sharpness of his cheekbones . . . and most of all, his eyelids 
folded so tightly in the corners and so smooth and flat. And suddenly everything around me 
seemed to grow quiet, as if he were the wind that blew and I were just a cloud carried upon 
it. 

He was familiar, certainly-more familiar in some ways than my own image in the mirror. But it 
wasn't Mr. Tanaka at all. It was the Chairman. 


Chapter seventeen 

I had seen the Chairman during only one brief moment in my life; but I'd spent a great many 
moments since then imagining him. He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had 
been singing in my mind ever since. Though of course, the notes had changed a bit over 
time-which is to say that I expected his forehead to be higher and his gray hair not so thick. 
When I saw him, I had a flicker of uncertainty whether he was really the Chairman; but I felt 
so soothed, I knew without a doubt I had found him. 

While Mameha was greeting the two men, I stood behind awaiting my turn to bow. What if 
my voice, when I tried to speak, should sound like a rag squeaking on polished wood? Nobu, 
with his tragic scars, was watching me, but I wasn't sure whether the Chairman had even 
noticed me there; I was too timid to glance in his direction. When Mameha took her place 
and began to smooth her kimono over her knees, I saw that the Chairman was looking at me 
with what I took to be curiosity. My feet actually went cold from all the blood that came 
rushing into my face. 

"Chairman Iwamura . . . President Nobu," Mameha said, "this is my new younger sister, 
Sayuri." 

I'm certain you've heard of the famous Iwamura Ken, founder of Iwamura Electric. And 
probably you've heard of Nobu Toshikazu as well. Certainly no business partnership in Japan 
was ever more famous than theirs. They were like a tree and its roots, or like a shrine and 
the gate that stands before it. Even as a fourteen-year-old girl I'd heard of them. But I'd never 
imagined for a moment that Iwamura Ken might be the man I'd met on the banks of the 
Shirakawa Stream. Well, I lowered myself to my knees and bowed to them, saying all the 
usual things about begging their indulgence and so forth. When I was done, I went to kneel in 
the space between them. Nobu fell into conversation with a man beside him, while the 
Chairman, on the other side of me, sat with his hand around an empty teacup on a tray at his 
knee. Mameha began talking to him; I picked up a small teapot and held my sleeve out of the 
way to pour. To my astonishment, the Chairman's eyes drifted to my arm. Of course, I was 
eager to see for myself exactly what he was seeing. Perhaps because of the murky light in 
the Exhibition Hall, the underside of my arm seemed to shine with the gleaming smoothness 
of a pearl, and was a beautiful ivory color. No part of my body had ever struck me as lovely in 
this way before. I was very aware that the Chairman's eyes weren't moving; as long as he 
kept looking at my arm, I certainly wasn't going to take it away. And then suddenly Mameha 
fell silent. It seemed to me she'd stopped talking because the Chairman was watching my 
arm instead of listening to her. Then I realized what was really the matter. 

The teapot was empty. What was more, it had been empty even when I'd picked it up. 

I'd felt almost glamorous a moment earlier, but now I muttered an apology and put the pot 
down as quickly as I could. Mameha laughed. "You can see what a determined girl she is, 
Chairman," she said. "If there'd been a single drop of tea in that pot, Sayuri would have 
gotten it out." 

"That certainly is a beautiful kimono your younger sister is wearing, Mameha," the Chairman 
said. "Do I recall seeing it on you, back during your days as an apprentice?" 

If I felt any lingering doubts about whether this man was really the Chairman, I felt them no 
longer after hearing the familiar kindness of his voice. 

"It's possible, I suppose," Mameha replied. "But the Chairman has seen me in so many 
different kimono over the years, I can't imagine he remembers them all." 


"Well, I'm no different from any other man. Beauty makes quite an impression on me. When it 
comes to these sumo wrestlers, I can't tell one of them from the next." 

Mameha leaned across in front of the Chairman and whispered to me, "What the Chairman is 
really saying is that he doesn't particularly like sumo." 

"Now, Mameha," he said, "if you're trying to get me into trouble with Nobu . . ." 

"Chairman, Nobu-san has known for years how you feel!" 

"Nevertheless. Sayuri, is this your first encounter with sumo?" 

I'd been waiting for some excuse to speak with him; but before I'd so much as taken a 
breath, we were all startled by a tremendous boom that shook the great building. Our heads 
turned and the crowd fell silent; but it was nothing more than the closing of one of the giant 
doors. In a moment we could hear hinges creaking and saw the second door straining its 
way around in an arc, pushed by two of the wrestlers. Nobu had his head turned away from 
me; I couldn't resist peering at the terrible burns on the side of his face and his neck, and at 
his ear, which was misshapen. Then I saw that the sleeve of his jacket was empty. I'd been 
so preoccupied, I hadn't noticed it earlier; it was folded in two and fastened to his shoulder by 
a long silver pin. 

I may as well tell you, if you don't know it already, that as a young lieutenant in the Japanese 
marines, Nobu had been severely injured in a bombing outside Seoul in 1910, at the time 
Korea was being annexed to Japan. I knew nothing about his heroism when I met him-
though in fact, the story was familiar all over Japan. If he'd never joined up with the Chairman 
and eventually become president of Iwamura Electric, probably he would have been 
forgotten as a war hero. But as it was, his terrible injuries made the story of his success that 
much more remarkable, so the two were often mentioned together. 

I don't know too much about history-for they taught us only arts at the little school-but I think 
the Japanese government gained control over Korea at the end of the Russo-Japanese War, 
and a few years afterward made the decision to incorporate Korea into the growing empire. 
I'm sure the Koreans didn't much like this. Nobu went there as part of a small force to keep 
things under control. Eate one afternoon he accompanied his commanding officer on a visit 
to a village near Seoul. On the way back to the spot where their horses were tied up, the 
members of the patrol came under attack. When they heard the horrible shrieking noise of an 
incoming shell, the commanding officer tried to climb down into a ditch, but he was an old 
man and moved at about the speed of a barnacle inching its way down a rock. Moments 
before the shell struck he was still trying to find a foothold. Nobu laid himself over the 
commanding officer in an effort to save him, but the old man took this badly and tried to climb 
out. With some effort he raised his head; 

Nobu tried to push it back down, but the shell struck, killing the commanding officer and 
injuring Nobu severely. In surgery later that year, Nobu lost his left arm above the elbow. 

The first time I saw his pinned sleeve, I couldn't help averting my eyes in alarm. I'd never 
before seen anyone who'd lost a limb-though when I was a little girl, an assistant of Mr. 
Tanaka's had lost the tip of his finger one morning while cleaning a fish. In Nobu's case, 
many people felt his arm to be the least of his problems, because his skin was like an 
enormous wound. It's hard to describe the way he looked, and probably it would be cruel for 
me even to try. I'll just repeat what I overheard another geisha say about him once: "Every 
time I look at his face, I think of a sweet potato that has blistered in the fire." 
