you think for a moment I 
would?" she said. "I'm not even going to tell it to my own maid. Just be very sure to keep 
Nobu-san 
interested in you. Everything depends on him, and on one other man as well." 

"What other man?" 

"A man you haven't met yet. Now don't talk about it any further! I've probably said more than I 
should already. It's a great thing you met Nobu-san today. He may just prove to be your 
rescuer." 

I must admit I felt a sickness inside when I heard this. If I was to have a rescuer, I wanted it 
to be the Chairman and no one else. 

Chapter eighteen 

Now that I knew the identity of the Chairman, I began that very night to read every discarded 
news magazine I could find in the hopes of learning more about him. Within a week I'd 
accumulated such a stack of them in my room that Auntie gave me a look as if I'd lost my 
mind. I did find mention of him in a number of articles, but only in passing, and none told me 
the sorts of things I really wanted to know. Still, I went on picking up every magazine I found 
poking out of a trash basket, until one day I came upon a stack of old papers tied in a bundle 
behind one of the teahouses. Buried in it was a two-year-old issue of a news magazine that 
happened to feature an article on Iwa-mura Electric. 

It seemed that Iwamura Electric had celebrated its twentieth anniversary in April of 1931. It 
astonishes me even now to think of it, but this was the same month when I met the Chairman 
on the banks or the Shirakawa Stream; I would have seen his face in all the magazines, if 
only I'd looked in them. Now that I knew a date to search for, I managed over the course of 
time to find many more articles about the anniversary. Most of them came from a collection 
of junk thrown out after the death of the old granny who lived in an okiya across the alley. 

The Chairman had been born in 1890, as I learned, which meant that despite his gray hair 
he'd been a little over forty when I met him. I'd formed the impression that day he was 
probably chairman of an unimportant company, but I was quite wrong. Iwamura Electric 
wasn't as big as Osaka Electric-its chief rival in western Japan, according to all the articles. 
But the Chairman and Nobu, because of their celebrated partnership, were much better 
known than the chiefs of much larger companies. In any case, Iwamura Electric was 
considered more innovative and had a better reputation. 

At seventeen the Chairman had gone to work at a small electric company in Osaka. Soon he 
was supervising the crew that installed wiring for machinery at factories in the area. The 
demand for electric lighting in households and offices was growing at this time, and during 
the evenings the Chairman designed a fixture to allow the use of two lightbulbs in a socket 
built for only one. The director of the company wouldn't build it, however, and so at the age of 
twenty-two, in 1912, shortly after marrying, the Chairman left to establish his own company. 

For a few years things were difficult; then in 1914, the Chairman's new company won the 
electrical wiring contract for a new building on a military base in Osaka. Nobu was still in the 
military at this time, since his war wounds made it difficult for him to find a job anywhere else. 


He was given the task of overseeing the work done by the new Iwamura Electric Company. 
He and the Chairman quickly became friends, and when the Chairman offered him a job the 
following year, Nobu took it. 

The more I read about their partnership, the more I understood just how well suited they 
really were to each other. Nearly all the articles showed the same photograph of them, with 
the Chairman in a stylish three-piece suit of heavy wool, holding in his hand the ceramic two-
bulb socket that had been the company's first product. He looked as if someone had just 
handed it to him and he hadn't yet decided what he was going to do with it. His mouth was 
slightly open, showing his teeth, and he stared at the camera with an almost menacing look, 
as though he were about to throw the fixture. By contrast, Nobu stood beside him, half a 
head shorter and at full attention, with his one hand in a fist at his side. He wore a morning 
coat and pin-striped trousers. His scarred face was completely without expression, and his 
eyes looked sleepy. The Chairman-perhaps because of his prematurely gray hair and the 
difference in their sizes-might almost have been Nobu's father, though he was only two years 
older. The articles said that while the Chairman was responsible for the company's growth 
and direction, 

Nobu was responsible for managing it. He was the less glamorous man with the less 
glamorous job, but apparently he did it so well that the Chairman often said publicly that the 
company would never have survived several crises without Nobu's talents. It was Nobu 
who'd brought in a group of investors and saved the company from ruin in the early 19205. "I 
owe Nobu a debt I can never repay," the Chairman was quoted more than once as saying. 

Several weeks passed, and then one day I received a note to come to Mameha's apartment 
the following afternoon. By this time I'd grown accustomed to the priceless kimono 
ensembles that Mameha's maid usually laid out for me; but when I arrived and began 
changing into an autumn-weight silk of scarlet and yellow, which showed leaves scattered in 
a field of golden grasses, I was taken aback to find a tear in the back of the gown large 
enough to put two fingers through. Mameha hadn't yet returned, but I took the robe in my 
arms and went to speak with her maid. 

"Tatsumi-san," I said, "the most upsetting thing . . . this kimono is ruined." 

"It isn't ruined, miss. It needs to be repaired is all. Mistress borrowed it this morning from an 
okiya down the street." 

"She must not have known," I said. "And with my reputation for ruining kimono, she'll 
probably think-" 

"Oh, she knows it's torn," Tatsumi interrupted. "In fact, the under-robe is torn as well, in just 
the same place." I'd already put on the cream-colored underrobe, and when I reached back 
and felt in the area of my thigh, I saw that Tatsumi was right. 

"East year an apprentice geisha caught it by accident on a nail," Tatsumi told me. "But 
Mistress was very clear that she wanted you to put it on." 

This made very little sense to me; but I did as Tatsumi said. When at last Mameha rushed in, 
I went to ask her about it while she touched up her makeup. 

"I told you that according to my plan," she said, "two men will be important to your future. You 
met Nobu a few weeks ago. The other man has been out of town until now, but with the help 
of this torn kimono, you re about to meet him. That sumo wrestler gave me such a wonderful 
idea! I can hardly wait to see how Hatsumomo reacts when you come back from the dead. 


Do you know what she said to me the other day? She couldn't thank me enough for taking 
you to the exhibition. It 
was worth all her trouble getting there, she said, just to see you making big eyes at 'Mr. 
Lizard.' I'm sure she'll leave you alone when you entertain him, unless it's to drop by and 
have a look for herself. In fact, the more you talk about Nobu around her, the better-though 
you're not to mention a word about the man you'll meet this afternoon." 

I began to feel sick inside when I heard this, even as I tried to seem pleased at what she'd 
said; because you see, a man will never have an intimate relationship with a geisha who has 
been the mistress of a close associate. One afternoon in a bathhouse not many months 
earlier, I'd listened as a young woman tried to console another geisha who'd just learned that 
her new danna would be the business partner of the man she'd dreamed about. It had never 
occurred to me as I watched her that I might one day be in the same position myself. 

"Ma'am," I said, "may I ask? Is it part of your plan that Nobu-san will one day become my 
danna?" 

Mameha answered me by lowering her makeup brush and staring at me in the mirror with a 
look that I honestly think would have stopped a train. "Nobu-san is a fine man. Are you 
suggesting you'd be ashamed to have him for a danna?" she asked. 

"No, ma'am, I don't mean it that way. I'm just wondering . . ." 

"Very well. Then I have only two things to say to you. First, you're a fourteen-year-old girl with 
no reputation whatever. You'll be very fortunate ever to become a geisha with sufficient 
status for a man like Nobu to consider proposing himself as your danna. Secondly, Nobu-san 
has never found a geisha he likes well enough to take as a mistress. If you're the first, I 
expect you to feel very flattered." 

I blushed with so much heat in my face I might almost have caught fire. Mameha was quite 
right; whatever became of me in the years ahead, I would be fortunate even to attract the 
notice of a man like Nobu. If Nobu'was beyond my reach, how much more unreach-able the 
Chairman must be. Since finding him again at the sumo exhibition, I'd begun to think of all 
the possibilities life presented to me. But now after Mameha's words I felt myself wading 
through an ocean of sorrow. 

I dressed in a hurry, and Mameha led me up the street to the okiya where she'd lived until six 
years earlier, when she'd gained her independence. At the door we were greeted by an 
elderly maid, who smacked her lips and gave her head a shake. 

"We called the hospital earlier," the maid said. "The Doctor goes home at four o'clock today. 
It's nearly three-thirty already, you know. 

"We'll phone him before we go, Kazuko-san," Mameha replied. "I'm sure he'll wait for me." 

"I hope so. It would be terrible to leave the poor girl bleeding." 

"Who's bleeding?" I asked in alarm; but the maid only looked at me with a sigh and led us up 
the st