t it fall, I felt the puff of air against my 
side almost as a breeze. Soon I was alone in the room; the Baron had walked out without my 
even realizing it. Now that he was gone, I rushed to dress myself with such desperation that 


while I knelt on the floor to gather up my undergarments, I kept seeing in my mind an image 
of a starving child grabbing at scraps of food. 

I dressed again as best I could, with my hands trembling. But until I had help, I could go no 
further than to close my underrobe and secure it with the waistband. I waited in front of the 
mirror, looking with some concern at the smeared makeup on my face. I was prepared to 
wait there a full hour if I had to. But only a few minutes passed before the Baron came back 
with the sash of his bathrobe tight around his plump belly. He helped me into my kimono 
without a word, and secured it with my datejime just as Mr. Itchoda would have done. While 
he was holding my great, long obi in his arms, measuring it out in loops as he prepared to tie 
it around me, I began to feel a terrible feeling. I couldn't make sense of it at first; but it seeped 
its way through me just as a stain seeps across cloth, and soon I understood. It was the 
feeling that I'd done something terribly wrong. I didn't want to cry in front of the Baron, but I 
couldn't help it-and anyway, he hadn't looked me in the eye since coming back into the room. 
I tried to imagine I was simply a house standing in the rain with the water washing down the 
front of me. But the Baron must have seen, for he left the room and came back a moment 
later with a handkerchief bearing his monogram. He instructed me to keep it, but after I used 
it, I left it there on a table. 

Soon he led me to the front of the house and went away without speaking a word. In time a 
servant came, holding the antique kimono wrapped once again in linen paper. He presented 
it to me with a bow and then escorted me to the Baron's motorcar. I cried quietly in the 
backseat on the way to the inn, but the driver pretended to take no notice. I was no longer 
crying about what had happened to me. Something much more frightful was on my mind-
namely, what would happen when Mr. Itchoda saw my smeared makeup, and then helped 
me undress and saw the poorly tied knot in my obi, and then opened the package and saw 
the expensive gift I'd received. Before leaving the 
car I wiped my face with the Chairman's handkerchief, but it did me little good. Mr. Itchoda 
took one look at me and then scratched his chin as though he understood everything that 
had happened. While he was untying my obi in the room upstairs, he said: 

"Did the Baron undress your" 

"I'm sorry," I said. 

"He undressed you and looked at you in the mirror. But he didn't enjoy himself with you. He 
didn't touch you, or lie on top of you, did he?" 

"No, sir." 

"That's fine, then," Mr. Itchoda said, staring straight ahead. Not another word was spoken 
between us. 

Chapter twenty-three 

I won't say my emotions had settled themselves by the time the train pulled into Kyoto 
Station early the following morning. After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water 
continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom. But when I descended the 
wooden stairs carrying us from the platform, with Mr. Itchoda one step behind me, I came 
upon such a shock that for a time I forgot everything else. 

There in a glass case was the new poster for that season's Dances of the Old Capital, and I 
stopped to have a look at it. Two weeks remained before the event. The poster had been 
distributed just the previous day, probably while I was strolling around the Baron's estate 
hoping to meet up with the Chairman. The dance every year has a theme, such as "Colors of 


the Four Seasons in Kyoto," or "Famous Places from Tale of the Heike." This year the theme 
was "The Gleaming Light of the Morning Sun." The poster, which of course was drawn by 
Uchida Kosaburo-who'd created nearly every poster since 1919- showed an apprentice 
geisha in a lovely green and orange kimono standing on an arched wooden bridge. I was 
exhausted after my long trip and had slept badly on the train; so I stood for a while before the 
poster in a sort of daze, taking in the lovely greens and golds of the background, before I 
turned my attention to the girl in the kimono. She was gazing directly into the bright light of 
the sunrise, and her eyes were a startling blue-gray. I had to put a hand on the railing to 
steady myself. I was the girl Uchida had drawn there on that bridge! 

On the way back from the train station, Mr. Itchoda pointed out every poster we passed, and 
even asked the rickshaw driver to go out of his way so we could see an entire wall of them 
on the old Daimaru Department Store building. Seeing myself all over the city this way wasn't 
quite as thrilling as I would have imagined; I kept thinking of the poor girl in the poster 
standing before a mirror as her obi was untied by an older man. In any case, I expected to 
hear all sorts of congratulations over the course of the following few days, but I soon learned 
that an honor like this one never comes without costs. Ever since Mameha had arranged for 
me to take a role in the seasonal dances, I'd heard any number of unpleasant comments 
about myself. After the poster, things only grew worse. The next morning, for example, a 
young apprentice who'd been friendly the week before now looked away when I gave a bow 
to greet her. 

As for Mameha, I went to visit her in her apartment, where she was recovering, and found 
that she was as proud as if she herself had been the one in the poster. She certainly wasn't 
pleased that I'd taken the trip to Hakone, but she seemed as devoted to my success as ever-
strangely, perhaps even more so. For a while I worried she would view my horrible encounter 
with the Baron as a betrayal of her. I imagined Mr. Itchoda must have told her about it... but if 
he did, she never raised the subject between us. Neither did I. 

Two weeks later the seasonal dances opened. On that first day in the dressing room at the 
Kaburenjo Theater, I felt myself almost overflowing with excitement, for Mameha had told me 
the Chairman and Nobu would be in the audience. While putting on my makeup, I tucked the 
Chairman's handkerchief beneath my dressing robe, against my bare skin. My hair was 
bound closely to my head with a silk strip, because of the wigs I would be wearing, and when 
I saw myself in the mirror without the familiar frame of hair surrounding my face, I found 
angles in my cheeks and around my eyes that I'd never before seen. It may seem odd, but 
when I realized that the shape of my own face was a surprise to me, I had the sudden insight 
that nothing in life is ever as simple as we imagine. 

An hour later I was standing with the other apprentices in the wings of the theater, ready for 
the opening dance. We wore identical kimono of yellow and red, with obis of orange and 
gold-so that we looked, each of us, like shimmering images of sunlight. When the music 
began, with that first thump of the drums and the twang of all the shamisens, and we danced 
out together like a string of beads-our arms outstretched, our folding fans open in our hands-I 
had never before felt so much a part of something. 

After the opening piece, I rushed upstairs to change my kimono. The dance in which I was to 
appear as a solo performer was called "The Morning Sun on the Waves," about a maiden 
who takes a morning swim in the ocean and falls in love with an enchanted dolphin. My 
costume was a magnificent pink kimono with a water design in gray, and I held blue silk 
strips to symbolize the rippling water behind me. The enchanted dolphin prince was played 
by a geisha named Umiyo; in addition, there were roles for geisha portraying wind, sunlight, 
and sprays of water-as well as a few apprentices in charcoal and blue kimono at the far 
reaches of the stage, playing dolphins calling their prince back to them. 


My costume change went so quickly that I found myself with a few minutes to peek out at the 
audience. I followed the sound of occasional drumbeats to a narrow, darkened hallway 
running behind one of the two orchestra booths at the sides of the theater. A few other 
apprentices and geisha were already peering out through carved slits in the sliding doors. I 
joined them and managed to find the Chairman and Nobu sitting together-though it seemed 
to me the Chairman had given Nobu the better seat. Nobu was peering at the stage intently, 
but I was surprised to see that the Chairman seemed to be falling asleep. From the music I 
realized that it was the beginning of Mameha's dance, and went to the end of the hallway 
where the slits in the doors gave a view of the stage. 

I watched Mameha no more than a few minutes; and yet the impression her dance made on 
me has never been erased. Most dances of the Inoue School tell a story of one kind or 
another, and the story of this dance-called "A Courtier Returns to His Wife"-was based on a 
Chinese poem about a courtier who carries on a long affair with a lady in the Imperial palace. 
One night the courtier's wife hides on the outskirts of the palace to find out where her 
husband has been spending his time. Finally, at dawn, she watches from the bushes as her 
husband takes leave of his mistress-but by this time she has fallen ill from the terrible cold 
and dies soon afterward. 

For our spring dances, the story was changed to Japan instead of China; but otherwise, the 
tale was the same. Mameha played the wife who dies of cold and heartbreak, while the 
geisha Kanako played the role of her husband, the courtier. I watched the dance from the 
moment the courtier bids good-bye to his mistress. Already the setting was inspi