she went so far as to turn to me and say this: 

"Sayuri-san, when was the first time I raised the subject of adopting you? A year ago, 
perhaps?" 

If you've ever seen a mother cat teaching its young to hunt-the way she takes a helpless 
mouse and rips it apart-well, I felt as though Mother was offering me the chance to learn how 
I could be just like her. All I had to do was lie as she lied and say, "Oh, yes, Mother, you 
mentioned the subject to me many times!" This would be my first step in becoming a yellow-
eyed old woman myself one day, living in a gloomy room with my account books. I could no 
more take Mother's side than Hatsumomo's. I kept my eyes to the mats so I wouldn't have to 
see either of them, and said that I didn't remember. 

Hatsumomo's face was splotched red from anger. She got up and walked to the door, but 
Mother stopped her. 


"Sayuri will be my daughter in one week," she said. "Between now and then, you must learn 
how to treat her with respect. When you go downstairs, ask one of the maids to bring tea for 
Sayuri and me." 

Hatsumomo gave a little bow, and then she was gone. 

"Mother," I said, "I'm very sorry to have been the cause of so much trouble. I'm sure 
Hatsumomo is quite wrong about any plans you may have made for Pumpkin, but . . . may I 
ask? Wouldn't it be possible to adopt both Pumpkin and me?" 

"Oh, so you know something about business now, do you?" she replied. "You want to try 
telling me how to run the okiya?" 

A few minutes later, a maid arrived bearing a tray with a pot of tea and a cup-not two cups, 
but only a single one. Mother didn't seem to care. I poured her cup full and she drank from it, 
staring at me with her red-rimmed eyes. 

Chapter twenty-four 

Then Mameha returned to town the following day and learned that Mother had decided to 
adopt me, she didn't seem as pleased as I would have expected. She nodded and looked 
satisfied, to be sure; but she didn't smile. I asked if things hadn't turned out exactly as she'd 
hoped. 

"Oh, no, the bidding between Dr. Crab and Nobu went just as I'd hoped," she told me, "and 
the final figure was a considerable sum. The moment I found out, I knew Mrs. Nitta would 
certainly adopt you. I couldn't be more pleased!" 

This is what she said. But the truth, as I came to understand in stages over the following 
years, was something quite different. For one thing, the bidding hadn't been a contest 
between Dr. Crab and Nobu at all. It had ended up a contest between Dr. Crab and the 
Baron. I can't imagine how Mameha must have felt about this; but I'm sure it accounts for 
why she was suddenly so cold to me for a short time, and why she kept to herself the story of 
what had really happened. 

I don't mean to suggest that Nobu was never involved. He did bid quite aggressively for my 
mizuage, but only during the first few days, until the figure passed A8000. When he ended up 
dropping out, it probably wasn't because the bidding had gone too high. Mameha knew from 
the beginning that Nobu could bid against anyone, if he wanted to. The trouble, which 
Mameha hadn't anticipated, was that Nobu had no more than a vague interest in my 
mizuage. Only a certain kind of man spends his time and money chasing after mizuage, and 
it turned out that Nobu wasn't one of them. Some months earlier, as you may remember, 
Mameha had suggested that no man would cultivate a relationship with a fifteen-year-old 
apprentice unless he was interested in her mizuage. This was during the same discussion 
when she told me, "You can bet it isn't your conversation he's attracted to." She may have 
been right about my conversation, I don't know; but whatever attracted Nobu to me, it wasn't 
my mizuage either. 

As for Dr. Crab, he was a man who would probably have chosen suicide the old-fashioned 
way before allowing someone like Nobu to take a mizuage away from him. Of course he 
wasn't really bidding against Nobu after the first few days, but he didn't know that, and the 
mistress of the Ichiriki made up her mind not to tell him. She wanted the price to go as high 
as it could. So when she spoke to him on the telephone she said things like, "Oh, Doctor, I've 
just received word from Osaka, and an offer has come in for five thousand yen." She 
probably had received word from Osaka-though it might have been from her sister, because 


the mistress never- liked to tell outright lies. But when she mentioned Osaka and an offer in 
the same breath, naturally Dr. Crab assumed the offer was from Nobu, even though it was 
actually from the Baron. 

As for the Baron, he knew perfectly well his adversary was the Doctor, but he didn't care. He 
wanted the mizuage for himself and pouted like a little boy when he began to think he might 
not win it. Sometime later a geisha told me about a conversation she'd had with him around 
this time. "Do you hear what has been happening?" the Baron said to her. "I'm trying to 
arrange a mizuage, but a certain annoying doctor keeps getting in my way. Only one man 
can be the explorer of an undiscovered region, and I want to be that man! But what am I to 
do? This foolish doctor doesn't seem to understand that the numbers he throws about 
represent real money!" 

As the bidding went higher and higher, the Baron began to talk about dropping out. But the 
figure had already come so close to a new record that the mistress of the Ichiriki made up 
her mind to push things still higher by misleading the Baron, just as she'd misled the Doctor. 
On the telephone she told him that the "other gentleman" had made a very high bid, and then 
added, "However, many people believe he's the sort of gentleman who will go no higher." I'm 
sure there may have been people who believed such a thing about the Doctor, but the 
mistress herself wasn't one of them. She knew that when the Baron made his last bid, 
whatever it was, the Doctor would top it. 

In the end, Dr. Crab agreed to pay A11,500 for my mizuage. Up to that time, this was the 
highest ever paid for a mizuage in Gion, and possibly in any of the geisha districts in Japan. 
Keep in mind that in those days, one hour of a geisha's time cost about A4, and an 
extravagant kimono might have sold for A1500. So it may not sound like a lot, but it's much 
more than, say, a laborer might have earned in a year. 

I have to confess I don't know much about money. Most geisha pride themselves on never 
carrying cash with them, and are accustomed to charging things wherever they go. Even now 
in New York City, I live just the same way. I shop at stores that know me by sight, where the 
clerks are kind enough to write down the items I want. When the bill comes at the end of the 
month, I have a charming assistant who pays it for me. So you see, I couldn't possibly tell 
you how much money I spend, or how much more a bottle of perfume costs than a 
magazine. So I may be one of the worst people on earth to try explaining anything at all 
about money. However, I want to pass on to you something a close friend once told me-who 
I'm sure knows what he's talking about, because he was Japan's Deputy Minister of Finance 
for a time during the 19605. Cash, he said, is often worth less one year than it was the year 
before, and because of this, Mameha's mizuage in 1929 actually cost more than mine in 
1935, even though mine was A11,500 while Mameha's was more like A7000 or A8000. 

Of course, none of this mattered back at the time my mizuage was sold. As far as everyone 
was concerned I had set a new record, and it remained until 1951, when Katsumiyo came 
along-who in my opinion was one of the greatest geisha of the twentieth century. Still, 
according to my friend the Deputy Minister of Finance, the real record remained Mameha's 
until the 19605. But whether the real record belonged to me, or to Katsumiyo, or to Mamehaor even to Mamemitsu back in the 18905-you can well imagine that Mother's plump little 
hands began to itch when she heard about a record amount of cash. 

It goes without saying that this is why she adopted me. The fee for my mizuage was more 
than enough to repay all my debts to the okiya. If Mother hadn't adopted me, some of that 
money would have fallen into my hands-and you can imagine how Mother would have felt 
about this. When I became the daughter of the okiya, my debts ceased to exist because the 
okiya absorbed them all. But all of my profits went to the okiya as well, not only then, at the 
time of my mizuage, but forever afterward. 


The adoption took place the following week. Already my given name had changed to Sayuri; 
now my family name changed as well. Back in my tipsy house on the sea cliffs, I'd been 
Sakamoto Chiyo. Now my name was Nitta Sayuri. 

Of all the important moments in the life of a geisha, mizuage certainly ranks as high as any. 
Mine occurred in early July of 1935, when I was fifteen years old. It began in the afternoon 
when Dr. Crab and I drank sake in a ceremony that bound us together. The reason for this 
ceremony is that even though the mizuage itself would be over with quickly, Dr. Crab would 
remain my mizuage patron until the end of his life- not that it gave him any special privileges, 
you understand. The ceremony was performed at the Ichiriki Teahouse, in the presence of 
Mother, Auntie, and Mameha. The mistress of the Ichiriki attended as well, and Mr. Bekku, 
my dresser-because the dresser is always involved in ceremonies of this sort, representing 
the interests of the geisha. I was dressed in the most formal costume an apprentice wears, a 
black, five-crested robe and an underrobe of red, which is the color of new beginnings. 
Mameha instructed me to behave very sternly, as though I had no sense of humor at all. 
Considering my nervousness, I found it easy to look stern as I walked down the hallway of