r tires. I heard a horrible screech, which turned 
out to be a streetcar on tracks in the center of the avenue. 

I felt terrified as evening settled in around us; but I was never so astonished by anything in 
my life as by my first glimpse of city lights. I'd never even seen electricity except during part 
of our dinner at Mr. Tanaka's house. Here, windows were lit along the buildings upstairs and 
down, and the people on the sidewalks stood under puddles of yellow glow. I could see 
pinpoints even at the far reaches of the avenue. We turned onto another street, and I saw for 
the first time the Mi-namiza Theater standing on the opposite side of a bridge ahead of us. Its 
tiled roof was so grand, I thought it was a palace. 

At length the rickshaw turned down an alleyway of wooden houses. The way they were all 
packed together, they seemed to share one continuous facade-which once again gave me 


the terrible feeling of being lost. I watched women in kimono rushing around in a great hurry 
on the little street. They looked very elegant to me; though, as I later learned, they were 
mostly maids. 

When we came to a halt before a doorway, Mr. Bekku instructed me to get out. He climbed 
out behind me, and then as if the day hadn't been difficult enough, the worst thing of all 
happened. For when Satsu tried to get out as well, Mr. Bekku turned and pushed her back 
with his long arm. 

"Stay there," he said to her. "You're going elsewhere." 

I looked at Satsu, and Satsu looked at me. It may have been the first time we'd ever 
completely understood each other's feelings. But it lasted only a moment, for the next thing I 
knew my eyes had welled up with tears so much I could scarcely see. I felt myself being 
dragged backward by Mr. Bekku; I heard women's voices and quite a bit of commotion. I was 
on the point of throwing myself onto the street when suddenly Satsu's mouth fell open at 
something she saw in the doorway behind me. 

I was in a narrow entryway with an ancient-looking well on one side and a few plants on the 
other. Mr. Bekku had dragged me inside, and now he pulled me up onto my feet. There on 
the step of the entryway, just slipping her feet into her lacquered zori, stood an exquisitely 
beautiful woman wearing a kimono lovelier than anything I'd ever imagined. I'd been 
impressed with the kimono worn by the young bucktoothed geisha in Mr. Tanaka's village of 
Senzuru; but this one was a water blue, with swirling lines in ivory to mimic the current in a 
stream. Glistening silver trout tumbled in the current, and the surface of the water was ringed 
with gold wherever the soft green leaves of a tree touched it. I had no doubt the gown was 
woven of pure silk, and so was the obi, embroidered in pale greens and yellows. And her 
clothing wasn't the only extraordinary thing about her; her face was painted a kind of rich 
white, like the wall of a cloud when lit by the sun. Her hair, fashioned into lobes, gleamed as 
darkly as lacquer, and was decorated with ornaments carved out of amber, and with a bar 
from which tiny silver strips dangled, shimmering as she moved. 

This was my first glimpse of Hatsumomo. At the time, she was one of the most renowned 
geisha in the district of Gion; though of course I didn't know any of this then. She was a petite 
woman; the top of her hairstyle reached no higher than Mr. Bekku's shoulder. I was so 
startled by her appearance that I forgot my manners-not that I had developed very good 
manners yet-and stared directly at her face. She was smiling at me, though not in a kindly 
way. And then she said: 

"Mr. Bekku, could you take out the garbage later? I'd like to be on my way." 

There was no garbage in the entryway; she was talking about me. Mr. Bekku said he thought 
Hatsumomo had enough room to pass. 

"You may not mind being so close to her," said Hatsumomo. "But when I see filth on one side 
of the street, I cross to the other." 

Suddenly an older woman, tall and knobby, like a bamboo pole, appeared in the doorway 
behind her. 

"I don't know how anyone puts up with you, Hatsumomo-san," said the woman. But she 
gestured for Mr. Bekku to pull me onto the street again, which he did. After this she stepped 
down into the entry-way very awkwardly-for one of her hips jutted out and made it difficult for 
her to walk-and crossed to a tiny cabinet on the wall. She took from it something that looked 
to me like a piece of flint, along with a rectangular stone like the kind fishermen use to 


sharpen their knives, and then stood behind Hatsumomo and struck the flint against the 
stone, causing a little cluster of sparks to jump onto Hatsumomo's back. I didn't understand 
this at all; but you see, geisha are more superstitious even than fishermen. A geisha will 
never go out for the evening until someone has sparked a flint on her back for good luck. 

After this, Hatsumomo walked away, using such tiny steps that she seemed to glide along 
with the bottom of her kimono fluttering just a bit. I didn't know that she was a geisha at the 
time, for she was worlds above the creature I'd seen in Senzuru a few weeks earlier. I 
decided she must be some sort of stage performer. We all watched her float away, and then 
Mr. Bekku handed me over to the older woman in the entryway. He climbed back into the 
rickshaw with my sister, and the driver raised the poles. But I never saw them leave, because 
I was slumped down in the entryway in tears. 

The older woman must have taken pity on me; for a long while I lay there sobbing in my 
misery without anyone touching me. I even heard her shush up a maid who came from inside 
the house to speak with her. At length she helped me to my feet and dried my face with a 
handkerchief she took from one sleeve of her simple gray kimono. 

"Now, now, little girl. There's no need to worry so. No one's going to cook you." She spoke 
with the same peculiar accent as Mr. Bekku and Hatsumomo. It sounded so different from 
the Japanese spoken in my village that I had a hard time understanding her. But in any case, 
hers were the kindest words anyone had said to me all day, so I made up my mind to do 
what she advised. She told me to call her Auntie. And then she looked down at me, square in 
the face, and said in a throaty voice: 

"Heavens! What startling eyes! You're a lovely girl, aren't you? Mother will be thrilled." 

I thought at once that the mother of this woman, whoever she was, must be very old, 
because Auntie's hair, knotted tightly at the back of her head, was mostly gray, with only 
streaks of black remaining. 

Auntie led me through the doorway, where I found myself standing on a dirt corridor passing 
between two closely spaced structures to a courtyard in the back. One of the structures was 
a little dwelling like my house in Yoroido-two rooms with floors of dirt; it turned out to be the 
maids' quarters. The other was a small, elegant house sitting up on foundation stones in 
such a way that a cat might have crawled underneath it. The corridor between them opened 
onto the dark sky above, which gave me the feeling I was standing in something more like a 
miniature village than a house-especially since I could see several other small wooden 
buildings down in the courtyard at the end. I didn't know it at the time, but this was a very 
typical dwelling for the section of Kyoto in which it stood. The buildings in the courtyard, 
though they gave the impression of another group of tiny houses, were just a small shed for 
the toilets and a storehouse of two levels with a ladder on the outside. The entire dwelling 
fitted into an area smaller than Mr. Tanaka's home in the countryside and housed only eight 
people. Or rather nine, now that I had arrived. 

After I took in the peculiar arrangement of all the little buildings, I noticed the elegance of the 
main house. In Yoroido> the wood structures were more gray than brown, and rutted by the 
salty air. But here the wood floors and beams gleamed with the yellow light of electric lamps. 
Opening off the front hallway were sliding doors with paper screens, as well as a staircase 
that seemed to climb straight up. One of these doors stood open, so that I was able to see a 
wood cabinet with a Buddhist altar. These elegant rooms turned out to be for the use of the 
family-and also Hatsumomo, even though, as I would come to understand, she wasn't a 
family member at all. When family members wanted to go to the courtyard, they didn't walk 
down the dirt corridor as the servants did, but had their own ramp of polished wood running 


along the side of the house. There were even separate toilets-an upper one for family and a 
lower one for servants. 

I had yet to discover most of these things, though I would learn them within a day or two. But 
I stood there in the corridor a long while, wondering what sort of place this was and feeling 
very afraid. Auntie had disappeared into the kitchen and was talking in a hoarse voice to 
somebody. At length the somebody came out. She turned out to be a girl about my age, 
carrying a wooden bucket so heavy with water that she sloshed half of it onto the dirt floor. 
Her body was narrow; but her face was plump and almost perfectly round, so that she looked 
to me like a melon on a stick. She was straining to carry the bucket, and her tongue stuck out 
of her mouth just the way the stem comes out of the top of a pumpkin. As I soon learned, this 
was a habit of hers. She stuck her tongue out when she stirred her miso soup, or scooped 
rice into a bowl, or even tied the knot of her robe. And her face was truly so plump and so 
soft, with that tongue curling out like a pumpkin stem, that within a few days I'd given her the 
nickname of "Pumpkin," which everyone came to call her-even her customers many years 
later whe