to strike Mameha on the side of the head. I screamed, 
which must have made Hatsumomo stop to think about what she was doing. She stared at 
me a moment with eyes burning before the fire went out of them and she walked away. 
Everyone in the alley had noticed what was happening, and a few came over to see if 
Mameha was all right. She assured them she was fine and then said sadly: 

"Poor Hatsumomo! It must be just as the doctor said. She really does seem to be losing her 
mind." 

There was no doctor, of course, but Mameha's words had the effect she'd hoped for. Soon a 
rumor had spread all over Gion that a doctor had declared Hatsumomo mentally unstable. 

For years Hatsumomo had been very close to the famous Kabuki actor Bando Shojiro VI. 
Shojiro was what we call an onna-gata, which means that he always played women's roles. 
Once, in a magazine interview, he said that Hatsumomo was the most beautiful woman he'd 
ever seen, and that on the stage he often imitated her gestures to make himself seem more 


alluring. So you can well imagine that whenever Shojiro was in town, Hatsumomo visited 
him. 

One afternoon I learned that Shojiro would attend a party later that evening at a teahouse in 
the geisha district of Pontocho, on the other side of the river from Gion. I heard this bit of 
news while preparing a tea ceremony for a group of naval officers on leave. Afterward I 
rushed back to the okiya, but Hatsumomo had already dressed and snuck out. She was 
doing what I'd once done, leaving early so that no one would follow her. I was very eager to 
explain to Mameha what I'd learned, so I went straight to her apartment. Unfortunately, her 
maid told me she'd left a half hour earlier "to worship." I knew exactly what this meant: 
Mameha had gone to a little temple just at the eastern edge of Gion to pray before the three 
tiny jizo statues she'd paid to have erected there. A jizo, you see, honors the soul of a 
departed child; in Mameha's case, they were for the three children she'd aborted at the 
Baron's request. Under other circumstances I might have gone searching for her, but I 
couldn't possibly disturb her in such a private moment; and besides, she might not have 
wanted me to know even that she'd gone there. Instead I sat in her apartment and permitted 
Tatsumi to serve me tea while I waited. At last, with something of a weary look about her, 
Mameha came home. I didn't want to raise the subject at first, and so for a time we chatted 
about the upcoming Festival of the Ages, in which Mameha was scheduled to portray Lady 
Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji. Finally Mameha looked up with a smile from 
her cup of brown tea-Tatsumi had been roasting the leaves when I arrived-and I told her 
what I'd discovered during the course of the afternoon. 

"How perfect!" she said. "Hatsumomo's going to relax and think she's free of us. With all the 
attention Shojiro is certain to give her at the party, she may feel renewed. Then you and I will 
come drifting in like some sort of horrid smell from the alleyway, and ruin her evening 
completely." 

Considering how cruelly Hatsumomo had treated me over the years, and how very much I 
hated her, I'm sure I ought to have been elated at this plan. But somehow conspiring to make 
Hatsumomo suffer wasn't the pleasure I might have imagined. I couldn't help remembering 
one morning as a child, when I was swimming in the pond near our tipsy house and suddenly 
felt a terrible burning in my shoulder. A wasp had stung me and was struggling to free itself 
from my skin. I was too busy screaming to think of what to do, but one of the boys pulled the 
wasp off and held it by the wings upon a rock, where we all gathered to decide exactly how 
to murder it. I was in great pain because of the wasp, and certainly felt no kindness toward it. 
But it gave me a terrible sensation of weakness in my chest to know that this tiny struggling 
creature could do nothing to save itself from the death that was only moments away. I felt the 
same sort of pity toward Hatsumomo. 

During evenings when we trailed her around Gion until she returned to the okiya just to get 
away from us, I felt almost as though we were torturing her. 

In any case, around nine o'clock that night, we crossed the river to the Pontocho district. 
Unlike Gion, which sprawls over many blocks, Pontocho is just a single long alleyway 
stretched out along one bank of the river. People call it an "eel's bed" because of its shape. 
The autumn air was a bit chilly that night, but Shojiro's party was outdoors anyway, on a 
wooden verandah standing on stilts above the water. No one paid us much attention when 
we stepped out through the glass doors. The verandah was beautifully lit with paper lanterns, 
and the river shimmered gold from the lights of a restaurant on the opposite bank. Everyone 
was listening to Shojiro, who was in the middle of telling a story in his singsong voice; but 
you should have seen the way Hatsumomo's expression soured when she caught sight of us. 
I couldn't help remembering a damaged pear I'd held in my hand the day before, because 
amid the cheerful faces, Hatsumomo's expression was like a terrible bruise. 


Mameha went to kneel on a mat right beside Hatsumomo, which I considered very bold of 
her. I knelt toward the other end of the verandah, beside a gentle-looking old man who 
turned out to be the koto player Tachibana Zensaku, whose scratchy old records I still own. 
Tachibana was blind, I discovered that night. Regardless of my purpose in coming, I would 
have been content to spend the evening just chatting with him, for he was such a fascinating, 
endearing man. But we'd hardly begun to talk when suddenly everyone burst out laughing. 

Shojiro was quite a remarkable mimic. He was slender like the branch of a willow, with 
elegant, slow-moving fingers, and a very long face he could move about in extraordinary 
ways; he could have fooled a group of monkeys into thinking he was one of them. At that 
moment he was imitating the geisha beside him, a woman in her fifties. With his effeminate 
gestures-his pursed lips, his rolls of the eyes-he managed to look so much like her that I 
didn't know whether to laugh or just sit with my hand over my mouth in astonishment. I'd 
seen Shojiro on the stage, but this was something much better. 

Tachibana leaned in toward me and whispered, "What's he doing?" 

"He's imitating an older geisha beside him." 

"Ah," said Tachibana. "That would be Ichiwari." And then he tapped me with the back of his 
hand to make sure he had my attention. "The director of the Minamiza Theater," he said, and 
held out his little finger below the table where no one else could see it. In Japan, you see, 
holding up the little finger means "boyfriend" or "girlfriend." Tachibana was telling me that the 
older geisha, the one named Ichi-wari, was the theater director's mistress. And in fact the 
director was there too, laughing louder than anyone. 

A moment later, still in the midst of his mimicry, Shojiro stuck one of his fingers up his nose. 
At this, everyone let out a laugh so loud you could feel the verandah trembling. I didn't know 
it at the time, but picking her nose was one of Ichiwari's well-known habits. She turned bright 
red when she saw this, and held a sleeve of her kimono over her face, and Shojiro, who had 
drunk a good bit of sake, imitated her even then. People laughed politely, but only 
Hatsumomo seemed to find it really funny; for at this point Shojiro was beginning to cross the 
line into cruelty. Finally the theater director said, "Now, now, Shojiro-san, save some energy 
for your show tomorrow! Anyway, don't you know you're sitting near one of Gion's greatest 
dancers? I propose that we ask for a performance." 

Of course, the director was talking about Mameha. "Heavens, no. I don't want to see any 
dancing just now," Shojiro said. As I came to understand over the years, he preferred to be 
the center of attention himself. "Besides, I'm having fun." 

"Shojiro-san, we mustn't pass up an opportunity to see the famous Mameha," the director 
said, speaking" this time without a trace of humor. A few geisha spoke up as well, and finally 
Shojiro was persuaded to ask her if she would perform, which he did as sulkily as a little boy 
Already I could see Hatsumomo looking displeased. She poured more sake for Shojiro, and 
he poured more for her. They exchanged a long look as if to say their party had been 
spoiled. 

A few minutes passed while a maid was sent to fetch a shamisen and one of the geisha 
tuned it and prepared to play. Then Mameha took her place against the backdrop of the 
teahouse and performed a few very short pieces. Nearly anyone would have agreed that 
Mameha was a lovely woman, but very few people would have found her more beautiful than 
Hatsumomo; so I can't say exactly what caught Shojiro's eye. It may have been the sake he'd 
drunk, and it may have been Mameha's extraordinary dancing-for Shojiro was a dancer 
himself. Whatever it was, by the time Mameha came back to join us at the table, Shojiro 
seemed quite taken with her and asked that she sit beside him. When she did, he poured her 


a cup of sake, and turned his back on Hatsumomo as if she were just another adoring 
apprentice. 

Well, Hatsumomo's mouth hardened, and her eyes shrank to about half their size. As for 
Mameha, I never saw her flirt with anyone more deliberately than she did with Shojiro. Her 
voice grew high and soft, and her eyes swished from his chest to his face and back again. 
From time to time she drew the fingertips of her hand across the base of her throat as though 
she felt self-conscious about the splotchy blush that had appeared there. There wasn't really 
any blush, but she acted it so convincingly, you wouldn'