t have known it without looking 
closely. Then one of the geisha asked Shojiro if he'd heard from Bajiru-san. 

"Bajiru-san," said Shojiro, in his most dramatic manner, "has abandoned me!" 

I had no idea who Shojiro was talking about, but Tachibana, the old koto player, was kind 
enough to explain in a whisper that "Bajiru-san" was the English actor Basil Rathbone-though 
I'd never heard of him at the time. Shojiro had taken a trip to London a few years earlier and 
staged a Kabuki performance there. The actor Basil Rathbone had admired it so much that 
with the help of an interpreter the two of them had developed something of a friendship. 
Shojiro may have lavished attention on women like Hatsumomo or Mameha, but the fact 
remained that he was homosexual; and since his trip to England, he'd made it a running joke 
that his heart was destined to be broken because Bajiru-san had no interest in men. 

"It makes me sad," said one of the geisha quietly, "to witness the death of a romance." 

Everyone laughed except for Hatsumomo, who went on glowering at Shojiro. 

"The difference between me and Bajiru-san is this. I'll show you," Shojiro said; and with this 
he stood and asked Mameha to join him. He led her off to one side of the room, where they 
had a bit of space. 

"When I do my work, I look like this," he said. And he sashayed from one side of the room to 
the other, waving his folding fan with a most fluid wrist, and letting his head roll back and 
forth like a ball on a seesaw. "Whereas when Bajiru-san does his work, he looks like this." 
Here he grabbed Mameha, and you should have seen the astonished expression on her face 
when he dipped her toward the floor in what looked like a passionate embrace, and planted 
kisses all over her face. Everyone in the room cheered and clapped. Everyone except 
Hatsumomo, that is. 

"What is he doing?" Tachibana asked me quietly. I didn't think anyone else had heard, but 
before I could reply, Hatsumomo cried out: 

"He's making a fool of himself! That's what he's doing." 

"Oh, Hatsumomo-san," said Shojiro, "you're jealous, aren't you!" 

"Of course she is!" said Mameha. "Now you must show us how the two of you make up. Go 
on, Shojiro-san. Don't be shy! You must give her the very same kisses you gave to me! It's 
only fair. And in the same way." 

Shojiro didn't have an easy time of it, but soon he succeeded in getting Hatsumomo to her 
feet. Then with the crowd behind him, he took her in his arms and bent her back. But after 
only an instant, he jerked upright again with a shout, and grabbed his lip. Hatsumomo had 
bitten him; not enough to make him bleed, but certainly enough to give him a shock. She was 
standing with her eyes squinted in anger and her teeth exposed; and then she drew back her 


hand and slapped him. I think her aim must have been bad from all the sake she'd drunk, 
because she hit the side of his head rather than his face. 

"What happened?" Tachibana asked me. His words were as clear in the quiet of the room as 
if someone had rung a bell. I didn't answer, but when he heard Shojiro's whimper and the 
heavy breathing of Hatsumomo, I'm sure he understood. 

"Hatsumomo-san, please," said Mameha, speaking in a voice so calm it sounded completely 
out of place, "as a favor to me ... Jo try to calm down." 

I don't know if Mameha's words had the precise effect she was hoping for, or whether 
Hatsumomo's mind had already shattered. But Hatsumomo threw herself at Shojiro and 
began hitting him everywhere. I do think that in a way she went crazy. It wasn't just that her 
mind seemed to have fractured; the moment itself seemed disconnected from everything 
else. The theater director got up from the table and rushed over to restrain her. Somehow in 
the middle of all this, Mameha slipped out and returned a moment later with the mistress of 
the teahouse. By that time the theater director was holding Hatsumomo from behind. I 
thought the crisis was over, but then Shojiro shouted at Hatsumomo so loudly, we heard it 
echo off the buildings across the river in Gion. 

"You monster!" he screamed. "You've bitten me!" 

I don't know what any of us would have done without the calm thinking of the mistress. She 
spoke to Shojiro in a soothing voice, while at the same time giving the theater director a 
signal to take Hatsumomo away. As I later learned, he didn't just take her inside the 
teahouse; he took her downstairs to the front and shoved her out onto the street. 

Hatsumomo didn't return to the okiya at all that night. When she did come back the following 
day, she smelled as if she had been sick to her stomach, and her hair was in disarray. She 
was summoned at once to Mother's room and spent a long while there. 

A few days afterward, Hatsumomo left the okiya, wearing a simple cotton robe Mother had 
given her, and with her hair as I'd never seen it, hanging in a mass around her shoulders. 
She carried a bag containing her belongings and jewelry, and didn't say good-bye to any of 
us, but just walked out to the street. She didn't leave voluntarily; Mother had thrown her out. 
And in fact, Mameha believed Mother had probably been trying to get rid of Hatsumomo for 
years. Whether or not this is true, I'm sure Mother was pleased at having fewer mouths to 
feed, since Hatsumomo was no longer earning what she once had, and food had never been 
more difficult to come by. 

If Hatsumomo hadn't been renowned for her wickedness, some other okiya might have 
wanted her even after what she'd done to Shojiro. But she was like a teakettle that even on a 
good day might still scald the hand of anyone who used it. Everyone in Gion understood this 
about her. 

I don't know for sure what ever became of Hatsumomo. A few years after the war, I heard 
she was making a living as a prostitute in the Miyagawa-cho district. She couldn't have been 
there long, because on the night I heard it, a man at the same party swore that if Hatsumomo 
was a prostitute, he would find her and give her some business of his own. He did go looking 
for her, but she was nowhere to be found. Over the years, she probably succeeded in 
drinking herself to death. She certainly wouldn't have been the first geisha to do it. 

In just the way that a man can grow accustomed to a bad leg, we'd all grown accustomed to 
having Hatsumomo in our okiya. I don't think we quite understood all the ways her presence 
had afflicted us until long after she'd left, when things that we hadn't realized were ailing 


slowly began to heal. Even when Hatsumomo had been doing nothing more than sleeping in 
her room, the maids had known she was there, and that during the course of the day she 
would abuse them. They'd lived with the kind of tension you feel if you walk across a frozen 
pond whose ice might break at any moment. And as for Pumpkin, I think she'd grown to be 
dependent on her older sister and felt strangely lost without her. 

I'd already become the okiya's principal asset, but even I took some time to weed out all the 
peculiar habits that had taken root because of Hatsumomo. Every time a man looked at me 
strangely, I found myself wondering if he'd heard something unkind about me from her, even 
long after she was gone. Whenever I climbed the stairs to the second floor of the okiya, I still 
kept my eyes lowered for fear that Hatsumomo would be waiting there on the landing, eager 
for someone to 
abuse. I can't tell you how many times I reached that last step and looked up suddenly with 
the realization that there was no Hatsumomo, and there never would be again. I knew she 
was gone, and yet the very emptiness of the hall seemed to suggest something of her 
presence. Even now, as an older woman, I sometimes lift the brocade cover on the mirror of 
my makeup stand, and have the briefest flicker of a thought that I may find her there in the 
glass, smirking at me. 

chapter twenty-eight 

n Japan we refer to the years from the Depression through World War II as kurotani-the 
valley of darkness, when so many people I lived like children whose heads had slipped 
beneath the waves. As is often the case, those of us in Gion didn't suffer quite as badly as 
others. While most Japanese lived in the dark valley all through the 19305, for example, in 
Gion we were still warmed by a bit of sun. And I'm sure I don't need to tell you why; women 
who are mistresses of cabinet ministers and naval commanders are the recipients of 
enormous good fortune, and they pass that good fortune along to others. You might say Gion 
was like a pond high up on a mountaintop, fed by streams of rich springwater. More water 
poured in at some spots than others, but it raised the pond as a whole. 

Because of General Tottori, our okiya was one of the spots where the rich springwater came 
pouring in. Things grew worse and worse around us during the course of several years; and 
yet long after the rationing of goods had begun, we continued to receive regular supplies of 
foodstuffs, tea, linens, and even some luxuries like cosmetics and chocolate. We might have 
kept these things to ourselves and lived behind closed doors, but Gion isn't that sort of place. 
Mother passed much of it along and considered it well spent, not because she was a 
generous woman, of course, but because we were all like spiders crowded together on the 
same web. From time to time people came asking for help, and we were pleased to give it 
when we could. At some point in the fall of 1941, for example, the military police found a 
maid with a box containing probably ten times more ration coupons than her okiya was 
supposed to have. Her mistress sent her to us for safekeeping until arrangements could be 
made to take her to the countryside- because of course, every okiya in Gion hoarded 
coupons; the better the oki