ya, the more it usually had. The maid was sent to us rather than to 
someone else because General Tottori had instructed the military police to leave us alone. 
So you see, even within that mountaintop pond that was Gion, we were the fish swimming in 
the very warmest water of all. 

As the darkness continued to settle over Japan, there did finally come a time when even the 
pinpoint of light in which we'd managed to keep ourselves suddenly went out. It happened at 
a single moment, early one afternoon just a few weeks before New Year's Day, in December 
1942. I was eating my breakfast-or at least, my first meal of the day, for I'd been busy helping 
to clean the okiya in preparation for the New Year- when a man's voice called out at our 
entrance. I thought he was probably just making a delivery, so I went on with my meal, but a 


moment later the maid interrupted me to say a military policeman had come looking for 
Mother. 

"A military policeman?" I said. "Tell him Mother is out." "Yes, I did, ma'am. He'd like to speak 
with you instead." When I reached the front hall, I found the policeman removing his boots in 
the entryway. Probably most people would have felt relieved just to note that his pistol was 
still snapped inside its leather case, but as I say, our okiya had lived differently right up until 
that moment. Ordinarily a policeman would have been more apologetic even than most 
visitors, since his presence would alarm us. But to see him tugging at his boots . . . well, this 
was his way of saying he planned to come in whether we invited him or not. 

I bowed and greeted him, but he did nothing more than glance at me as though he would 
deal with me later. Finally he pulled up his socks and pulled down his cap, and then stepped 
up into the front entrance hall and said he wanted to see our vegetable garden. Just like that, 
with no word of apology for troubling us. You see, by this time nearly everyone in Kyoto, and 
probably the rest of the country, had converted their decorative gardens into vegetable 
gardens-everyone 
but people like us, that is. General Tottori provided us with enough food that we didn't need 
to plow up our garden, and were instead able to go on enjoying the hair moss and 
spearflowers, and the tiny maple in the corner. Since it was winter, I hoped the policeman 
would look only at the spots of frozen ground where the vegetation had died back, and 
imagine that we'd planted squash and sweet potatoes amid the decorative plants. So after I'd 
led him down to the courtyard, I didn't say a word; I just watched as he knelt down and 
touched the dirt with his fingers. I suppose he wanted to feel whether or not the ground had 
been dug up for planting. 

I was so desperate for something to say that I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. 
"Doesn't the dusting of snow on the ground make you think of foam on the ocean?" He didn't 
answer me, but just stood up to his full height and asked what vegetables we had planted. 

"Officer," I said, "I'm terribly sorry, but the truth is, we haven't had an opportunity to plant any 
vegetables at all. And now that the ground is so hard and cold ..." 

"Your neighborhood association was quite right about you!" he said, taking off his cap. He 
brought out from his pocket a slip of paper and began to read a long list of misdeeds our 
okiya had committed. I don't even remember them all-hoarding cotton materials, failing to 
turn in metal and rubber goods needed for the war effort, improper use of ration tickets, all 
sorts of things like that. It's true we had done these things, just as every other okiya in Gion 
had. Our crime, I suppose, was that we'd enjoyed more good fortune than most, and had 
survived longer and in better shape than all but a very few. 

Luckily for me, Mother returned just then. She didn't seem at all surprised to find a military 
policeman there; and in fact, she behaved more politely toward him than I'd ever seen her 
behave toward anyone. She led him into our reception room and served him some of our ill-
gotten tea. The door was closed, but I could hear them talking for a long while. At one point 
when she came out to fetch something, she pulled me aside and told me this: 

"General Tottori was taken into custody this morning. You'd better hurry and hide our best 
things, or they'll be gone tomorrow." 

Back in Yoroido I used to swim on chilly spring days, and afterward lie on the rocks beside 
the pond to soak up the heat of the sun. If the sunlight vanished suddenly behind a cloud, as 
it often did, the cold air seemed to close about my skin like a sheet of metal. The moment I 
heard of the General's misfortune, standing there in the front entrance hall, I had that same 
feeling. It was as though the sun had vanished, possibly for good, and I was now condemned 


to stand wet and naked in the icy air. Within a week of the policeman's visit, our okiya had 
been stripped of the things other families had lost long ago, such as stores of food, 
undergarments, and so forth. We'd always been Mameha's source for packets of tea; I think 
she'd been using them to purchase favors. But now her supplies were better than ours, and 
she became our source instead. Toward the end of the month, the neighborhood association 
began confiscating many of our ceramics arid scrolls to sell them on what we called the "gray 
market," which was different from the black market. The black market was for things like fuel 
oil, foods, metals, and so on-mostly items that were rationed or illegal to trade. The gray 
market was more innocent; it was mainly house-waves selling off their precious things to 
raise cash. In our case, though, our things were sold to punish us as much as for any other 
reason, and so the cash went to benefit others. The head of the neighborhood association, 
who was mistress of a nearby okiya, felt deeply sorry whenever she came to take our things 
away. But the military police had given orders; no one could do anything but obey. 

If the early years of the war had been like an exciting voyage out to sea, you might say that 
by about the middle of 1943 we all realized the waves were simply too big for o'ur craft. We 
thought we would drown, all of us; and many did. It wasn't just that day-to-day life had grown 
increasingly miserable; no one dared admit it, but I think we'd all begun worrying about the 
outcome of the war. No one had fun any longer; many people seemed to feel it was 
unpatriotic even to have a good time. The closest thing to a joke I heard during this period 
was something the geisha Raiha said one night. For months we'd heard rumors that the 
military government planned to shut down all the geisha districts in Japan; lately we'd begun 
to realize that it really was going to happen. We were all wondering what would become of 
us, when suddenly Raiha spoke up. 

"We can't waste our time thinking about such things," she said. "Nothing is bleaker than the 
future, except perhaps the past." 

It may not sound funny to you; but that night we laughed until tears beaded in the corners of 
our eyes. One day soon the geisha districts would indeed close. When they did, we were 
certain to end up working in the factories. To give you some idea of what life in the factories 
was like, let me tell you about Hatsumomo's friend Korin. 

During the previous winter, the catastrophe that every geisha in Gion feared most had 
actually happened to Korin. A maid tending the bath in her okiya had tried to burn 
newspapers to heat the water, but had lost control of the flames. The entire okiya was 
destroyed, along with its collection of kimono. Korin ended up working in a factory south of 
the city, fitting lenses into the equipment used for dropping bombs from airplanes. She came 
back to visit Gion from time to time as the months passed, and we were horrified at how 
much she'd changed. It wasn't just that she seemed more and more unhappy; we'd all 
experienced unhappiness, and were prepared for it in any case. But she had a cough that 
was as much a part of her as a song is part of a bird; and her skin was stained as though 
she'd soaked it in ink-since the coal the factories used was of a very low grade and covered 
everything in soot as it burned. Poor Korin was forced to work double shifts while being fed 
no more than a bowl of weak broth with a few noodles once a day, or watery rice gruel 
flavored with potato skin. 

So you can imagine how terrified we were of the factories. Every day that we awakened to 
find Gion still open, we felt grateful. 

Then one morning in January of the following year, I was standing in line at the rice store in 
the falling snow, holding my ration coupons, when the shopkeeper next door put out his head 
and called into the cold: 

"It's happened!" 


We all of us looked at one another. I was too numbed with cold to care what he was talking 
about, for I wore only a heavy shawl around my peasant's clothing; no one wore kimono 
during the day any longer. Finally the geisha in front of me brushed the snow from her 
eyebrows and asked him what he was talking about. "The war hasn't come to an end, has 
it?" she asked. 

"The government has announced the closing of the geisha districts," he said. "All of you are 
to report to the registry office tomorrow morning." 

For a long moment we listened to the sound of a radio inside his shop. Then the door 
rumbled closed again, and there was nothing but the soft hiss of the falling snow. I looked at 
the despair on the faces of the other geisha around me and knew in an instant that we were 
all thinking the same thing: Which of the men we knew would save us from life in the 
factories? 

Even though General Tottori had been my danna until the previous year, I certainly wasn't 
the only geisha acquainte