 geisha at all any longer." It was a frightening feeling to 
look at my hands and see their roughness. To draw my mind away from my fears, I turned 
my attention again to the truckloads of soldiers driving past. Weren't these the very American 
soldiers we'd been taught to hate, who had bombed our cities with such horrifying weapons? 
Now they rode through our neighborhood, throwing pieces of candy to the children. 

Within a year after the surrender, Mr. Arashino had been encouraged to begin making 
kimono once again. I knew nothing about kimono except how to wear them, so I was given 
the task of spending my days in the basement of the workshop annex, tending to the vats of 
dye as they boiled. This was a horrid job, partly because we couldn't afford any fuel but 
tadon, which is a kind of coal dust held together by tar; you cannot imagine the stench when 
it burns. Over time Mr. Arashino's wife taught me how to gather the proper leaves, stems, 
and bark to make the dyes myself, which may sound like something of a promotion. And it 
might have been, except that one of the materials-I never found out which-had the strange 
effect of pickling my skin. My delicate dancer's hands, which I'd once nurtured with the finest 
creams, now began to peel like the papery outside of an onion, and were stained all over the 


color of a bruise. During this time-impelled probably by my own loneliness-I became involved 
in a brief romance with a young tatami maker named Inoue. I thought he looked quite 
handsome, with his soft eyebrows like smudges on his delicate skin and a perfect 
smoothness to his lips. Every few nights during the course of several weeks, I sneaked into 
the annex to let him in. I didn't-realize quite how gruesome my hands looked until one night 
when the fire under the vats was burning so brightly we could see each other. After Inoue 
caught a glimpse of my hands, he wouldn't let me touch him with them! 

To allow my skin some relief, Mr. Arashino gave me the task of gathering spiderworts during 
the summertime. The spiderwort is a flower whose juice is used for painting the silks before 
they're masked with starch and then dyed. They tend to grow around the edges of ponds and 
lakes during the rainy season. I thought gathering them sounded like a pleasant job, so one 
morning in July, I set out with my rucksack, ready to enjoy the cool, dry day; but soon I 
discovered that spiderworts are devilishly clever flowers. As far as I could tell, they'd enlisted 
every insect in western Japan as an ally. Whenever I tore off a handful of flowers, I was 
attacked by divisions of ticks and mosquitoes; and to make matters worse, one time I 
stepped on a hideous little frog. Then after I'd spent a miserable week gathering the flowers, I 
took on what I thought would be a much easier task, of squeezing them in a press to extract 
their juices. But if you've never smelled the juice of a spiderwort . . . well, I was very glad at 
the end of the week to go back to boiling dyes once again. 

I worked very hard during those years. But every night when I went to bed, I thought of Gion. 
All the geisha districts in Japan had reopened within a few months of the surrender; but I 
wasn't free to go back until Mother summoned me. She was making quite a good living 
selling kimono, artwork, and Japanese swords to American soldiers. So for the time being, 
she and Auntie remained on the little farm west of Kyoto where they had set up shop, while I 
continued to live and work with the Arashino family. 

Considering that Gion was only a few kilometers away, you may think I visited there often. 
And yet in the nearly five years I lived away, I went only once. It was one afternoon during 
the spring, about a year after the end of the war, while I was on my way back from picking up 
medicine for little Juntaro at the Kamigyo Prefectural Hospital. I took a walk along 
Kawaramachi Avenue as far as Shijo and crossed the bridge from there into Gion. I was 
shocked to see whole families crowded together in poverty along the river's edge. 

In Gion I recognized a number of geisha, though of course they didn't recognize me; and I 
didn't speak a word to them, hoping for once to view the place as an outsider might. In truth, 
though, I could scarcely see Gion at all as I strolled through it; I saw instead only my ghostly 
memories. When I walked along the banks of the Shirakawa Stream, I thought of the many 
afternoons Mameha and I had spent walking there. Nearby was the bench where Pumpkin 
and I had sat with two bowls of noodles on the night I asked for her help. Not far away was 
the alleyway where Nobu had chastened me for taking the General as my danna. From there 
I walked half a block to the corner of Shijo Avenue where I'd made the young delivery man 
drop the lunch boxes he was carrying. In all of these spots, I felt I was standing on a stage 
many hours after the dance had ended, when the silence lay as heavily upon the empty 
theater as a blanket of snow. I went to our okiya and stared with longing at the heavy iron 
padlock on the door. When I was locked in, I wanted to be out. Now life had changed so 
much that, finding myself locked out, I wanted to be inside again. And yet I was a grown 
woman-free, if I wished, to stroll out of Gion at that very moment and never come back. 

One bitter cold afternoon in November, three years after the end of the war, I was warming 
my hands over the dye vats in the annex when Mrs. Arashino came down to say that 
someone wished to see me. I could tell from her expression that the visitor wasn't just 
another of the women from the neighborhood. But you can imagine my surprise when I 
reached the top of the stairs and saw Nobu. He was sitting in the workshop with Mr. 


Arashino, holding an empty teacup as though he'd been there chatting for some time already. 
Mr. Arashino stood when he saw me. 

"I have some work in the next room, Nobu-san," he said. "You two can stay here and talk. I'm 
delighted you've come to see us." 

"Don't fool yourself, Arashino," Nobu replied. "Sayuri is the person I've come to see." 

I thought this an unkind thing for Nobu to have said, and not at all funny; but Mr. Arashino 
laughed when he heard it and rolled the door of the workshop closed behind him. 

"I thought the whole world had changed," I said. "But it can't be so, for Nobu-san has stayed 
exactly the same." 

"I never change," he said. "But I haven't come here to chat. I want to know what's the matter 
with you." 

"Nothing is the matter. Hasn't Nobu-san been receiving my letters?" 

"Your letters all read like poems! You never talk about anything but 'the beautiful, trickling 
water' or some such nonsense." 

"Why, Nobu-san, I'll never waste another letter on you!" 

"I'd rather you didn't, if that's how they sound. Why can't you just tell me the things I want to 
know, such as when you're coming back to Gion? Every month I telephone the Ichiriki to ask 
about you, and the mistress gives some- excuse or other. I thought I might find you ill with 
some horrible disease. You're skinnier than you were, I suppose, but you look healthy 
enough to me. What's keeping you?" 

"I certainly think of Gion every day." 

"Your friend Mameha came back a year or more ago. Even Michizono, as old as she is, 
showed up the day it reopened. But no one has been able to tell me why Sayuri won't come 
back." 

"To tell the truth, the decision isn't mine. I've been waiting for Mother to reopen the okiya. I'm 
as eager to get back to Gion as Nobu-san is to have me there." 

"Then call that mother of yours and tell her the time has come. I've been patient the past six 
months. Didn't you understand what I was telling you in my letters?" 

"When you said you wanted me back in Gion, I thought you meant that you hoped to see me 
there soon." 

"If I say I want to see you back in Gion, what I mean is, I want you to pack your bags and go 
back to Gion. I don't see why you need to wait for that mother of yours anyway! If she hasn't 
had the sense to go back by now, she's a fool." 

"Few people have anything good to say about her, but I can assure you she's no fool. Nobusan might even admire her, if he came to know her. She's making a fine living selling 
souvenirs to American soldiers." 


"The soldiers won't be here forever. You tell her your good friend Nobu wants you back in 
Gion." At this, he took a little package with his one hand and tossed it onto the mats next to 
me. He didn't say a word afterward, but only sipped at his tea and looked at me. 

"What is Nobu-san throwing at me?" I said. 

"It's a gift I've brought. Open it." 

"If Nobu-san is giving me a gift, first I must bring my gift for him." 

I went to the corner of the room, where I kept my trunk of belongings, and found a folding fan 
I'd long ago decided to give to Nobu. A fan may seem a simple gift for the man who'd saved 
me from life in the factories. But to a geisha, the fans we use in dance are like sacred 
objects-and this wasn't just an ordinary dancer's fan, but the very one my teacher had given 
me when I reached the level of shisho in the Inoue School of dance. I'd never before heard of 
a geisha parting with such a thing-which was the very reason I'd decided to give it to him. 

I wrapped the fan in a square of cotton and went back to present it to him. He was puzzled 
when he opened it, as I knew he would be. I did my best to explain why I wanted him to have 
it. 

"It's kind of you," he said, "but I'm unworthy of this gift. Offer it to someone who appreciates 
dance more than I do." 

"There's no one else I would give it to. It's a part of me, and I have given it to Nobu-san." 

"In that case, I'm very grateful and I'll cherish it. Now open the package I've brought you." 

Wrapped inside paper an