Memoirs of a Geisha (19 page)

In the beginning Pumpkin and I practiced shamisen together every afternoon, right after our hour-long lesson in reading and writing with Auntie. We’d studied Japanese with her ever since my arrival, and Auntie always insisted on good behavior. But while practicing shamisen during the afternoon, Pumpkin and I had great fun together. If we laughed out loud Auntie or one of the maids would come scold us; but as long as we made very little noise and plunked away at our shamisens while we talked, we could get away with spending the hour enjoying each other’s company. It was the time of day I looked forward to most.

Then one afternoon while Pumpkin was helping me with a technique for slurring notes together, Hatsumomo appeared in the corridor before us. We hadn’t even heard her come into the okiya.

“Why, look, it’s Mameha’s little-sister-to-be!” she said to me. She added the “to-be” because Mameha and I wouldn’t officially be sisters until the time of my debut as an apprentice geisha.

“I might have called you ‘Little Miss Stupid,’ ” she went on, “but after what I’ve just observed, I think I ought to save that for Pumpkin instead.”

Poor Pumpkin lowered her shamisen into her lap just like a dog putting its tail between its legs. “Have I done something wrong?” she asked.

I didn’t have to look directly at Hatsumomo to see the anger blooming on her face. I was terribly afraid of what would happen next.

“Nothing at all!” Hatsumomo said. “I just didn’t realize what a thoughtful person you are.”

“I’m sorry, Hatsumomo,” Pumpkin said. “I was trying to help Chiyo by—”

“But Chiyo doesn’t want your help. When she wants help with her shamisen, she’ll go to her teacher. Is that head of yours just a big, hollow gourd?”

And here Hatsumomo pinched Pumpkin by the lip so hard that the shamisen slid off her lap onto the wooden walkway where she was seated, and fell from there onto the dirt corridor below.

“You and I need to have a little talk,” Hatsumomo said to her. “You’ll put your shamisen away, and I’ll stand here to make sure you don’t do anything else stupid.”

When Hatsumomo let go, poor Pumpkin stepped down to pick up her shamisen and begin disassembling it. She gave me a pitiful glance, and I thought she might calm down. But in fact her lip began to quiver; then her whole face trembled like the ground before an earthquake; and suddenly she dropped the pieces of her shamisen onto the walkway and put her hand to her lip—which had already begun to swell—while tears rolled down her cheeks. Hatsumomo’s face softened as if the angry sky had broken, and she turned to me with a satisfied smile.

“You’ll have to find yourself another little friend,” she said to me. “After Pumpkin and I have had our talk, she’ll know better than to speak a word to you in the future. Won’t you, Pumpkin?”

Pumpkin nodded, for she had no choice; but I could see how sorry she felt. We never practiced shamisen together again.

*  *  *

I reported this encounter to Mameha the next time I visited her apartment.

“I hope you took to heart what Hatsumomo said to you,” she told me. “If Pumpkin isn’t to speak a word to you, then you mustn’t speak a word to her either. You’ll only get her into trouble; and besides, she’ll have to tell Hatsumomo what you say. You may have trusted the poor girl in the past, but you mustn’t any longer.”

I felt so sad at hearing this, I could hardly speak for a long while. “Trying to survive in an okiya with Hatsumomo,” I said at last, “is like a pig trying to survive in a slaughterhouse.”

I was thinking of Pumpkin when I said this, but Mameha must have thought I meant myself. “You’re quite right,” she said. “Your only defense is to become more successful than Hatsumomo and drive her out.”

“But everyone says she’s one of the most popular geisha. I can’t imagine how I’ll ever become more popular than she is.”

“I didn’t say popular,” Mameha replied. “I said successful. Going to a lot of parties isn’t everything. I live in a spacious apartment with two maids of my own, while Hatsumomo—who probably goes to as many parties as I do—continues to live in the Nitta okiya. When I say successful, I mean a geisha who has earned her independence. Until a geisha has assembled her own collection of kimono—or until she’s been adopted as the daughter of an okiya, which is just about the same thing—she’ll be in someone else’s power all her life. You’ve seen some of my kimono, haven’t you? How do you suppose I came by them?”

“I’ve been thinking that perhaps you were adopted as the daughter of an okiya before you came to live in this apartment.”

“I did live in an okiya until about five years ago. But the mistress there has a natural daughter. She would never adopt another.”

“So if I might ask . . . did you buy your entire collection of kimono yourself?”

“How much do you think a geisha earns, Chiyo! A complete collection of kimono doesn’t mean two or three robes for each of the seasons. Some men’s lives revolve around Gion. They’ll grow bored if they see you in the same thing night after night.”

I must have looked every bit as puzzled as I felt, for Mameha gave a laugh at the expression on my face.

“Cheer up, Chiyo-chan, there’s an answer to this riddle. My
danna
is a generous man and bought me most of these robes. That’s why I’m more successful than Hatsumomo. I have a wealthy
danna
. She hasn’t had one in years.”

*  *  *

I’d already been in Gion long enough to know something of what Mameha meant by a
danna
. It’s the term a wife uses for her husband—or rather, it was in my day. But a geisha who refers to her
danna
isn’t talking about a husband. Geisha never marry. Or at least those who do no longer continue as geisha.

You see, sometimes after a party with geisha, certain men don’t feel satisfied with all the flirting and begin to long for something a bit more. Some of these men are content to make their way to places like Miyagawa-cho, where they’ll add the odor of their own sweat to the unpleasant houses I saw on the night I found my sister. Other men work up their courage to lean in bleary-eyed and whisper to the geisha beside them a question about what her “fees” might be. A lower-class geisha may be perfectly agreeable to such an arrangement; probably she’s happy to take whatever income is offered her. A woman like this may call herself a geisha and be listed at the registry office; but I think you should take a look at how she dances, and how well she plays shamisen, and what she knows about tea ceremony before you decide whether or not she really is a proper geisha. A true geisha will never soil her reputation by making herself available to men on a nightly basis.

I won’t pretend a geisha never gives in casually to a man she finds attractive. But whether she does or not is her private affair. Geisha have passions like everyone else, and they make the same mistakes. A geisha who takes such a risk can only hope she isn’t found out. Her reputation is certainly at stake; but more important, so is her standing with her
danna
, if she has one. What’s more, she invites the wrath of the woman who runs her okiya. A geisha determined to follow her passions might take this risk; but she certainly won’t do it for spending money she might just as easily earn in some legitimate way.

So you see, a geisha of the first or second tier in Gion can’t be bought for a single night, not by anyone. But if the right sort of man is interested in something else—not a night together, but a much longer time—and if he’s willing to offer suitable terms, well, in that case a geisha will be happy to accept such an arrangement. Parties and so on are all very nice; but the real money in Gion comes from having a
danna
, and a geisha without one—such as Hatsumomo—is like a stray cat on the street without a master to feed it.

You might expect that in the case of a beautiful woman like Hatsumomo, any number of men would have been eager to propose themselves as her
danna
; and I’m sure there were many who did. She had in fact had a
danna
at one time. But somehow or other she’d so angered the mistress of the Mizuki, which was her principal teahouse, that men who made inquiries forever afterward were told she wasn’t available—which they probably took to mean she already had a
danna
, even though it wasn’t true. In damaging her relationship with the mistress, Hatsumomo had hurt no one so much as herself. As a very popular geisha, she made enough money to keep Mother happy; but as a geisha without a
danna
, she didn’t make enough to gain her independence and move out of the okiya once and for all. Nor could she simply change her registration to another teahouse whose mistress might be more accommodating in helping her find a
danna
; none of the other mistresses would want to damage their relationships with the Mizuki.

Of course, the average geisha isn’t trapped in this way. Instead she spends her time charming men in the hopes that one of them will eventually make an inquiry with the mistress of the teahouse about her. Many of these inquiries lead nowhere; the man, when he’s investigated, may be found to have too little money; or he may balk when someone suggests he give a gift of an expensive kimono as a gesture of goodwill. But if the weeks of negotiations come to a successful conclusion, the geisha and her new
danna
conduct a ceremony just like when two geisha become sisters. In most cases this bond will probably last six months or so, perhaps longer—because of course, men tire so quickly of the same thing. The terms of the arrangement will probably oblige the
danna
to pay off a portion of the geisha’s debts and cover many of her living expenses every month—such as the cost of her makeup and perhaps a portion of her lesson fees, and maybe her medical expenses as well. Things of that sort. Despite all these extravagant expenses, he’ll still continue to pay her usual hourly fee whenever he spends time with her, just as her other customers do. But he’s also entitled to certain “privileges.”

These would be the arrangements for an average geisha. But a very top geisha, of which there were probably thirty or forty in Gion, would expect much more. To begin with, she wouldn’t even consider tarnishing her reputation with a string of
danna
, but might instead have only one or two in her entire life. Not only will her
danna
cover all of her living expenses, such as her registration fee, her lesson fees, and her meals; what’s more, he’ll provide her with spending money, sponsor dance recitals for her, and buy her gifts of kimono and jewelry. And when he spends time with her, he won’t pay her usual hourly fee; he’ll probably pay more, as a gesture of goodwill.

Mameha was certainly one of these top geisha; in fact, as I came to learn, she was probably one of the two or three best-known geisha in all of Japan. You may have heard something about the famous geisha Mametsuki, who had an affair with the prime minister of Japan shortly before World War I and caused something of a scandal. She was Mameha’s older sister—which is why they both had “Mame” in their names. It’s common for a young geisha to derive her name from the name of her older sister.

Having an older sister like Mametsuki was already enough to ensure Mameha a successful career. But in the early 1920s, the Japan Travel Bureau began its first international advertising campaign. The posters showed a lovely photograph of the pagoda from the Toji Temple in southeastern Kyoto, with a cherry tree to one side and a lovely young apprentice geisha on the other side looking very shy and graceful, and exquisitely delicate. That apprentice geisha was Mameha.

It would be an understatement to say that Mameha became famous. The poster was displayed in big cities all over the world, with the words “Come and Visit the Land of the Rising Sun” in all sorts of foreign languages—not only English, but German, French, Russian, and . . . oh, other languages I’ve never even heard of. Mameha was only sixteen at the time, but suddenly she found herself being summoned to meet every head of state who came to Japan, and every aristocrat from England or Germany, and every millionaire from the United States. She poured sake for the great German writer Thomas Mann, who afterward told her a long, dull story through an interpreter that went on and on for nearly an hour; as well as Charlie Chaplin, and Sun Yat-sen, and later Ernest Hemingway, who got very drunk and said the beautiful red lips on her white face made him think of blood in the snow. In the years since then, Mameha had grown only more famous by putting on a number of widely publicized dance recitals at the Kabukiza Theater in Tokyo, usually attended by the prime minister and a great many other luminaries.

When Mameha had announced her intention of taking me on as her younger sister, I hadn’t known any of these things about her, and it’s just as well. Probably I would have felt so intimidated, I couldn’t have done much more than tremble in her presence.

*  *  *

Mameha was kind enough to sit me down and explain much of this on that day in her apartment. When she was satisfied that I understood her, she said:

“Following your debut, you’ll be an apprentice geisha until the age of eighteen. After that you’ll need a
danna
if you’re to pay back your debts. A very substantial
danna
. My job will be to make sure you’re well known in Gion by then, but it’s up to you to work hard at becoming an accomplished dancer. If you can’t make it at least to the fifth rank by the age of sixteen, nothing I can do will help you, and Mrs. Nitta will be delighted to win her bet with me.”

“But, Mameha-san,” I said, “I don’t understand what dance has to do with it.”

“Dance has everything to do with it,” she told me. “If you look around at the most successful geisha in Gion, every one of them is a dancer.”

*  *  *

Dance is the most revered of the geisha’s arts. Only the most promising and beautiful geisha are encouraged to specialize in it, and nothing except perhaps tea ceremony can compare to the richness of its tradition. The Inoue School of dance, practiced by the geisha of Gion, derives from Noh theater. Because Noh is a very ancient art that has always been patronized by the Imperial court, dancers in Gion consider their art superior to the school of dance practiced in the Pontocho district across the river, which derives from Kabuki. Now, I’m a great admirer of Kabuki, and in fact I’ve been lucky enough to have as my friends a number of the most famous Kabuki actors of this century. But Kabuki is a relatively young art form; it didn’t exist before the 1700s. And it has always been enjoyed by ordinary people rather than patronized by the Imperial court. There is simply no comparing the dance in Pontocho to the Inoue School of Gion.