Memoirs Of A Geisha

ark tatami rooms on the second floor of the school building, filled with desks and accounting books and smelling terribly of cigarettes. A clerk looked

s would probably have fallen off the tatami platform onto the floor. He hadn't been a good enough sumo wrestler to take a retirement name, as some of them do; but

do it. She said to him, "Awaji-san!" but the way she spoke, I wouldn't have been surprised if

en when he heard her voice, and his two big cheeks sh

id, "if you get any prettier, I

use sumo wrestlers often ruin their voice boxes, s

h Gion flowed where it was supposed to; and a trickle from that river of cash flowed directly into his pocket. That isn't to say that he was stealing; it was just the way the system worked. Conside

for lessons at the school. Awajiumi hadn't really looked at me yet, but here he turned his giant h

ould have told me sooner what a pretty girl you brought

said. "A mirror has

you look at a mirror, all you see is yoursel

saw a dead mar fished out of the river, and hi

aid, opening an account book and picking up his pen. "Anyway, let's register the gir

at Awajiumi, full of confusion and fear. She must have been in this same room

n in the town of! Yoroido. You may have heard

h me; but to my surprise she seemed almo

already," Awajiumi said. "But I haven't come a

ther she really had spoken to my sister as she claimed, I felt them no longer. There were other geisha districts i

towel and a scrap of soap and then squatted on the tile floor to wash themselves while I did the same. Auntie was much kinder, and knelt over me to scrub my back. I was surprised that

way, or do anything that might make her angry. I didn't understand it at the time, but now I know perfectly well why she was so concerned. Because, you see, when a geisha wakes up in the morning she is just like any other woman. Her face may be greasy from sleep, and her breath unpleasant. It may be true that she wears a startling

her makeup stand. She was kneeling on a cushion, wearing a cotton robe that clung to her shoulders, and gathering in her hands a half dozen makeup brushes in var

drawer of her makeup stand a glass container of stark white makeup and waved it

touched i

think you have." Then she put the makeup down and took up three

shading. You ma

but hard and smooth as stone, so that it left no trace of color on my skin. One end

ck and held out what looked to me li

wing my eyebrows. And this is wax." She took two half-used bars

uppose I've shown

d how you put on y

magic involved. What a pity for you! Because it means that makeup a

er eyes and mouth. Then she tore a small piece of wax from one of the bars and, after softening it in her fingertips, rubbed it into the skin of her face, and afterward of her neck and chest. She took some time to wipe her hands clean on a rag, and then moistened one of her flat makeup brushes in a dish of water and rubbed it in the makeup until she had a chalky white paste. She used thi

. Because I knew that in an hour or so, men would be gazing with astonishment

I could without seeming rude. I'd noticed she used a variety of tints for her cheeks, depending on the colors of her kimono. There was nothing unusual in this; but what I didn't know until years later was that Hatsumo

a wear the collars of their kimono so low in the back that the first few bumps of the spine are visible; I suppose it's like a woman in Paris wearing a short skirt. Auntie painted onto the back of Hatsumomo's neck a design called sanbon-ashi-"three legs." It makes a very dramatic picture, for you feel as if you're looking at the bare skin of the neck through little tapering points of a white fence. It was ye

s, she glanced several times at my reflect

re thinking you'll never be so bea

tie, "that some people find Ch

d Hatsumomo. And with that, she ordered us to lea

he'd taken Satsu and me from our home. As I'd learned during my first week in the okiya, his real occupation wasn't dragging girls from

derrobe in a lovely rust color, with a pattern of deep yellow leaves. What happened next made very little sense to me at the time, because the comp

emple hall. But a geisha wears kimono so frequently she hardly needs any padding, and bunching never seems to be a problem. Both a housewife and a geisha will begin by taking off their makeup robes and tucking a silk slip around the bare hips; we call this a koshimaki-"hip wrap." It's followed by a short-slee

r left hand to keep it out of the way. This has the effect of exposing the underrobe below the knees; so, you see, the pattern and fabric of the underrobe must be coordinated with the kimono. And, in fact, the underrobe's collar shows as well, just like the collar of a man's shirt when he we

ady for Mr. Bekku to dress her. To see him at work, you'd have understood at once just why his help was necessary. Kimono are the same length no matter who wears them, so except for the very tallest women, the extra fabric must be folded beneath the sash. When Mr. Bekku doubled

the area from the breastbone all the way to below the navel. Most people who know nothing of kimono seem to think the obi is simply tied in the back as if it were a string; but nothing could be further from the truth. A half dozen cords and clasps are n

n shades of brown and gold. Below the waist, deer in their rich brown coloring of autumn nuzzled one another, with golds and rusts behind them in a pattern like fallen leaves on a forest floor. Her obi was plum-colored, interwoven with silver threads. I didn't know it at the time, but the outfit she wore prob

that time was to leave the upper lip unpainted, which made the lower lip look fuller. White makeup causes all sorts of curious illusions; if a geisha were to paint the entire surface of her lips, her mouth would end up looking like two big slices of tuna. So most geisha prefer a poutier sha

e went to a closet and selected a few ornaments for her hair, including one of tortoiseshell, and an unusual cluster of pearls at the end of a long pin. When she'd slipped them into her hair, she applied a bit of perfume to the bare flesh on the back of her neck, and tucked the flat wooden vial into