Memoirs of a Geisha

by Arthur Golden

  In any case, as I say, the Chairman permitted me to accompany him on his second trip to America. I traveled alone by rail to Tokyo, and from there we flew together on an airplane bound for Hawaii, where we spent a few remarkable days. The Chairman bought me a bathing suit-the first I'd ever owned-and I sat wearing it on the beach with my hair hanging neatly at my shoulders just like other women around me. Hawaii reminded me strangely of Amami; I worried that the same thought might occur to the Chairman, but if it did, he said nothing about it. From Hawaii, we continued to Los Angeles and finally to New York. I knew nothing about the United States except what I'd seen in movies; I don't think I quite believed that the great buildings of New York City really existed. And when I settled at last into my room at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and looked out the window at the mountainous buildings around me and the smooth, clean streets below, I had the feeling I was seeing a world in which anything was possible. I confess I'd expected to feel like a baby who has been taken away from its mother; for I had never before left Japan, and couldn't imagine that a setting as alien as New York City would make me anything but fearful. Perhaps it was the Chairman's enthusiasm that helped me to approach my visit there with such goodwill. He'd taken a separate room, which he used mostly for business; but every night he came to stay with me in the suite he'd arranged. Often I awoke in that strange bed and turned to see him there in the dark, sitting in a chair by the window holding the sheer curtain open, staring at Park Avenue below. One time after two o'clock in the morning, he took me by the hand and pulled me to the window to see a young couple dressed as if they'd come from a ball, kissing under the street lamp on the corner.

  Over the next three years I traveled with the Chairman twice more to the United States. While he attended to business during the day, my maid and I took in the museums and restaurants-and even a ballet, which I found breathtaking. Strangely, one of the few Japanese restaurants we were able to find in New York was now under the management of a chef I'd known well in Gion before the war. During lunch one afternoon, I found myself in his private room in the back, entertaining a number of men I hadn't seen in years-the vice president of Nippon Telephone & Telegraph; the new Japanese Consul-General, who had formerly been mayor of Kobe; a professor of political science from Kyoto University. It was almost like being back in Gion once again.

  *

  In the summer of 1956, the Chairman-who had two daughters by his wife, but no son-arranged for his eldest daughter to marry a man named Nishioka Minoru. The Chairman's intention was that Mr. Nishioka take the family name of Iwamura and become his heir; but at the last moment, Mr. Nishioka had a change of heart, and informed the Chairman that he did not intend to go through with the wedding. He was a very temperamental young man, but in the Chairman's estimation, quite brilliant. For a week or more the Chairman was upset, and snapped at his servants and me without the least provocation. I'd never seen him so disturbed by anything.

  No one ever told me why Nishioka Minoru changed his mind; but no one had to. During the previous summer, the founder of one of Japan's largest insurance companies had dismissed his son as president, and turned his company over instead to a much younger man-his illegitimate son by a Tokyo geisha. It caused quite a scandal at the time. Things of this sort had happened before in Japan, but usually on a much smaller scale, in family-owned kimono stores or sweets shops-businesses of that sort. The insurance company director described his firstborn in the newspapers as "an earnest young man whose talents unfortunately can't be compared with --" and here he named his illegitimate son, without ever giving any hint of their relationship. But it made no difference whether he gave a hint of it or not; everyone knew the truth soon enough.

  Now, if you were to imagine that Nishioka Minoru, after already having agreed to become the Chairman's heir, had discovered some new bit of information-such as that the Chairman had recently fathered an illegitimate son... well, I'm sure that in this case, his reluctance to go through with the marriage would probably seem quite understandable. It was widely known that the Chairman lamented having no son, and was deeply attached to his two daughters. Was there any reason to think he wouldn't become equally attached to an illegitimate son-enough, perhaps, to change his mind before death and turn over to him the company he'd built? As to the question of whether or not I really had given birth to a son of the Chairman's... if I had, I'd certainly be reluctant to talk too much about him, for fear that his identity might become publicly known. It would be in no one's best interest for such a thing to happen. The best course, I feel, is for me to say nothing at all; I'm sure you will understand.

  *

  A week or so after Nishioka Minoru's change of heart, I decided to raise a very delicate subject with the Chairman. We were at the Eishin-an, sitting outdoors after dinner on the veranda overlooking the moss garden. The Chairman was brooding, and hadn't spoken a word since before dinner was served.

  "Have I mentioned to Danna-sama," I began, "that I've had the strangest feeling lately?"

  I glanced at him, but I could see no sign that he was even listening.

  "I keep thinking of the Ichiriki Teahouse," I went on, "and truthfully, I'm beginning to recognize how much I miss entertaining."

  The Chairman just took a bite of his ice cream, and then set his spoon down on the dish again.

  "Of course, I can never go back to work in Gion; I know that perfectly well. And yet I wonder, Danna-sama... isn't there a place for a small teahouse in New York City?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "There's no reason why you should want to leave Japan."

  "Japanese businessmen and politicians are showing up in New York these days as commonly as turtles plopping into a pond," I said. "Most of them are men I've known already for years. It's true that leaving Japan would be an abrupt change. But considering that Danna-sama will be spending more and more of his time in the United States..." I knew this was true, because he'd already told me about his plan to open a branch of his company there.

  "I'm in no mood for this, Sayuri," he began. I think he intended to say something further, but I went on as though I hadn't heard him.

  "They say that a child raised between two cultures often has a very difficult time," I said. "So naturally, a mother who moves with her child to a place like the United States would probably be wise to make it her permanent home."

  "Sayuri-"

  "Which is to say," I went on, "that a woman who made such a choice would probably never bring her child back to Japan at all."

  By this time the Chairman must have understood what I was suggesting-that I remove from Japan the only obstacle in the way of Nishioka Minoru's adoption as his heir. He wore a startled look for an instant. And then, probably as the image formed in his mind of my leaving him, his peevish humor seemed to crack open like an egg, and out of the corner of his eye came a single tear, which he blinked away just as swiftly as swatting a fly.

  In August of that same year, I moved to New York City to set up my own very small teahouse for Japanese businessmen and politicians traveling through the United States. Of course, Mother tried to ensure that any business I started in New York City would be an extension of the Nitta okiya, but the Chairman refused to consider any such arrangement. Mother had power over me as long as I remained in Gion; but I broke my ties with her by leaving. The Chairman sent in two of his accountants to ensure that Mother gave me every last yen to which I was entitled.

  *

  I can't pretend I didn't feel afraid so many years ago, when the door of my apartment here at the Waldorf Towers closed behind me for the first time. But New York is an exciting city. Before long it came to feel at least as much a home to me as Gion ever did. In fact, as I look back, the memories of many long weeks I've spent here with the Chairman have made my life in the United States even richer in some ways than it was in Japan. My little teahouse, on the second floor of an old club off Fifth Avenue, was modestly successful from the very beginning; a number of geisha have com
e from Gion to work with me there, and even Mameha sometimes visits. Nowadays I go there myself only when close friends or old acquaintances have come to town. I spend my time in a variety of other ways instead. In the mornings I often join a group of Japanese writers and artists from the area to study subjects that interest us-such as poetry or music or, during one month-long session, the history of New York City. I lunch with a friend most days. And in the afternoons I kneel before my makeup stand to prepare for one party or another-sometimes here in my very own apartment. When I lift the brocade cover on my mirror, I can't help but remember the milky odor of the white makeup I so often wore in Gion. I dearly wish I could go back there to visit; but on the other hand, I think I would be disturbed to see all the changes. When friends bring photographs from their trips to Kyoto, I often think that Gion has thinned out like a poorly kept garden, increasingly overrun with weeds. After Mother's death a number of years ago, for example, the Nitta okiya was torn down and replaced with a tiny concrete building housing a bookshop on the ground floor and two apartments overhead.

  Eight hundred geisha worked in Gion when I first arrived there. Now the number is less than sixty, with only a handful of apprentices, and it dwindles further every day-because of course the pace of change never slows, even when we've convinced ourselves it will. On his last visit to New York City, the Chairman and I took a walk through Central Park. We happened to be talking about the past; and when we came to a path through pine trees, the Chairman stopped suddenly. He'd often told me of the pines bordering the street outside Osaka on which he'd grown up; I knew as I watched him that he was remembering them. He stood with his two frail hands on his cane and his eyes closed, and breathed in deeply the scent of the past.

  "Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see."

  As a younger woman I believed that passion must surely fade with age, just as a cup left standing in a room will gradually give up its contents to the air. But when the Chairman and I returned to my apartment, we drank each other up with so much yearning and need that afterward I felt myself drained of all the things the Chairman had taken from me, and yet filled with all that I had taken from him. I fell into a sound sleep and dreamed that I was at a banquet back in Gion, talking with an elderly man who was explaining to me that his wife, whom he'd cared for deeply, wasn't really dead because the pleasure of their time together lived on inside him. While he spoke these words, I drank from a bowl of the most extraordinary soup I'd ever tasted; every briny sip was a kind of ecstasy. I began to feel that all the people I'd ever known who had died or left me had not in fact gone away, but continued to live on inside me just as this man's wife lived on inside him. I felt as though I were drinking them all in-my sister, Satsu, who had run away and left me so young; my father and mother; Mr. Tanaka, with his perverse view of kindness; Nobu, who could never forgive me; even the Chairman. The soup was filled with all that I'd ever cared for in my life; and while I drank it, this man spoke his words right into my heart. I awoke with tears streaming down my temples, and I took the Chairman's hand, fearing that I would never be able to live without him when he died and left me. For he was so frail by then, even there in his sleep, that I couldn't help thinking of my mother back in Yoroido. And yet when his death happened only a few months later, I understood that he left me at the end of his long life just as naturally as the leaves fall from the trees.

  I cannot tell you what it is that guides us in this life; but for me, I fell toward the Chairman just as a stone must fall toward the earth. When I cut my lip and met Mr. Tanaka, when my mother died and I was cruelly sold, it was all like a stream that falls over rocky cliffs before it can reach the ocean. Even now that he is gone I have him still, in the richness of my memories. I've lived my life again just telling it to you.

  It's true that sometimes when I cross Park Avenue, I'm struck with the peculiar sense of how exotic my surroundings are. The yellow taxicabs that go sweeping past, honking their horns; the women with their briefcases, who look so perplexed to see a little old Japanese woman standing on the street corner in kimono. But really, would Yoroido seem any less exotic if I went back there again? As a young girl I believed my life would never have been a struggle if Mr. Tanaka hadn't torn me away from my tipsy house. But now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.

  Arthur Golden

  Arthur Golden was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He is a 1978 graduate of Harvard College with a degree in art history, specializing in Japanese art. In 1980 he earned an M.A. in Japanese history from Columbia University, where he also learned Mandarin Chinese. After a summer at Beijing University, he went to work at a magazine in Tokyo. In 1988 he received an M.A. in English from Boston University. He has lived and worked in Japan, and since that time has been teaching writing and literature in the Boston area. He resides in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife and children.

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