Geisha

by Mineko Iwasaki

  I had never walked over the footbridge by myself. I was too afraid.

  There is a canal that runs under that bridge. And in the canal is cold, clear water, water that comes down from Lake Biwa in the north. The water rushes through the canal as it flows towards the Nanzenji aqueduct. It courses through the aqueduct, past the miles of cherry trees lining the banks, and then down into the main waterway of Kyoto. It continues past the zoo and the Heian Shrine, runs along Cold Spring Avenue, and finally empties into the Kamogawa River, where it streams towards Osaka and out to the open sea.

  I’ll never forget walking over the bridge by myself for the first time. The contrast between the white concrete, the hand-knit red dress my mother had made me, and my red sneakers is burned into my memory.

  4

  IT WAS EARLY AFTERNOON when we got there. My father left soon after and I sat there in the parlor, not saying anything but only watching and observing. I felt riveted by the details. I did look around until I saw where the closet was so I had a place to escape to if necessary. But other than that I just sat there quietly staring at everything around me. I answered people politely when they asked me something, but I kept saying I was fine just where I was.

  In the late afternoon Madame Oima took my hand and we went to another house. We opened the door to the entranceway and went inside. Madame Oima bowed low to a lady I had never met before. Madame Oima introduced her as Madame Sakaguchi and told me I was to call her Mother. Madame Oima laughed and said Mother Sakaguchi was her boss.

  The woman was very friendly and we took to each other immediately.

  After we returned from our visit to the Sakaguchi okiya, it was time for dinner. It was served differently than at my house. Instead of sitting around a table, everyone ate from individual trays that were arranged in a U-shape around the oblong brazier.

  As a guest, I assumed that I would sit next to Madame Oima. I went to sit down next to her just as Old Meanie came into the room and was about to sit in the same place.

  I said, “That is my seat.”

  Old Meanie had almost begun to protest when Madame Oima said, with a big smile, “Yes, child, that’s right. Take your seat.”

  I sat down next to the brazier.

  Old Meanie sat down in a huff next to me and picked up her chopsticks and began to eat without saying the customary grace, “itadakimasu.” Itadakimasu means “I receive this food with humble gratitude.” It acknowledges the efforts of the farmers and other providers in bringing the food to table. Madame Oima was the head of the household so no one was supposed to eat anything before she said these words and picked up her chopsticks. I reprimanded Old Meanie for her unthinkable breach of etiquette.

  “It’s rude to eat before Madame Oima has said ‘itadakimasu’ and taken the first bite of food. You have terrible manners.”

  Madame Oima interjected, addressing Old Meanie, “Listen to what she says. She has a lot to teach you.” Then she turned to the rest of the women sitting around the long brazier and said, “Please don’t any of you speak to Miss Masako unless she speaks to you first.” I couldn’t believe Madame Oima was putting me ahead of all these fancy grown-ups.

  But Old Meanie couldn’t leave it alone, and, in a stage whisper I was sure to hear, grumbled, “Well, aren’t we the little princess?”

  It made me feel bad so I said, “I can’t eat this.”

  Madame Oima said, “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

  “I can’t eat if I’m sitting next to this mean old lady.”

  I stood up quietly, found Big John, and took him for a walk.

  When I got back my older sister Kuniko asked me if I wanted to eat a nice rice ball or take a bath.

  “I won’t eat anyone’s rice balls except Mommy’s and I won’t take a bath with anyone but Daddy,” I answered. Then I lapsed into silence. I didn’t speak again for the rest of the night.

  My sister Kuniko got me ready for bed. She wrapped me up in my favorite blanket, which was turquoise and had white tulips on it. She lay me down beside her on the futon. I still couldn’t sleep without nursing, so she let me suckle her breast until I drifted off to sleep.

  My father came to get me the next morning. There is an unwritten rule in the okiya that visitors are not allowed in before 10 in the morning. But my father showed up very early, at 6:30.

  I was thrilled to see him. I said, “Bye, so long,” and was out the door. Madame Oima called after me, “Please come again, very soon.”

  “Yes,” I called back.

  I was annoyed at myself for answering like that because it is not what I meant to say, in fact, it was the exact opposite of what I felt. I meant to say I was never coming back, but I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth.

  My mother was so happy to see me when I got home that I thought she was going to cry. But I didn’t even wait around long enough for her to hug me. I dove straight for the safety of the closet.

  My mother tempted me out of the darkness with my favorite food, onigiri, a sort of rice sandwich with seaweed on the outside and a savory treat on the inside. Pickled plums and bits of salmon are popular fillings, but my favorite was dried bonito flakes. That’s the kind my mother made for me that day.

  (Dried bonito fish is a staple of Japanese cuisine. The flakes are widely used as the basis for soup stock and to flavor other dishes.)

  They were delicious.

  This was the beginning of my move to the Iwasaki okiya. It began with that one night. A while later I went for two nights. And then I started to visit for days at a time. The days stretched into a month. And finally, a few months after I turned five, I moved in for good.

  5

  IT IS DIFFICULT TO EXPRESS in contemporary terms the prominence, almost the sanctity, of the okiya owner and her successor within the hierarchy of Gion Kobu. The okiya owner is the queen of the realm, the atotori is the heir apparent, and the other members of the okiya are like the royal court, bound to accept the dictates of the reigning queen without argument or question. The future queen is treated with the same degree of deference.

  Though not yet official, Madame Oima acted as though I were her atotori from the moment I moved into the household. She made everyone treat me as such. The other members of the okiya were there to serve me and cater to my every need. They used honorific language when they addressed me, weren’t allowed to speak to me unless I spoke first, and basically had to follow my commands. I imagine that some of them were jealous of me but it was so much in everyone’s best interest to please Madame Oima that I was never aware of any negative reaction to my arrival. It all seemed perfectly natural to me.

  Madame Oima asked me to call her Auntie, which I was happy to do. I continued to sit next to Auntie Oima, in the place of honor, for all meals. I was always given the choicest bit of whatever food we were having, and was always served first.

  Soon after I moved in tailors began arriving to take my measurements. A few days later I had a new set of clothes, Western-style coats and dresses and Japanese kimono and obi. I didn’t wear anything that wasn’t handmade until I became an adult. I wore kimono around the neighborhood, but often put on a dress to go to the Kabuki theater, the sumo matches, or the amusement park.

  Auntie Oima spent hours playing with me and thought up endless ways to keep me amused. She let me look at the geiko’s kimono whenever I wanted. If my hands were very clean she let me touch the rich embroidery, let me trace the patterns of autumn scenes and rolling waves with my fingers.

  She set up a desk for me in the genkan so I could do my work. This is where I drew my pictures and practiced writing my letters, just like I had when I lived with my father.

  We converted a stone basin in the courtyard garden into a home for goldfish. It became quite an undertaking, and we planned every aspect of it together. We found wonderful rocks and duckweed to give the fish a place to hide. We bought colorful pebbles, an ornate bridge, and a sculpture of a heron to create a fairytale environment for my pets.

  One da
y Auntie Oima and I were outside in the garden cleaning the fish basin, which was one of my favorite things to do because I didn’t have to talk to anyone else when I was doing it. I would have cleaned it every day but she wouldn’t let me. She told me that the fish couldn’t live in the water if it was too clear. We had to let the water stand so that the algae had time to grow.

  One day I asked her something that had been bothering me.

  “Auntie, you don’t let many people speak to me. Just you and Old Meanie. But that Yaeko lady? How come she gets to talk to me too? And why are her boys living at my house?”

  “Oh, Mine-chan, I thought you knew. Yaeko is your parents’ first daughter. She is your oldest sister. Your mother and father are the boys’ grandparents.”

  I felt like I was going to faint or throw up and yelled back at her, “That’s not true! You’re a liar!” I was really upset. “An old person like you shouldn’t tell lies. Because soon you are going to go to the Enma (the King of Hell) and he’s going to rip your tongue out for not telling the truth!” I burst out crying.

  Auntie Oima said as calmly and kindly as she could, “I’m sorry, my child, but I’m afraid its true. I didn’t realize no one had told you.”

  I figured there was some reason Yaeko kept showing up in my world but this was worse than I imagined. If Yaeko was my sister, then those boys were my nephews!

  “You don’t have to worry about her,” Auntie Oima comforted. “I’ll protect you.”

  I wanted to believe her, but I still got a bad feeling in my stomach whenever Yaeko was around.

  When I first arrived, I stayed constantly by Auntie’s side. After a few weeks, as I started to feel more at home, I began to explore my new surroundings. I decided to use the closet in the dining room, under the staircase, for my hideaway. This is the closet where Kuniko stored her bedding. I inhaled her scent whenever I nestled into the quilts. She smelled like my mother.

  I journeyed up the stairs. I found a closet there that I also liked and decided to use it as an alternative. There were four other big rooms on the second floor, and lots of dressing tables with containers of makeup for the maiko and geiko. Not particularly interesting.

  I next went to investigate the guest house. This was a great find. The main room of the guest house was the “best” room in the okiya, reserved for important visitors. It was airy, spacious, and immaculate. I was the only person in the household who was allowed to spend time there. In a sense, I was the only person living in the house who was a “guest.”

  In back of the guest house was a formal garden, the same size as the central garden off the altar room. I sat on the verandah for hours at a time, hypnotized by the tranquil beauty of the rocks and moss.

  The bathhouse was located on the other side of the garden. It had a big modern bathtub made of fragrant hinoki (white cedar) wood. Auntie Oima or Kuniko bathed me every night. I remember the smell of the garden air drifting into the steamy bathhouse from the window high in the wall.

  Most nights I slept with Auntie Oima in the altar room, who let me suckle her breast until I fell asleep. Sometimes, when the night was especially warm or the moon particularly bright, we slept in the guest house instead.

  Other times I slept with Kuniko in the dining room. In traditional Japanese houses, the sparsely furnished tatami rooms are used for a variety of purposes. Living rooms often serve as bedrooms as well. Kuniko was the apprentice housekeeper, and thus given the important position of keeping watch over the kitchen and hearth, the heart of the house. Accordingly, she would simply move the low tables out of the way and lay her futon down on the tatami at night. Kuniko was twenty-one when I moved into the okiya. I felt safest cuddled to her warm plumpness. She adored children and took care of me as if I were her own.

  I continued waking up at six o’clock in the morning as I had with my father. Everybody in the okiya had to stay up late so no one was awake at that hour, not even the maids. Most of the time I stayed curled up in my futon and read one of the picture books that my father brought me. But sometimes I would put on my slippers and wander around.

  That’s when I found out where everybody slept.

  The two maids moved the screen partition back and slept on the tatami in the genkan. Everybody else slept upstairs. Old Meanie had one of the middle rooms all to herself. Kuniko explained to me that that was because she was an Iwasaki. The other geiko and maiko slept together in the big front room. That’s where Tomiko was. Later I remember Ichifumi, Fumimaru, and Yaemaru being there too. There was one more large room but no one used it for sleeping. That is where everyone got dressed.

  One of the women didn’t sleep in the okiya, even though she always seemed to be in the house. Her name was Taji. Everyone called her Aba, “Little Mother.” She oversaw the meals and the clothes and the shopping and the cleaning. Aba was married to Auntie Oima’s brother and lived somewhere else.

  I was trying to figure out the hierarchy of the household. It was very different than my own family. My father cooked, my mother rested, my parents treated us all the same. I thought everyone in a family was equal. But not here.

  There were two groups. Auntie Oima, Old Meanie, the geiko and maiko, and I were in the first one. Aba, Kuniko, the apprentices, and the maids were in the other. The first group had more power and more privileges than the second one. This disturbed me because Kuniko, whom I loved, wasn’t in my group, and people whom I disliked, such as Yaeko, were.

  The “second” group wore different clothes, used different toilets, and waited until we finished eating before they began. They ate different food than we did and were relegated to sit at the edge of the dining room near the kitchen. And they were the ones whom I actually saw working all the time.

  One day I saw a whole grilled fish sitting on Kuniko’s plate. It still had its head and tail on and it looked delicious. I had never seen anything like it before. Even when I lived with my parents, we only ate fish that had been filleted (a holdover from my father’s aristocratic upbringing).

  “Aba, what is that?”

  “It’s called a dried sardine.”

  “Can I have some?”

  “No, my dear, sardines are not your kind of food. You wouldn’t like it.”

  Sardines were considered peasant fare, and I was only served the best types of fish: sole, turbot, conger eel. But a fish with a head and a tail! Now that seemed special.

  “I want to eat what Kuniko is eating!” I wasn’t much of a whiner, but this time I made an exception.

  “That food isn’t suitable for an atotori to eat,” Aba said.

  “I don’t care, it’s what I want. I want to eat what other people are eating, and I want all of us to eat together.”

  The next thing I knew there was a table in the dining room and, from then on, we ate our meals together, like we had at my house.

  One day Auntie Oima announced that she was changing my name to Mineko. I was horrified. I knew she had the power to do this to a dog but I never imagined she would do it to me. My Daddy had given me the name Masako and I didn’t think anyone else had the right to change it. I told her she couldn’t.

  She patiently explained that Old Meanie’s name was Masako too and that it would be confusing if we both had the same name. I still refused. She wouldn’t listen.

  Auntie Oima started to call me Mineko and insisted that everyone else do the same. I wouldn’t answer to it. If anyone called me Mineko I would ignore them or turn on my heels and storm into the closet. I was determined not to give in.

  Auntie Oima finally sent for my father to help negotiate the situation. He did his best to reason with me. “I’ll take you home if that’s what you want, Masako. You don’t have to put up with this. If you want to stay here, you can always pretend that they are calling you Masako when they say Mineko. But I guess that won’t be much fun. So maybe you’d better come home with me.”

  While he was trying to reason with me, Old Meanie put in her two cents. “I certainly don’t have any desire to a
dopt you, you may be sure. But if Auntie Oima makes you our successor I’ll have no choice.”

  “What does she mean, Daddy? When was I adopted? I don’t belong to them, do I? Don’t I belong to you?” I hadn’t understood that being the atotori meant I would have to be adopted.

  “Of course you do, Masako. You are still my little girl. Your last name is still Tanaka, not Iwasaki.” He tried to comfort me and then turned to Auntie Oima.

  “You know, I think it might be better if I take her home for a little while.”

  Auntie Oima became frantic. “Wait a minute, Mr. Tanaka! Please don’t go. I beg of you! You know how much I adore her. Please don’t take her away. She means so much to me. Just think about what you are doing. And try to explain the importance of the situation to Masako. I’m sure she will listen to you. Please, Mr. Tanaka. Please!”

  My father remained firm. “I’m sorry, Auntie Oima. She is a child who makes up her own mind about things. I’m not going to force her to do anything that she doesn’t want to do. I know this is a big opportunity, but it’s my job to see that she is happy. Maybe we shouldn’t rush into this. Let me think about it again.”

  This is the one time I almost wavered in my resolve. But as soon as I heard his words I was overcome with guilt. “Oh no, there I go again,” I thought. “I’m being a selfish baby. The problems are going to start all over again and it will be all my fault.”

  My father stood up to leave.

  “Never mind, Daddy, I didn’t mean it. It’s okay. They can call me Mineko. Really. I don’t care. I’ll stay right where I am.”

  “You don’t have to say that Masako. Let’s go home.”

  “No, I’m going to stay here.”

  When I first came to live in the Iwasaki okiya it wasn’t clear to me if Auntie Oima was going to make me into a geiko like most of the other women in the house or not. I knew that Auntie Oima wanted me to be her atotori, but she wasn’t a geiko so that didn’t seem to be a requirement of the position.