Geisha Read online

  I was waiting for Mother Sakaguchi to defend my innocence.

  “Mistress Aiko, I must tell you how grateful I am that you scolded Mineko like that. This is the kind of censure she needs to become a true dancer. On her behalf, may I ask most humbly for your continued consideration and guidance.”

  As if on cue, the Iwasaki contingent bowed down again. I was a heartbeat behind, just time enough to think Whaaaats going on here? Then I got it. In a flash. Big Mistress was testing me again. Using the otome to push me forward. She wanted me to understand that the most important thing was to keep on dancing. An occasional reprimand was nothing in light of what I might be able to achieve, or what I stood to lose. My arrogance and schoolgirl superiority had no place in all this. And in that instant something changed. I started to see the bigger picture. I felt a new level of commitment to what I was doing. I became a dancer.

  I have no idea what Mama Masako told Mother Sakaguchi when she called her, or how Mother Sakaguchi reacted, or what Mother Sakaguchi said to Mistress Aiko before we all met together. But, through her eloquent display of humility, Mother Sakaguchi was also sending me a crucial message. She was showing me how professionals dealt with their differences in a way that was nonreactive and beneficial for all concerned. I had seen countless examples of this before, but, until that moment, had never really understood it. I was so proud of the skillful way Mother Sakaguchi handled the situation. Big Mistress may have given me the initial scolding, but the real lesson came from Mother Sakaguchi.

  I still had a long way to go before I was an adult, but I knew then that I wanted to be as good a person as the women who were in that room. Big Mistress thanked Madame Sakaguchi for coming and, with her staff in tow, accompanied Mother Sakaguchi to the entryway to bid her good-bye.

  Right before she got into the car, Mother Sakaguchi bent down and whispered quietly into my ear:

  “Mine-chan, work hard.”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  When we got home I went around the okiya and brought all the mirrors I could find into my room. I arranged them along the walls so that I could view myself from every angle and started to dance. From that moment on I practiced like a madwoman. I changed into dance clothes as soon as I walked in the house at night and rehearsed until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. Some nights I only got one hour of sleep.

  I looked at myself as critically as I could. I tried to analyze every aspect of my movements, tried to perfect every gesture. But something was missing. Some element of expressiveness. I thought about it long and hard. What could it be? Finally, it dawned on me that the problem was emotional not physical.

  The problem was that I had never been in love. My dancing lacked a depth of feeling that would only come after I had experienced romantic passion. How could I portray authentic love or loss when I didn’t know them?

  This realization was very scary, because whenever I thought about physical love I thought about the time my nephew tried to rape me and my mind stopped cold. I was still stuck in the terror of that moment. I was afraid that something was seriously wrong with me. Had I been so damaged that I would never be able to have a normal relationship? And this wasn’t the only obstacle standing between me and intimacy. There was something deeper, potentially more insidious.

  The fact is, I didn’t like people. I hadn’t when I was a little girl and I still didn’t. My distaste for other people hindered me professionally as well as personally. It was my biggest shortcoming as a maiko. But I had no choice. I had to force myself to pretend that I liked everyone.

  I feel such poignancy when I look back and see this image of myself, this unworldly young woman, trying so hard to please, yet not wanting anyone to come near.

  The relationship between the sexes, always a mystery, is confusing to most adolescents, but I was truly at sea. I had so little experience with men or boys that I had no intuitive feel for how to project warmth without inviting intimacy. It was imperative that I be friendly to everyone. But if I was too nice, the customer got the wrong idea, and that was the last thing I wanted to happen. It was years before I learned how to tread a middle path between making men happy and keeping them away. In the beginning, before I knew how to send the right signals, I made a lot of mistakes.

  One time a customer, a very wealthy young man, said to me, “I’m going abroad to study. I’d like you to come with me. Any objections?”

  I was flabbergasted. He announced his plans for me as though they had already been decided. I didn’t know what to say.

  Men who are familiar with the ways of Gion Kobu understand the unspoken rules and rarely break them. But sometimes, especially if the man is as naïve as this fellow was, one would misinterpret my kindness and take it too personally. I was left with no choice but to deal with him head on. I explained to him that I was just doing my job, and that, although I thought he was a nice man, I hadn’t meant to give him the impression that I was interested in him.

  Another time a young customer brought me an expensive doll from his hometown. He was so excited about giving me the present that he couldn’t wait until his next ozashiki. He brought it to the okiya and knocked on the door.

  This was a total breach of etiquette but I felt sorry for him, even though it was kind of creepy. I couldn’t believe he was naïve enough to think he had the right to come to my home. Still, I tried to be polite.

  “Thank you anyway, but I don’t care much for dolls. Please give it to someone else who will appreciate it.”

  A rumor soon spread among my regular customers that I hated dolls.

  Once I was on assignment in Tokyo when my client took me to a shop that specialized in name-brand luxury items.

  “Pick out anything you want,” he said.

  I rarely accepted gifts from clients so I declined and said I was happy just to look around. I saw a watch that I liked and mumbled unconsciously to myself, “Nice watch.” The next day the customer had the watch delivered to my hotel. I returned it immediately. It was a good reminder that I could never let down my guard.

  These incidents all happened when I was sixteen or seventeen and are testaments to my immaturity and inexperience. They show how much I still had to learn.

  Sometimes my innocence led to real embarrassment.

  The first New Year after becoming a maiko I was invited to attend the Hatsugama (first tea ceremony of the year) at the Urasenke Tea School, the premier bastion of aesthetic correctness in Japan. It was an honor to be invited, and I was on my best behavior in front of the distinguished group of attendees.

  Geiko study the tea ceremony in order to absorb the graciousness that it imparts, but we also must be prepared to perform the ceremony publicly at the annual Miyako Odori.

  There is an enormous tearoom in the Kaburenjo that holds three hundred guests. On her appointed day, a geiko enacts the ceremony five times before each performance, at fifteen-minute intervals, to accommodate the 1,450 audience members. She herself only prepares tea for the two people who have been invited to participate as guests of honor. The other 298 people are served by serving women who have prepared the tea in an anteroom. Every geiko must study tea, and there is thus a close relationship between the Urasenke Tea School and the Gion Kobu.

  At the Hatsugama, we were seated in a long row around a large room, and an attendant began passing an interesting looking cup from guest to guest. The cup had a pointed stem and no base, like a golf tee or a mushroom. There was no way to put the cup down. You had to drink whatever was in it. “What fun,” I thought, and when it came to me I drank the contents in one gulp.

  It was disgusting. I had never tasted anything so awful. I thought I was going to throw up. My face must have shown what I was feeling because Mrs. Kayoko Sen, the wife of the previous director of the Urasenke Tea School, who was always very nice to me, laughed and said, “What’s the matter Mine-chan? Don’t you like the sake?”

  SAKE? At first I grimaced. And then I panicked. I had just broken the law! Oh my god, what
if I was arrested? My father had put such fear of the law in me that I was terrified of committing crimes. What am I going to do now? But then the cup came around my way again and nobody seemed to think anything was wrong. I didn’t want to make a scene in front of all these important people so I held my breath and gulped it down again. By the time the party was over I had had a lot of sake.

  I started to feel strange, but managed to perform my dance without incident. I attended my usual number of banquets in the evening and got through those as well. But the moment I returned home and walked into the vestibule of the okiya I fell flat on my face. Everyone in the okiya made a big fuss as they helped me take off my costume and put me into my futon.

  The next day I woke up at 6 A.M. as usual but was immediately overcome by an intense feeling of shame and self-loathing. What had I done last night? I couldn’t remember anything that happened after I left the tea school. I couldn’t remember anything about any of the ozashiki I had attended.

  I wanted to crawl into a hole and die but had to get up and go to class. Not only had I broken the law but maybe I had behaved disgracefully as well. It was almost too much to bear. I didn’t want to face anyone.

  I forced myself to get up to go to class. I took my lesson with Big Mistress, but was convinced that everybody was looking at me funny. I was unbearably uncomfortable. I asked to be excused from the rest of my classes and fled back to the okiya. As soon as I walked through the door I went straight into the closet. I rocked myself and chanted, “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’ll never do it again,” over and over again in my head, like a mantra.

  I hadn’t taken sanctuary in the closet for quite a while and stayed there for the entire afternoon. I finally came out when it was time to get dressed for work.

  This was the last time I allowed myself the comfort of my childhood refuge. I never went back inside the closet again.

  I wonder why I was so hard on myself. It was something about my father, something about feeling so alone. I completely believed that the answer to everything was self-discipline.

  I believed that self-discipline was the key to beauty.

  26

  AFTER I HAD BEEN A MAIKO for more than two years it was coming to be time for my mizuage, a ceremony that celebrates a maiko’s moving up. A maiko changes her hairstyle five times to symbolize the steps she takes in becoming a geiko. At her mizuage ceremony, the topknot is symbolically cut to denote her transition from girlhood to young womanhood and she assumes a more adult hairstyle. It is similar to becoming “sweet sixteen” in the West.

  I asked Mama Masako if I was supposed to ask my customers to pay for the expenses of the mizuage ceremony. She just laughed and said, “What are you talking about? I have raised you to be an independent, professional woman. We don’t need men to help with this. The okiya can take care of it just fine.”

  Mama Masako was very careful about money. Although I was not knowledgeable in that area, I always wanted to feel that I was carrying my weight.

  “Then what do I have to do?”

  “Not much. You have to get a new hairstyle. Then we’ll hold a sakazuki ceremony to signify the occasion and give out gifts to the main and branch families, including those little sweets that embarrassed you so much when you were fourteen.”

  I had my mizuage ceremony in October of 1967, when I was seventeen. We made a formal round of visits to make the announcement and present gifts to all our “relations” in Gion Kobu.

  I said good-bye to the wareshinobu hairstyle I had worn for the last two and a half years and began to wear the ofuku style, the everyday style of the senior maiko. There were two other styles I was required to wear on special occasions: the yakko, for when I was in formal kimono, and the katsuyama, for one month before and after the Gion Festival in July.

  The change in hairstyle meant that I had entered the later stages of my career as a maiko. My regular customers took this as a signal that I was nearing marriageable age and started to approach me with proposals. Not for themselves, of course, but for their sons and grandsons.

  The geiko of Gion Kobu make famously prized wives for rich and powerful men. One couldn’t ask for a more beautiful or sophisticated hostess, especially if one travels in diplomatic or international business circles. And a geiko brings with her the cornucopia of connections she has cultivated over her career, which can be very important for a young man starting out.

  From the geiko’s point of view, she needs a partner who is as interesting as the men she meets every night of the week. Most have no desire to leave their aerie of glamour and openness for the constriction of a middle-class existence. And geiko are used to having a lot of money. I have seen instances where working geiko married for love and basically kept their husbands. These relationships were rarely successful.

  What about the women who are the mistresses of married patrons? Those stories could fill another volume. The classic tale is that of a wife lying on her deathbed. She calls the geiko to her side and thanks her tearfully for taking such good care of her husband. Then she dies, the geiko becomes the man’s second wife, and they live happily ever after.

  It is rarely that straightforward.

  I remember one particularly disturbing incident. Two geiko were having affairs with the same man, a big sake merchant. They each took it upon themselves to pay uninvited visits on his wife to implore her to separate from him. Caught in the impossible dilemma of the ensuing uproar, the man committed suicide.

  I received more than ten serious proposals from men who asked that I consider their son or grandson as a potential husband but I refused them all without deliberation. I had just turned eighteen (a very young eighteen) and I couldn’t begin to take the idea of marriage seriously. First of all, I couldn’t imagine a life in which I wasn’t dancing.

  In the next few years I did go out on a number of dates with hopeful young men. I was used to such sophisticated company, however, that age-appropriate men seemed pretty dull and boring. After the movies and a cup of tea I could never wait to get home.

  After the mizuage ceremony, the next major rite of passage in the life of a maiko is her erikae ceremony, or “turning of the collar.” This is when the maiko exchanges the red embroidered collar of the “child” dancer for the white collar of the adult geiko. This transition normally occurs around the age of twenty. After that, a geiko must be able to stand on the strength of her artistic accomplishments.

  I was planning to have my erikae on my twentieth birthday (in 1969). But Osaka was planning a World Exposition for the following year and the powers that be wanted as many maiko as possible available to entertain the great number of dignitaries they were expecting to attend. Accordingly, they asked for the cooperation of the Kabukai and, in turn, the Kabukai asked everyone in my “class” to put off becoming a geiko for one more year.

  I entertained many important people that year. In April 1970 I was invited to an informal banquet for Prince Charles. The party took place at the Kitcho restaurant in Sagano, generally considered the best restaurant in Japan.

  It was a lovely, sunny afternoon and Prince Charles seemed to be having a very nice time. He ate everything he was offered and declared it all delicious. We were sitting in the garden. The master of the establishment was grilling up some tiny sweetfish, a local specialty, on the outdoor brazier. I was fanning myself with one of my favorite fans. Prince Charles smiled at me and said, “May I have a look at that for a moment.” I handed it to him.

  Before I knew what was happening, Prince Charles whipped out a pen and wrote his autograph ’70 Charles across the face of my fan. “Oh no!” I thought, aghast. I loved that fan. I couldn’t believe he had signed it without asking me. I don’t care who he is, I thought. That is really rude. He began to hand it back to me, obviously thinking that I would be pleased by his gesture.

  In my best English I said, “I would be honored if you would accept this fan as a gift from me. It is one of my favorites.”

  He looked perplexed. “Don’t
you want my autograph?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I’ve never heard anyone say that before.”

  “In that case, please take the fan and give it to someone who wants your autograph. When I leave here I have to attend another banquet, and it would be rude to the host if I am carrying something with someone else’s signature on it. If you don’t wish to take it with you, I will be happy to take care of it.”

  “Well, yes, thank you.” He still looked confused. I kept hold of the ruined fan.

  I didn’t have time to run home and get another one so I called the house and had a maid bring one to my next engagement. I handed her Charles’s fan and told her to get rid of it. I later ran into another maiko who had been at the garden party.

  “Mine-chan. What happened to that fan?”

  “I’m not sure. Why?”

  “Because if you don’t want it I’d really like to have it.”

  “You should have said something before. I think its already been thrown away.”

  She immediately telephoned to inquire but, unfortunately, it was too late. The maid had done as I asked and disposed of it. My friend lamented the loss of the souvenir, but I didn’t feel that way at all. It just felt to me like Charles had defaced something precious.

  27

  IHAD NEVER BEEN AS BUSY as I was the year of the Osaka Expo. I had so many engagements with foreign visitors that I felt like I was an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Imperial Household Agency. Then one of my friends got sick and I agreed to stand in for her at the Miyako Odori. This strained my schedule to the bursting point. On top of that, one of the Iwasaki okiya’s maiko, whose name was Chiyoe, eloped. We had to pick up the slack caused by her sudden disappearance.

  Finally, there was another geiko who was causing us problems. Her name was Yaemaru and she was impossible. She was one of Yaeko’s other younger sisters (though she was older than I). The two of them deserved each other. Yaemaru was a heavy drinker who got falling-down drunk almost every night. The maids were forever having to drag her home from wherever she happened to pass out, her hair disheveled and her kimono in disarray. She was quite a character.