Memoirs Of A Geisha

Arthur Golden

Chapter one

Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a gar-1 den, chatting and
sipping at our cups of green tea while we talked J about something that had happened a long
while ago, and I said to you, "That afternoon when I met so-and-so . . . was the very best
afternoon of my life, and also the very worst afternoon." I expect you might put down your
teacup and say, "Well, now, which was it? Was it the best or the worst? Because it can't
possibly have been both!" Ordinarily I'd have to laugh at myself and agree with you. But the
truth is that the afternoon when I met Mr. Tanaka Ichiro really was the best and the worst of
my life. He seemed so fascinating to me, even the fish smell on his hands was a kind of
perfume. If I had never known him, I'm sure I would not have become a geisha.

I wasn't born and raised to be a Kyoto geisha. I wasn't even born in Kyoto. I'm a fisherman's
daughter from a little town called Yoroido on the Sea of Japan. In all my life I've never told
more than a handful of people anything at all about Yoroido, or about the house in which I
grew up, or about my mother and father, or my older sister-and certainly not about how I
became a geisha, or what it was like to be one. Most people would much rather carry on with
their fantasies that my mother and grandmother were geisha, and that I began my training in
dance when I was weaned from the breast, and so on. As a matter of fact, one day many
years ago I was pouring a cup of sake for a man who happened to mention that he had been
in Yoroido only the previous week. Well, I felt as a bird must feel when it has flown across the
ocean and comes upon a creature that knows its nest. I was so shocked I couldn't stop
myself from saying:

"Yoroido! Why, that's where I grew up!"

This poor man! His face went through the most remarkable series of changes. He tried his
best to smile, though it didn't come out well because he couldn't get the look of shock off his
face.

"Yoroido?" he said. "You can't mean it."

I long ago developed a very practiced smile, which I call my "Noh smile" because it
resembles a Noh mask whose features are frozen. Its advantage is that men can interpret it
however they want; you can imagine how often I've relied on it. I decided I'd better use it just
then, and of course it worked. He let out all his breath and tossed down the cup of sake I'd
poured for him before giving an enormous laugh I'm sure was prompted more by relief than
anything else.

"The very idea!" he said, with another big laugh. "You, growing up in a dump like Yoroido.
That's like making tea in a bucket!" And when he'd laughed again, he said to me, "That's why
you're so much fun, Sayuri-san. Sometimes you almost make me believe your little jokes are
real."

I don't much like thinking of myself as a cup of tea made in a bucket, but I suppose in a way it
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