Geisha

by Mineko Iwasaki

  That night some of Toshio’s fans were throwing a reception for him. He was ready to leave before I was and I told him to go ahead while I took my bath. I still had to put on my makeup and kimono, and said I would follow in half an hour.

  After my little bath, I got out of the tub and went to open the bathroom door. The knob wouldn’t turn. It was broken. I pulled and pushed but it wouldn’t budge. I started banging on the door. Toshio had already left and there was no one else to hear me. I looked around and, lo and behold, there was a telephone next to the mirror. I picked it up. There was no dial tone. I clicked the hook a few times. Still nothing. I couldn’t believe that both the doorknob and the phone were broken, and in the Waldorf-Astoria no less.

  I sat inside that bathroom for three hours. I was cold and miserable. Finally I heard a noise inside the room. Toshio knocked on the door.

  “Mineko, what are you doing in there?”

  At least one of us was calm!

  He responded quickly to the hysteria in my voice and found someone to open the door. I was thrilled to seem him. But I was too exhausted by the events of the day to go out. Poor Toshio! He had been so distracted at the party that he completely lost track of time. He felt terrible. It was very cute. He was actually a very considerate man. Apart from this little incident, we spent a glorious four days together in New York City.

  I had found what I was looking for. I was madly in love, and the intensity of our passion made a profound difference in my life. More than anything else, it affected my dancing, which attained the expressiveness I had been seeking for so long. Emotion seemed to flow from my heart into every movement, every gesture, making them deeper and more powerful.

  Toshio took a conscious, active role in this process. He was a serious critic. Our passion was rooted in our devotion to artistic excellence and that remained its source until the very end. We didn’t have the sort of relationship in which we sat around cuddling and whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears.

  As an actor, Toshio had been exploring the boundaries of self-expression for more years than I had been a dancer. In this he was very much my senior. Even though our disciplines were different, he was able and willing to offer me specific, pointed advice.

  The Inoue style is noted for its ability to express great emotion in spare, delicate gestures. This is the most challenging thing about the form, and Toshio understood how one met that challenge. Whereas Big Mistress was mentoring me from within the paradigm, Toshio was able to guide me from outside of it.

  Sometimes, passing a mirror, I would unconsciously do some little movement. Toshio would catch me and say, “Why don’t you do it this way?” His suggestions were often well considered. I’d stop whatever I was doing and, incorporating his idea, rehearse the movement then and there, over and over again.

  We were living like a couple but had to keep our affair secret from all but our closest associates. He was still a married man. We never betrayed any intimacy when we were out together in public. This was difficult, so we took trips abroad whenever possible. We never had our photo taken together, even when we were being tourists in some exotic resort. (Except for the rare one in the photo insert.)

  In 1973 we took another vacation in New York. This time we stayed at the Hilton hotel. Mr. R. A. gave a party for us, and Toshio introduced me as his fiancée. I was elated; I was sure that it was just a matter of time before I became his wife. The press got wind that I was having an affair with a celebrity and the paparazzi hounded me for weeks. But the funny thing is that they thought I was seeing somebody else; they got the wrong guy. Toshio had a huge home in the suburbs of Kyoto and another one in Tokyo, but he spent every night he could with me. My apartment became our “love nest.”

  He made himself right at home. I soon discovered a side of Toshio’s character that I never would have expected. He was uncommonly, meticulously neat. Given my housekeeping skills, this was fortunate for both of us. When he had some time off and was home alone he would actually clean the apartment, from top to bottom. He wiped down all the surfaces, including the kitchen and the bathroom, with a damp cloth and then a dry one, just like my mother taught me to do, though my housekeeping efforts were usually limited to running the vacuum cleaner around the living room floor and swishing at the coffee table with a dishrag.

  In my defense, I was very busy. My schedule was as full as it had been when I was living at the okiya, but now I had to take care of my living space as well. I went to the okiya every afternoon to get ready for work, but no longer had a contingent of maids picking up after me at home.

  Most of the time I managed to keep it together. But then Toshio would do something that tested my competence, like the time he was shooting a movie at a studio in Kyoto. He started coming home late at night with ten or so of his cronies in tow. I would get in from a full day of work and Toshio would say, “What have we got for these folks to eat?”

  I’d throw whatever ingredients we had in the house into a big pot and cook them up together. My first attempts weren’t so great but they got better over time. Toshio made sure that everyone’s glass was filled. No one ever went home hungry or thirsty. I came to love our impromptu parties.

  Toshio was endearingly warm and gregarious. He was great around the house, and spoke lovingly of his children. I couldn’t understand why things hadn’t gone better for him at home.

  32

  IN EARLY MAY THE CITY OF HAKATA in Kyushu holds an annual festival known as Dontaku. I used to be invited to attend every year, and a group of us would make the trip from Kyoto. I always stayed at the same hotel, ate in the same restaurants, and enjoyed seeing my friends from the local geisha community. I always shared a room with my dear friend Yuriko.

  Late one afternoon she and I were talking and the subject of the silent pilgrimage came up. The “silent pilgrimage” is something that takes place during the Gion Festival, though few people know about it. I had heard a rumor that Yuriko went on the silent pilgrimage and I wanted to know if it was true.

  The Gion Festival has taken place in Kyoto for over one thousand years, and is considered one of the three most important festivals in Japan. The festival starts at the end of June and continues until July 24, and involves a number of Shinto ceremonies and rituals. On July 17 the local gods are invited to come into their sacred palanquins known as omikoshi and are taken out into the community for the final week of the festival. In short, the gods are carried on the shoulders of the bearers from the main residence at Yasaka Shrine, down Shijo Street, to their temporary shrines on Shinkyogoku Avenue. The silent pilgrimage takes place during this one-week period.

  “I’d like take part in the pilgrimage, too. What do I have to do to be included?” I asked her.

  “It’s not something you join. It’s something you decide to do by yourself and you do it alone, in private. But, still, if you really want your prayer to come true they say you have to do it for three years in a row,” she answered. “And you can’t tell anybody else that you are doing it. That’s part of its power. You have to do it in silence. Keep your eyes lowered. Don’t make eye contact with anyone else. Concentrate completely on whatever is hidden in your heart. Keep your prayer in your mind the entire time, since that is the reason for the pilgrimage.”

  I was very moved by her description. Yuriko had very distinct features, unlike an ordinary Japanese face. Her eyes were staggeringly beautiful. They were large, with soft brown centers. She didn’t explicitly tell me what I wanted to know, but she offered me a smile that revealed the truth.

  I couldn’t stop wondering why Yuriko was making the pilgrimage. What was it that she wanted so badly? I kept bringing it up whenever I had the chance, but she always managed to change the subject. Finally, my persistence paid off and she gave up. She started to tell me her story.

  This was the first time I had ever heard anything about her childhood.

  Yuriko told me that she was born in January 1943 in a town called Suzushi located on the coast of the
Japan Sea. Her father’s family had been in the fishing business for generations. Her father also ran a successful seafood company. As a young man, her father often visited Gion Kobu.

  Yuriko’s mother died soon after she was born. Before she was weaned, she was sent to live with a succession of relatives. During the war, her father’s company was requisitioned by the military and turned into a munitions factory. But her father kept on fishing. After the war, he resumed his business and things were going very well. But he didn’t bring his daughter home. She continued to be passed from relative to relative.

  As his fortunes improved, her father began once again to visit Gion Kobu and resumed his friendship with a certain geiko. She married him and became Yuriko’s stepmother. At last Yuriko was able to return to her father’s side, and soon a little sister joined the family. I imagine this was the first time that she knew the security and warmth of a loving family. However, her happiness was not to continue for long. Her father’s company went bankrupt. He became desperate and, not knowing where to turn, passed his days in a drunken stupor until he hanged himself before the innocent eyes of his young daughter.

  Yuriko’s stepmother was at a complete loss about what to do, and farmed Yuriko back out to her dead husband’s relatives. The family she was given to treated her like a beast of burden, not even giving her a pair of shoes to wear. They finally sold her to a “slave trader” (zegen, men who went about the countryside buying girls to sell into the sex trade). (This practice was outlawed with the criminalization of prostitution in 1959.) She was sold to an establishment in the Shimabara pleasure quarter of Kyoto.

  Shimabara used to be a licensed quarter where women known as oiran and tayu (courtesans, high-class prostitutes) plied their trade, though they were accomplished in the traditional arts as well. A young oiran also underwent a ritual called a “mizuage” but hers consisted of being ceremoniously deflowered by a patron who had paid handsomely for the privilege. (This alternative definition of the word “mizuage” has been the source of some confusion about what it means to be a geisha.) Tayu and oiran worked under contracts of indenture and were confined to the district until their period of servitude was over.

  Yuriko’s stepmother found out what had happened to her, and she immediately contacted the okasan of the Y okiya in Gion Kobu and begged for her help. The proprietress contacted an otokoshi, who skillfully engineered her move from Shimabara into the okiya. Yuriko did not want to return to her stepmother and the okiya agreed to accept her into their care.

  This all occurred when Yuriko was twelve years old.

  Yuriko was very good-natured and applied herself unflaggingly to her lessons and became one of the top geiko in Gion Kobu. Whenever she talked about how much better her life was in Gion Kobu than it had been for the first twelve years those beautiful big brown eyes of hers filled up with tears.

  Two years after she first told me this story, when we were back in Hakata, she finally confided in me about her reason for making the silent pilgrimage. She had been in love with a certain man for many years and she wanted to marry him. That is the reason. This is what she prayed for every summer during her silent pilgrimage. Her mind was made up, and even though she received proposals from many other men, she completely ignored them.

  Unhappily, for political reasons, her lover ended up marrying someone else, though they continued to maintain a relationship. In May of 1980 she was diagnosed with cancer. I don’t know if he was the reason she got sick, but her love for him got even stronger after she became ill. As if in answer to her prayers, he nursed her tenderly as she lay dying. Unfortunately, his efforts were in vain and she met her end on September 22, 1981, at the young age of thirty-seven. In my mind I believe that her love for him still exists and that it will continue on for a thousand years, or into eternity.

  Setsubun falls in the middle of February. It is a holiday that used to mark the beginning of spring in the old, lunar calendar. We celebrate the occasion by scattering beans around the house to drive out evil demons and usher in good luck.

  In Gion Kobu we use Setsubun as an excuse to dress up in silly costumes and have fun. My friends and I always chose costumes that were thematically related to events of the previous year. In 1972 the United States returned Okinawa to Japanese control, so that year we dressed up in Okinawan folk costumes.

  This group of friends and I were in the habit of using the tips we made during the Setsubun parties to pay for a Hawaiian vacation. We went to almost forty ozashiki, spending as little as three minutes at each one in order to maximize our tips. That night we made over $30,000, enough to travel in style.

  It was my turn to be tour director. Besides making the reservations, I was in charge of all our money and passports, which I was carrying with me in my purse when we left Kyoto. We were going to spend the night in Tokyo before leaving for Honolulu the next day.

  Unfortunately, I left my purse in a taxi on the way to our hotel. My travel mates were not very sympathetic. They said, “Oh, Mineko, it’s just like you to do something like this.” I was trying very hard to be responsible and was incensed by their reaction.

  I had to get us new money and passports by the next afternoon. I called one of my customers and explained my predicament. He kindly agreed to loan me $30,000 in cash. I asked him to bring it to the hotel the following morning. I was deciding which of my government friends to tap for emergency passports when I got a call informing me that a businessman had discovered my purse in the back of the taxi. The taxi driver brought it to a police station where I retrieved it the next morning, in time to make our plane. In the hubbub I forgot to tell my customer that I no longer needed the $30,000 and he came running in with it just as were leaving.

  Despite this inauspicious beginning, we had a wonderful time. In the end, my friends thanked me for being a great tour leader. One afternoon we took hula lessons on a sunset cruise and the teacher could tell we were dancers. She asked us to do something for her. It was so much fun that we ended up giving Inoue-style dance lessons on the cruise for the next three days. Many of our customers were well connected in Hawaii and they arranged wonderful dinners for us on Kuai and Oahu.

  One day the breeze was gently blowing Miss M.’s hair. I had never noticed just how pronounced her bald spot was. Then I looked closely at my other two friends. And then at myself.

  All four of us had big bald spots right on the top of our crowns. This is a common problem caused by the maiko hairstyles, which start by binding the hair at the crown of the head. The mass is kept in place with a strip of bamboo that places constant stress on the roots of the hair. Our hair stays up for five days at time, and the rat irritates the scalp as well. When the scalp itches we often scratch it with the pointed tip of a hair ornament, further breaking the hair at the root. After a number of years the spot eventually becomes bald.

  “You know what?” I suggested. “I think that after we get back to Japan, when the Miyako Odori is finished, we should all check into a hospital together and have our bald spots fixed. What do you think? Shall we make a pact?”

  They agreed to think about it.

  We went into rehearsal as soon as we returned to Kyoto. I had to prepare a solo piece as well as participate in group rehearsals, plus I was asked to help the younger dancers prepare their parts. We didn’t have time to talk about the surgery again until after the Odori opened. Miss Y. said she was too scared to have it done, but the other three of us decided to go ahead. We left for Tokyo the day the Odori closed and checked into a hospital near Benkei Bridge.

  The operation consists of snipping the bald skin and pulling the edges together to tighten it, similar to a facelift. My incision was closed with twelve teeny stitches. There are many capillaries in the scalp and the operation was surprisingly bloody, though successful. Except it really hurt to laugh.

  Our biggest problem was that we were stuck in the hospital for days. Our Tokyo customers did their best to entertain us. They came by to visit and sent in food from the best
restaurants in town. But it was springtime and we were frisky. We got bored and started to bicker, so I made up adventures to amuse us. One afternoon we sneaked out to go shopping. Then we started to sneak out at night to go to our favorite restaurants, even in our bandages. We’d creep back into the hospital in the middle of the night. Another afternoon we line-danced our way to the gas station down the block.

  The head nurse was furious: “This is not a psychiatric hospital. Stop acting like madwomen. And please stop tying up all our telephone lines.”

  After ten days or so the doctor removed our stitches and we were free to go. I think the nursing staff was very happy to see us leave. I wonder if Miss Y. still has her bald spot. I bet she does.

  I returned to Kyoto and easily slid back into my routine with Toshio. I had missed him. But all of a sudden living on my own seemed like more trouble than it was worth. It was a real strain for me to prepare and cook meals, clean the house, do the wash, and prepare the bath—on top of honoring my professional commitments. There was never enough time. I only slept a few hours a night as it was. I couldn’t pull back on my nightly engagements, so the only way I could find more time was to shorten the time I spent rehearsing. The conflict was between becoming a better dancer or keeping a clean house. There was no contest.

  I went to speak to Mama. “Mom, my cooking isn’t getting any better. And I don’t have enough time to rehearse as much as I need to. What do you think I should do?”

  “Have you considered moving home?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a good idea.”

  So that was that. I moved back into the okiya in June of 1972. I had learned that I was capable of being independent, but also that I did not have to be. Besides, Toshio and I had the means to stay at a hotel whenever we wanted, and this we did frequently. I was grown up. I was a full-fledged geiko. I knew how to move around in the world. I knew how to handle money and how to shop. And I was in love.