Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

These would be the arrangements for an average geisha. But a very top geisha, of which there were probably thirty or forty in Gion, would expect much more. To begin with, she wouldn’t even consider tarnishing her reputation with a string of danna , but might instead have only one or two in her entire life. Not only will her danna cover all of her living expenses, such as her registration fee, her lesson fees, and her meals; what’s more, he’ll provide her with spending money, sponsor dance recitals for her, and buy her gifts of kimono and jewelry. And when he spends time with her, he won’t pay her usual hourly fee; he’ll probably pay more, as a gesture of goodwill.

Mameha was certainly one of these top geisha; in fact, as I came to learn, she was probably one of the two or three best-known geisha in all of Japan. You may have heard something about the famous geisha Mametsuki, who had an affair with the prime minister of Japan shortly before World War I and caused something of a scandal. She was Mameha’s older sister-which is why they both had “Mame” in their names. It’s common for a young geisha to derive her name from the name of her older sister.

Having an older sister like Mametsuki was already enough to ensure Mameha a successful career. But in the early 1920s, the Japan Travel Bureau began its first international advertising campaign. The posters showed a lovely photograph of the pagoda from the Toji Temple in southeastern Kyoto, with a cherry tree to one side and a lovely young apprentice geisha on the other side looking very shy and graceful, and exquisitely delicate. That apprentice geisha was Mameha.

It would be an understatement to say that Mameha became famous. The poster was displayed in big cities all over the world, with the words “Come and Visit the Land of the Rising Sun” in all sorts of foreign languages-not only English, but German, French, Russian, and… oh, other languages I’ve never even heard of. Mameha was only sixteen at the time, but suddenly she found herself being summoned to meet every head of state who came to Japan, and every aristocrat from England or Germany, and every millionaire from the United States. She poured sake for the great German writer Thomas Mann, who afterward told her a long, dull story through an interpreter that went on and on for nearly an hour; as well as Charlie Chaplin, and Sun Yat-sen, and later Ernest Hemingway, who got very drunk and said the beautiful red lips on her white face made him think of blood in the snow. In the years since then, Mameha had grown only more famous by putting on a number of widely publicized dance recitals at the Kabukiza Theater in Tokyo, usually attended by the prime minister and a great many other luminaries.

When Mameha had announced her intention of taking me on as her younger sister, I hadn’t known any of these things about her, and it’s just as well. Probably I would have felt so intimidated, I couldn’t have done much more than tremble in her presence.

Mameha was kind enough to sit me down and explain much of this on that day in her apartment. When she was satisfied that I understood her, she said:

“Following your debut, you’ll be an apprentice geisha until the age of eighteen. After that you’ll need a danna if you’re to pay back your debts. A very substantial danna . My job will be to make sure you’re well known in Gion by then, but it’s up to you to work hard at becoming an accomplished dancer. If you can’t make it at least to the fifth rank by the age of sixteen, nothing I can do will help you, and Mrs. Nitta will be delighted to win her bet with me.”

“But, Mameha-san,” I said, “I don’t understand what dance has to do with it.”

“Dance has everything to do with it,” she told me. “If you look around at the most successful geisha in Gion, every one of them is a dancer.”

Dance is the most revered of the geisha’s arts. Only the most promising and beautiful geisha are encouraged to specialize in it, and nothing except perhaps tea ceremony can compare to the richness of its tradition. The Inoue School of dance, practiced by the geisha of Gion, derives from Noh theater. Because Noh is a very ancient art that has always been patronized by the Imperial court, dancers in Gion consider their art superior to the school of dance practiced in the Pontocho district across the river, which derives from Kabuki. Now, I’m a great admirer of Kabuki, and in fact I’ve been lucky enough to have as my friends a number of the most famous Kabuki actors of this century. But Kabuki is a relatively young art form; it didn’t exist before the 1700s. And it has always been enjoyed by ordinary people rather than patronized by the Imperial court. There is simply no comparing the dance in Pontocho to the Inoue School of Gion.

All apprentice geisha must study dance, but, as I say, only the promising and attractive ones will be encouraged to specialize and go on to become true dancers, rather than shamisen players or singers. Unfortunately, the reason Pumpkin, with her soft, round face, spent so much of her time practicing shamisen was because she hadn’t been selected as a dancer. As for me, I wasn’t so exquisitely beautiful that I was given no choice but to dance, like Hatsumomo. It seemed to me I would become a dancer only by demonstrating to my teachers that I was willing to work as hard as necessary.

Thanks to Hatsumomo, however, my lessons got off to a very bad start. My instructor was a woman of about fifty, known to us as Teacher Rump, because her skin gathered at her throat in such a way as to make a little rear end there beneath her chin. Teacher Rump hated Hatsumomo as much as anyone in Gion did. Hatsumomo knew this quite well; and so what do you think she did? She went to her-I know this because Teacher Rump told it to me some years later-and said:

“Teacher, may I be permitted to ask you a favor? I have my eye on one of the students in your class, who seems to me a very talented girl. I’d be extremely grateful if you could tell me what you think of her. Her name is Chiyo, and I’m very, very fond of her. I’d be greatly in your debt for any special help you might give her.”

Hatsumomo never needed to say another word after this, because Teacher Rump gave me all the “special help” Hatsumomo hoped she would. My dancing wasn’t bad, really, but Teacher Rump began at once to use me as an example of how things should not be done. For example, I remember one morning when she demonstrated a move to us by drawing her arm across her body just so and then stamping one foot on the mats. We were all expected to copy this move in unison; but because we were beginners, when we finished and stamped our feet, it sounded as if a platter stacked with beanbags had been spilled onto the floor, for not a single foot hit the mats at the same moment as any other. I can assure you I’d done no worse at this than anyone else, but Teacher Rump came and stood before me with that little rear end under her chin quivering, and tapped her folding fan against her thigh a few times before drawing it back and striking me on the side of the head with it.

“We don’t stamp at just any old moment,” she said. “And we don’t twitch our chins.”

In dances of the Inoue School, the face must be kept perfectly expressionless in imitation of the masks worn in Noh theater. But for her to complain about my chin twitching at the very moment when her own was trembling in anger… well, I was on the edge of tears because she’d struck me, but the other students burst out laughing. Teacher Rump blamed me for the outburst, and sent me out of the classroom in punishment.

I can’t say what might have become of me under her care, if Mameha hadn’t finally gone to have a talk with her and helped her to figure out what had really happened. However much Teacher Rump might have hated Hatsumomo beforehand, I’m sure she hated her all the more after learning how Hatsumomo had duped her. I’m happy to say she felt so terrible about the way she had treated me that I soon became one of her favorite students.