Crab ultimately pays a record amount for Sayuri’s mizuage.
After months of cultivating relationships with the two men, Dr.
Crab” start a bidding war over Sayuri’s mizuage-the ceremonial taking of a young geisha’s virginity. Mameha wants to make Sayuri a success in Kyoto by having Nobu and a doctor nicknamed “ Dr.
However, Sayuri doesn’t get a chance to talk with the Chairman because Mameha tells her she must cultivate a relationship with Nobu instead. Sayuri realizes that Chairman Iwamura is the man who comforted her years ago. At one event, Mameha introduces Sayuri to the wealthy businessmen Toshikazu Nobu and Chairman Ken Iwamura. Following the geisha tradition of adopting a new name, Chiyo takes on the name Sayuri. Over the next two years, Chiyo completes her geisha training and makes her debut as an apprentice geisha. Chiyo thinks that Mameha is only taking her on as a protégé in order to infuriate her rival Hatsumomo. Since Mameha is one of the city’s best geisha, Mother sees an opportunity to make money from Chiyo again and agrees to Mameha’s plan. Mameha convinces Mother to reinvest in Chiyo’s education by saying that she will take on Chiyo as a “little sister”-a geisha apprentice. Not long after this encounter, a geisha named Mameha arrives at the okiya and takes notice of Chiyo’s beauty. Only then will she be able to surround herself with kind men instead of people like Hatsumomo and Mother. Touched by his kindness, Chiyo decides that she must try to become a geisha so she can increase her standing in the world. As Chiyo sits by a stream and begins to cry, a handsome man named the Chairman comforts her. One day, she goes on an errand and realizes that her life lacks purpose and direction. Instead, she tells Chiyo that she will work as a maid in the okiya until Mother sees fit to release her.įor two years, Chiyo works as a maid. Enraged at Chiyo for trying to run away, Mother stops paying for Chiyo’s geisha education. The doors to the okiya are locked at night, so Chiyo climbs to the roof, but she falls and breaks her arm. A few months after arriving in the okiya, Chiyo becomes so homesick that she tries to run away to her home village. The other people living at the okiya are the young apprentice geisha Pumpkin, the greedy and materialistic Mother who runs the okiya, and the beautiful but cruel geisha Hatsumomo. Geisha are women trained to entertain men with conversation, dancing, and singing.Īt the okiya, Chiyo works as a maid while she trains to be a geisha. Tanaka sells Chiyo to an okiya, which is a boarding house for geisha. After striking a deal with Chiyo’s father, Mr.
Ichiro Tanaka, takes notices of Chiyo’s beautiful blue-grey eyes. One day, the wealthiest man in her village, Mr. Near the end of the novel, Sayuri briefly references Japan’s surrender to the United States in 1945 and the American occupation of the country that lasted until the early 1950s.In 1929, the nine-year-old Chiyo Sakamoto lives with her ailing mother, emotionally withdrawn father, and older sister Satsu in a small fishing village in Western Japan. During World War Two, the Japanese government placed harsh restrictions on its civilians, rationing food and closing down all the geisha districts in Japan. Despite local resistance against the Japanese occupation, Japan held onto Manchuria until the end of World War Two. In 1931, Japan invaded and annexed Manchuria, a region in northeast China. Sayuri also makes passing mention of Japan’s militaristic expansion into neighboring countries. Sayuri, however, does not experience the effects of the Depression, since she works as a prominent geisha serving the wealthy elites of Japanese society. During the 1930s, a global economic depression affected almost every developed country in the world, including Japan. While the novel makes infrequent mention of world historical events, the majority of the plot occurs from the beginning of the Great Depression in Japan to the end of World War Two.
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