The heart…

“The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.”

Arthur Golden – Memoirs of a Geisha

Loss

“…At the temple there is a poem called “Loss” carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it…”

Arthur Golden ― Memoirs of a Geisha

Warm and comforting umeboshi ochazuke

“…and if she felt hungry, she certainly wasn’t going to stroll into the kitchen to prepare something by herself – such as an umeboshi ochazuke, which was a favorite snack of hers, made with leftover rice and pickled sour plums, soaked in hot tea…”

Memoirs of a Geisha

Traditional tabi

“…she wore white socks we call tabi, which button along the side with a snug fit. At this point she was ready for Mr Bekku to dress her…”

Memoirs of a Geisha

Koshimaki “hip wrap”

“…Both a housewife and a geisha will begin by taking off their makeup robes and tucking a silk slip around the bare hips; we call this a koshimaki – “hip wrap”…”

Memoris of a Geisha

Sanbon-ashi…. “Three Legs”

“….Auntie painted onto the back of Hatsumomo’s neck a design called sanbon-ashi “three legs.” It makes a very dramatic picture, for you feel as if you’re looking at the bare skin of the neck through little tapering points of a white fence. It was years before I understood the erotic effect it has on man…”

Memoirs of a Geisha

Tatami Room

“… I was expecting something very grand, but it turned out to be nothing more than several dark tatami rooms on the second floor of the school building, filled with desks and accounting books and smelling terribly of cigarettes…”

Memoirs of a Geisha

The shamisen “three strings”…

“…If you’ve never seen  a shamisen, you might find it’s a peculiar-looking instrument. Some people call it a Japanese guitar, but actually it’s a good deal smaller than a guitar, with a thin wooden neck that has three large tuning pegs at the end. The body is just a little wooden box with cat skin stretched over the top like a drum. The entire instrument can be taken apat and put into a box or a bag, which is how it is carried about…”

“…Pumpkin assembled her shamisen and began to tune it with her tongue poking out, but I’m sorry to say that her ear was very poor, and the notes went up and down like a boat on the waves, without ever settling down where they were supposed to be…”

Memoirs of a Geisha

Wareshinobu Hairstyle

“… Down at the end of the long hallway stood a group of six or eight girls. I felt a jolt when I set eyes on them, because I thought one might be Satsu; but when they turned to look at us I was disappointed. They all wore the same hairstyle – the Wareshinobu of a young apprentice geisha – and looked to me as if they knew much more about Gion than either Pumpkin or I would ever know…”

Memoirs of a Geisha

The Kaburenjo Theater in Gion

“…I didn’t understand what I was seeing at the moment, but I now know that only a tiny part of the compaund was devoted to the school. The massive building in the back was actually the Kaburenjo Theater – where the geisha of Gion perform Dances of the Old Capital every spring…”

Memoirs of a Geisha