Mameha arranges for Sayuri to feign an injury to approach Dr. Crab

Mameha arranges for Sayuri to feign an injury to approach Dr. Crab, turning a minor medical encounter into a calculated introduction to a man whose interest could advance Sayuri’s career. The plan reveals Mameha’s willingness to choreograph Sayuri’s presentation down to her explanation for the wound, while the hospital meeting establishes Dr. Crab as a possible admirer and future connection.

Purpose and Preparation

The plan emerges from Mameha’s conviction that Sayuri’s future depends on the attention of two men. Sayuri has been thinking about the possibilities opening before her since seeing the Chairman again at the sumo exhibition, but Mameha’s words leave her feeling sorrowful and aware of how remote such ambitions may be. Mameha takes her to an okiya where she had lived before gaining her independence, arriving with time pressing: the elderly maid says the doctor will leave at four, and it is already nearly half past three. Mameha is confident he will wait for her.

Rather than arrange a conventional introduction, Mameha proposes that Sayuri arrive as a patient. She explains that a small cut will provide an excuse to visit the hospital and meet the doctor she has mentioned. Sayuri suggests pretending to have a stomachache, but the group treats the suggestion as a joke. The scheme requires an actual wound, not merely a simulated complaint, and the cook is enlisted to make it.

Staging the Injury

Mameha directs the scene with practical precision. She sends a maid to fetch a red pigment stick used for lip shading, then marks a spot high on the back of Sayuri’s thigh through the opening in her kimono. The cook is told to cut exactly there. When the mark is mistaken for a pair of lips, Mameha wipes it off after the cook confirms she can locate the spot, and the preparation continues.

Sayuri faints at the sight of blood. She remembers having fainted after cutting her lip on the day she first met Mr. Tanaka, and this earlier reaction anticipates her loss of awareness during the present scheme. She has no memory of being helped into the rickshaw or of most of the ride. Near the hospital, Mameha rocks her head to bring her attention back and explains that she must make the right impression: the usual advice to apprentice geishas, to impress other geishas rather than concern themselves with men, will not apply in her case.

Mameha supplies Sayuri with a cover story for the cut. She is to say she fell while trying to use the bathroom in her kimono and landed on something sharp; because she fainted, she supposedly does not know what it was. Mameha allows her to invent details, but insists that she sound childish and act helpless. The explanation is not an incidental excuse: it is a rehearsed part of the impression the pair intend Dr. Crab to receive.

Meeting Dr. Crab

At the hospital, Mameha maintains the performance by telling Sayuri to look innocent and weak. Dr. Crab enters, and his distinctive hunched shoulders, protruding elbows, and sideways-leading walk account for the nickname Sayuri uses for him. His manner is methodical: he closes the door carefully, checks the latch, changes his glasses, and smooths his coat before examining her. Mameha presents Sayuri as a promising young woman whose cut may bring the risk of a scar or infection, and says she thought he was the right person to treat her.

Dr. Crab cleans and dresses the cut, determining that it needs cream and a bandage and giving instructions for its care over the next few days. The encounter therefore does have a genuine medical outcome, even though the injury was arranged as an introduction. He expresses regret that Sayuri has damaged a fine kimono, but also welcomes the opportunity to meet her, explaining that Mameha knows he is interested in new faces.

The Introduction Becomes an Arrangement

Dr. Crab suggests that he may see Sayuri at the Ichiriki Teahouse. Mameha redirects the proposed meeting: Sayuri is, she says, a “special property” with more admirers than she can manage, so Mameha has kept her away from the Ichiriki as much as possible. She proposes instead that they visit him at the Shirae Teahouse. Dr. Crab agrees, consults a small book, and sets a meeting for two evenings later. The visit thus succeeds not only in making contact but in converting the hospital encounter into a planned social appointment on Mameha’s terms.

After they leave, Mameha points to a detail that confirms the encounter’s effect on him: while cleaning the blood from Sayuri’s leg, Dr. Crab’s forehead had been beaded with sweat, although the room was not warm. Sayuri had not noticed it, having kept her face turned away. Mameha treats the detail as evidence of Dr. Crab’s interest, linking the staged injury to the larger objective of making Sayuri memorable to a prospective admirer.

Significance

The episode shows Mameha managing Sayuri’s early career as a sequence of appearances that must be designed as carefully as the opportunity itself. The cut supplies a socially acceptable reason to meet Dr. Crab; the invented accident gives Sayuri a role to perform; and Mameha’s description of her as a desirable but carefully guarded prospect shapes how the doctor may pursue a further introduction. What begins as a medical appointment ends with a scheduled visit at the Shirae Teahouse.

The scene also distinguishes Sayuri’s bodily response from the composure Mameha wants her to display. Sayuri faints and loses part of the journey, while Mameha continues to direct the explanation and the performance around her. The strategy depends on Sayuri being presented as helpless, yet its larger purpose is to place her future in motion through deliberate social maneuvering. The detail of Dr. Crab’s sweat, noticed and interpreted by Mameha after the meeting, closes the episode with a small sign that the performance has attracted the attention it was designed to secure.