Mameha introduces Sayuri to the painter Uchida Kosaburo

Mameha introduces Sayuri to the painter Uchida Kosaburo as part of her effort to build Sayuri’s standing and make use of her unusual eyes. Their first visit does not produce the immediate recognition Mameha hoped for: Uchida is absorbed by his disorderly studio and his own bad temper. Yet the encounter ends with an unplanned image of Sayuri in the sunset that Uchida later identified as the inspiration for a famous painting, and it leads, after a delay, to Sayuri posing for him through the winter and in later years.

The visit to Uchida’s studio

Mameha tells Sayuri that Uchida is a marvelous artist who will take a liking to her eyes, while warning that he can become distracted and that his studio is a mess. The journey to his house takes them through a small alley and a bright red Shinto gate, past pavilions and up stone steps under autumn-colored trees. Sayuri experiences the cool air rising from the steps as a passage into another world; the sound she first takes for the tide is Uchida sweeping water from the steps.

Uchida’s welcome confirms Mameha’s warning. He tells her to sweep the steps and complains that a mouse has died, leaving his house smelling like a coffin. Mameha understands his temper as something that must be released rather than soothed. She explains to Sayuri that when Uchida’s work goes badly, he needs to be made angry, like a boil being lanced; otherwise, he may turn to drink and worsen his mood. The mice, she adds, are not pets: they eat the ink sticks he leaves out and die from poisoning.

Inside, Uchida displays a sketch of a woman with an umbrella, marred by the paw prints of his ink-covered cat. He says he brought the cat in to deal with the mice and now has half a mind to throw it out. Mameha praises the paw prints as an improvement, then invites Sayuri to agree. Sayuri initially hesitates, seeing Uchida’s distress, but recognizes that Mameha is using the ruined picture to provoke him as she had described. She enthusiastically calls the prints attractive and suggests the cat may be an artist. The incident shows Mameha making Sayuri a participant in her tactics rather than merely a visitor to the studio.

Anger, departure, and the image in the sunset

Mameha later declines to tidy Uchida’s house, saying she would not be a friend if she left without straightening it. Uchida storms outside, kicks the broom she left against a tree, and nearly slips on the wet steps. Mameha and Sayuri spend the next half hour setting the studio in order. When Uchida returns, his mood has improved, though he remains uneasy and avoids looking directly at them, chewing at the mole by the corner of his mouth.

As the light fades, Mameha makes a final attempt to direct Uchida’s attention to Sayuri, asking whether he thinks she is pretty and whether he has even bothered to look at her. He barely glances at her. The visit appears to have failed: Mameha is disappointed, and the two women rise to leave. Outside, however, Sayuri pauses to look at the sunset. Its orange light seems to make her hands glow, and she raises them to study them. Mameha thinks Sayuri is calling her attention to the sky; Uchida, standing in the doorway, is instead fixed on Sayuri, studying her with concentrated attention.

Sayuri later recalls that Uchida insisted his famous ink painting of a young woman in a kimono, rapt and bright-eyed, came from what he saw that afternoon. She remains skeptical that such a beautiful painting could have come from the simple sight of a girl looking at her hands in the sunset. The contrast between Uchida’s claim and Sayuri’s modest recollection preserves the moment’s ambiguity: the artist turns an unplanned gesture into an origin story for a work, while the person at its center cannot fully recognize herself in that transformation.

Delay and renewed approach

Uchida’s attention does not immediately turn into an invitation. Several months pass after Mameha and Sayuri’s visit, and neither he nor Dr. Crab sends word. Mameha has advised waiting rather than inventing an excuse to approach them again, but eventually her patience gives way and she checks on Uchida. She learns that his cat had been bitten by a badger and died of infection a few days after their visit, sending him into another drinking spell. Mameha visits for several days to cheer him up.

When Uchida’s mood begins to improve, Mameha makes a second, more deliberate approach. She dresses Sayuri in an ice-blue kimono embroidered at the hem with multicolored ribbons, adds only a touch of Western-style makeup to accentuate her features, and sends her with a pearl-white kitten. The gift answers the earlier loss of Uchida’s cat, but it does not itself command his interest: he pays little attention to the kitten and instead squints at Sayuri, shifting his head from side to side. A few days later, he asks her to model in his studio.

Modeling and artistic significance

Mameha sends Sayuri to the studio accompanied by her maid Tatsumi and instructs her not to speak to Uchida. Tatsumi spends the afternoon nodding off in a drafty corner while Uchida moves Sayuri from place to place, mixes inks frantically, paints briefly on rice paper, and then repositions her. The carefully managed visit becomes an ongoing working arrangement, though not a glamorous one. Sayuri later recalls long, uncomfortable stretches of sitting, thirst, and Uchida’s refusal to offer her anything to drink. When she brings her own tea in a sealed jar, he moves it across the room so it will not distract him.

The discipline of silence continues even when it becomes difficult. On a bitter afternoon in mid-February, Uchida sits directly before Sayuri, staring at her eyes while chewing the mole at the corner of his mouth. He repeatedly grinds ink into shades of blue and gray, rejects each mixture, and carries it outside to spill into the snow. His frustration rises as he studies her, until he finally sends her away. Sayuri does not hear from him for more than two weeks and later learns that he has fallen into another drinking spell; Mameha blames her for allowing his anger to reach that point. The episode echoes the first visit’s lesson about Uchida’s volatility, but also complicates Mameha’s method: the effort to draw out his artistic attention depends on Sayuri’s restraint, while the consequences of his moods remain difficult to control.

Uchida’s relationship with Sayuri is thus both artistic and asymmetrical. He selects her as a subject and directs her movements and silence; she experiences the work as waiting, thirst, and discomfort rather than glamour. At the same time, his attention to her eyes and the sunset image connects the initial introduction to the later sessions. The encounter that began with a cat’s ruined paw-print sketch eventually leads to a sustained period of modeling, while the painting’s remembered origin remains suspended between Uchida’s artistic claim and Sayuri’s doubt.