Meyu

Mameha is Sayuri’s mentor and strategist, shaping both her entrance into Gion’s social world and her prospects within its patronage economy. Faced with Hatsumomo’s interference, she turns an apparent vulnerability—Nobu’s interest in Sayuri—into a possible advantage in the contest for Sayuri’s mizuage.

Identity and Role

Mameha is an established geisha whose relationships across Gion give her practical influence. She introduces Sayuri as her younger sister to the mistresses of teahouses and okiya, making the new kinship legible to the people whose recognition matters to a young apprentice’s career. Her mentorship is not simply instruction in performance: it includes building a network, anticipating rivalries, and arranging the conditions under which Sayuri might become financially valuable.

Establishing Sayuri in Gion

On the day of Sayuri’s first engagement as a novice geisha, Mameha spends the afternoon taking her around Gion. They make perhaps twenty stops at okiya and teahouses, though they visit only the fifteen or sixteen teahouses where Mameha customarily entertains and only okiya with which she has a relationship. At each introduction, Mameha speaks to the mistress and presents Sayuri as her new younger sister; Sayuri bows and asks the mistress’s favor. The repeated, formal encounters turn Mameha’s personal sponsorship into public recognition.

The work is physically taxing. The visits are brief, but after less than an hour Sayuri is already exhausted, and by the time they finish, shortly after three, she longs to return to the okiya and sleep. Instead, Mameha has planned her first evening engagement as a novice. She sends Sayuri to bathe because she has been perspiring and her makeup has not held up. The succession from introductions to an evening engagement shows how Mameha’s guidance places Sayuri quickly into the demanding routine of her new status.

Resistance and Strategic Reversal

Mameha recognizes that Hatsumomo’s obstruction threatens the future she had hoped for Sayuri. She had expected to see her become a popular young apprentice, but admits that Hatsumomo has gotten in their way. The obstacle is not merely personal hostility: Hatsumomo’s position in the household could make Sayuri’s future insecure, especially if the household chose to adopt Pumpkin and leave Sayuri exposed to expulsion.

Mameha does not answer that pressure with open confrontation alone. After the sumo tournament, she says that one wrestler has given her a marvelous idea: Hatsumomo has been thrown off balance without realizing it. Mameha refuses to disclose the plan, even to her own maid, but tells Sayuri to keep Nobu interested because everything depends on him and on another man. Her secrecy underscores the deliberate, staged quality of her counterstrategy: Sayuri is given a role to perform before she is told the full design.

Mizuage and the Bidding Plan

Mameha’s idea draws on her own mizuage. Dr. Crab once paid a record sum for it—perhaps ¥7,000 or ¥8,000—after competing with the businessman Fujikado. Such bidding was unusual in Gion, where men generally preferred to reach agreement rather than offend one another. Fujikado’s distance from Gion and Dr. Crab’s hostility toward self-made men helped make their rivalry possible.

When Mameha saw Nobu’s interest in Sayuri at the sumo tournament, she recognized a parallel: Nobu, like Fujikado, was self-made, and Dr. Crab might find him repellent. Sayuri was unlikely to become famous by the ordinary route while Hatsumomo kept harassing her. Mameha instead sees a chance that Nobu and Dr. Crab might both find Sayuri appealing and compete over her mizuage, raising the price enough to help repay her debts. Hatsumomo welcomes Nobu’s interest without understanding that the very attention she takes as a weakness may increase Sayuri’s value.

This plan also explains Mameha’s insistence that Dr. Crab’s affections must be regained. Nobu might make an offer, but the contest requires a second interested man; Mameha tells Sayuri that a man does not cultivate a relationship with a fifteen-year-old apprentice without having her mizuage in mind. Her strategy turns social attention into economic leverage, while revealing the severe terms under which Sayuri’s advancement is being negotiated. The scheme is still prospective in the evidence: Mameha has identified a route to a higher price, not a completed sale or guaranteed victory over Hatsumomo.