Mother (8b146989)

Mother, the head of the Nitta okiya, turns the language of family into an economic system: the girls’ training and care become debts, their earnings flow to the house, and adoption determines who controls the proceeds. Her authority survives the collapse of the geisha districts and the disruptions of war, but it depends on keeping Sayuri within the Nitta household. When Sayuri finally leaves for New York, that dependence is broken.

Identity and the Okiya’s Debts

Mother’s household is at once a home and a business. A girl taken into the okiya owes it not only for meals, lessons, and medical fees, but also for the money spent to acquire her. Sayuri learns that she must repay these costs once she begins working as a geisha, while Mother keeps the accounts in small books. The arrangement makes the prospect of future earnings part of the household’s present-day calculation: care is provided, but it is recorded as an obligation to the institution that provides it.

That system shapes Mother’s judgment of potential investments. When Mameha offers to train Sayuri as her younger sister, Mother points out that Sayuri’s debts may grow before they diminish and that a celebrated older sister will claim a larger share of her earnings than an ordinary one. Mother cannot pay Mameha’s usual fee up front, so she proposes a delayed return: if Sayuri repays her debts by twenty, Mother will give Mameha the remaining amount she would ordinarily have earned, plus another thirty percent. Her offer is both a wager on Sayuri’s future and a demonstration of how the okiya’s finances determine access to training.

Adoption and the Control of Sayuri’s Earnings

The decisive financial turn comes after Sayuri’s mizuage sets a record. Mother adopts her the following week, after Sayuri’s name has already changed from Sakamoto Chiyo to Sayuri. Adoption extinguishes Sayuri’s outstanding debts because the okiya absorbs them, but it also makes the okiya the recipient of her profits. Mother’s decision is therefore not simply an act of kinship: it redirects the proceeds of the mizuage and establishes the terms on which Sayuri will continue to earn for the household.

The same logic appears when General Tottori becomes Sayuri’s danna. His support makes little visible difference to Sayuri’s daily rounds of Gion, and he does not provide the lavish gifts or leisure she might have expected from a wealthy businessman or aristocrat. Nevertheless, he covers expenses including lessons, registration, and medical care. His military-procurement position also gives the okiya access to help unavailable from an ordinary patron: when Auntie falls ill, a military-hospital doctor visits and supplies medicine that cures her. For Mother, the arrangement’s value lies less in display than in dependable expenses covered, scarce goods delivered, and access to practical assistance.

War, Trade, and the Return to Gion

When Sayuri is sent to live with the Arashino family during the war, Mother and Auntie remain on a small farm west of Kyoto and make a living selling kimonos, artwork, and Japanese swords to American soldiers. Mother’s wartime business extends beyond those direct sales. She grows richer by buying and selling other people’s heirlooms, and Mr. Arashino asks Sayuri to contact her whenever he must sell a kimono for cash. He hopes Mother will hold the garment until he can buy it back; instead, she repeatedly claims she cannot find the pieces. Her ability to profit from others’ distress becomes a means of survival, but the transactions leave Mr. Arashino’s hope of recovering his collection unanswered.

Sayuri’s own wartime life makes the contrast concrete. She works with the Arashinos sewing parachutes, sleeps on futons in their workshop, and endures hunger and cold. Their grandson Juntaro’s hunger sometimes prompts Mr. Arashino to sell another kimono. While Sayuri experiences deprivation at close quarters, Mother’s trade in the same kinds of objects increases her wealth. The contrast links the okiya’s prewar system of debts and earnings to the wartime circulation of possessions: a kimono can be a store of value, a necessity sold for food, or an heirloom whose recovery depends on Mother’s cooperation.

Although the geisha districts reopen within months of Japan’s surrender, Sayuri remains away until Mother summons her. Mother continues to sell goods to American soldiers, and Sayuri’s exclusion from Gion lasts for nearly five years. When Sayuri writes to her, she does not know whether the letter changes Mother’s mind or whether Mother was already preparing to reopen the okiya. A week later Auntie arrives at the Arashinos’ door carrying coal and food as thanks for their care of Sayuri. Sayuri returns to Gion the next day, and she, Mother, and Auntie begin restoring the neglected house. Mother works alongside them; the okiya’s revival requires labor as well as the authority to call Sayuri back.

Sayuri’s Career and Mother’s Authority

After Iwamura Electric’s fortunes recover, Mother reads the news as a change in the value of Sayuri’s prospective patronage. She tells Sayuri that Nobu has proposed to become her danna and that she had been considering rejecting him because of his uncertain future. The company’s improved position alters her assessment, and she presents Nobu’s proposal as an opportunity Sayuri should welcome. Her response again exposes the financial calculations within the household: a patron’s appeal is inseparable from his capacity to offer security and resources.

That calculation also governs Mother’s negotiations with the Chairman. Sayuri’s relationship with him threatens the bond between the Chairman and Nobu, and the Chairman wants her out of Gion and beyond Nobu’s sight. He does not intend to marry her, and a separate teahouse or inn would have been one possible way to remove her from the district. Mother refuses to let Sayuri leave the Nitta family, because the okiya would lose the revenue from the relationship. The Chairman ultimately agrees to pay the household a substantial monthly sum in exchange for allowing Sayuri to end her geisha career. Sayuri remains in the okiya but stops attending school, making formal rounds, and entertaining at night. Mother retains the income and household tie even as Sayuri’s public working life ends.

Departure and the Limits of Her Control

Mother’s authority reaches its limit when Sayuri moves to New York. She tries to make Sayuri’s new business an extension of the Nitta okiya, but the Chairman refuses, and Sayuri’s departure breaks her ties to Mother. The Chairman sends two accountants to ensure Mother gives Sayuri every yen due to her. Where adoption had once moved Sayuri’s earnings into the household, migration now lets her leave its financial reach.

Sayuri establishes a modest teahouse for Japanese businessmen and politicians traveling through the United States. It becomes successful, draws geisha from Gion to work there, and is sometimes visited by Mameha. The contrast between the two arrangements is sharp: Mother’s effort to preserve the Nitta okiya’s claim is defeated, while Sayuri builds an enterprise of her own. After Mother’s death, the Nitta okiya is torn down and replaced by a small concrete building with a bookshop below and two apartments above. The house that once converted training, debt, patronage, and adoption into continuing income does not endure; Mother’s legacy is therefore both the economic system she maintained and its eventual loss of control over Sayuri.