Sayuri feigns an injury to meet Dr. Crab, a carefully staged introduction in which an apprentice’s performance extends from the banquet room to a hospital examination. Mameha arranges for Sayuri to receive a real cut, then coaches her to appear helpless and innocent so that Dr. Crab will notice her. The plan succeeds: he treats her, welcomes the chance to meet her, and suggests seeing her again at the Ichiriki Teahouse. Yet Sayuri’s faintness and distress make the encounter more than a polished act; her body cannot simply be made to follow the script.

Purpose and Preparation

Mameha leads Sayuri to the okiya where she had lived before gaining her independence, intending to see a doctor before his scheduled departure. She tells Sayuri plainly that the cut is a pretext for meeting a particular doctor and that the man is a doctor. Sayuri suggests pretending to have a stomachache, but the group laughs at her proposal; the plan instead requires a visible wound.

Mameha has a maid fetch a red pigment stick used for shading lips. She marks a spot high on the back of Sayuri’s thigh through the opening in her kimono and directs the cook to cut there. When the first mark looks like lips, Mameha wipes it away so the cook can locate the intended spot. She tells Sayuri to lie still and directs the cook to begin with the shallowest cut, with the option of making it deeper if necessary. The arrangement is controlled down to the placement and appearance of the injury, but Sayuri has no real choice about whether to take part.

The Performance and the Journey

The cut and the sight of blood overwhelm Sayuri. She recalls having fainted after cutting her lip on the day she met Mr. Tanaka; seeing blood run down her leg again leaves her with no memory of being put into the rickshaw or of most of the trip to the hospital. Mameha has to rock her head to bring her attention back as they near their destination.

Mameha explains that Sayuri’s future depends on two men and that she is about to meet one of them. She tells her to make the right impression, then corrects Sayuri’s attempt to act dead: the goal is to look helpless. Mameha demonstrates a dazed expression, with unfocused eyes and a hand held to the cheek, and makes Sayuri imitate it until satisfied. At the hospital entrance, Mameha adjusts Sayuri’s robe to keep her appearance attractive. The performance is therefore not a spontaneous display of weakness but a rehearsed presentation, shaped by an older geisha who understands how a prospective patron or influential guest might read it.

Meeting Dr. Crab

At the hospital, Mameha says that Dr. Crab is expecting them. In a dusty room furnished with a wooden table and a folding screen, she reminds Sayuri to look innocent and weak. Dr. Crab enters with hunched shoulders and elbows that jut outward, moving with a sideways, crablike gait that gives him the nickname Sayuri uses. His careful habits make him seem methodical: he closes the door quietly, checks that it is shut, changes his glasses, smooths his coat, and nods to the patient.

Mameha presents the wound as an unfortunate accident and emphasizes the risk of scars or infection. Dr. Crab asks Sayuri how it happened and examines the cut on the back of her thigh. Sayuri, still performing weakness, offers a fabricated account: she says that after drinking tea she urgently needed the toilet, struggled with her kimono, lost her balance, and struck her leg against something sharp. Mameha helps steer the explanation when the doctor’s questions threaten to expose its inconsistencies. The exchange shows how the plan depends not just on a convincing wound but on Mameha’s ability to manage the story around it.

Dr. Crab cleans and treats the cut, concluding that it needs only cream and a bandage and giving instructions for its care. He apologizes that Sayuri has ruined a fine kimono, but says he is happy to have met her and that Mameha knows he is always interested in new faces. He then suggests that he might see her soon at the Ichiriki Teahouse. The appointment thus achieves its immediate aim: Sayuri has been introduced, and the doctor has indicated willingness to encounter her again.

Significance and Limits of the Act

The scene makes apprenticeship look like a kind of directed emotional labor. Sayuri must present vulnerability as a means of securing notice, while Mameha coaches her expression, appearance, and account of events. Later, Mameha points out that Dr. Crab’s forehead was beaded with sweat even though the room was not warm. The detail provides her with evidence that the examination affected him, while also confirming that she has been watching his response as closely as she has managed Sayuri’s performance.

But the performance never fully contains the reality it stages. Sayuri’s faintness is not merely an act: blood has already caused her to lose consciousness, and she has no recollection of much of the journey. At the hospital Mameha can train her to look helpless, but the actual distress behind that appearance is part of what makes the scene possible. The encounter therefore marks both the effectiveness and the cost of Mameha’s strategy: a contrived injury opens a professional and social door, while Sayuri’s own bodily response makes the required performance precarious.