Sayuri’s return to Gion

Sayuri’s return to Gion is both a homecoming and a re-entry into a changed world: after years away during the war, she resumes life as a geisha, but does so through a neglected okiya, altered customs, and a proposal from Nobu that ties her return to Iwamura Electric’s prospects. The return is not simply a personal decision. Sayuri has been waiting for Mother to reopen the house, while Nobu insists that she come back and offers her a role in his company’s recovery.

The decision to return

During their reunion, Nobu complains that Sayuri’s letters sound like poems and tell him little of what he wants to know, especially when she is coming back to Gion. He has telephoned the Ichiriki every month to ask after her and has worried that she might be ill. Sayuri tells him that she thinks of Gion every day, but the decision is not hers alone: she has been waiting for Mother to reopen the okiya and is as eager as Nobu for her return.

Nobu has little patience for that qualification. He says he has waited six months and argues that Sayuri should tell Mother the time has come; if he says he wants her back in Gion, he means that she should pack her bags and go. Sayuri defends Mother against his judgment, pointing out that she is making a good living selling souvenirs to American soldiers. Nobu counters that the soldiers will not stay forever, and presses Sayuri to tell Mother that he wants her back. His appeal makes clear that he sees the return not as a distant hope but as an action Sayuri should help bring about.

A task for Iwamura Electric

Nobu gives Sayuri a small piece of concrete and explains that he wants her to help turn it into a lovely jewel she can keep. The object makes his proposal tangible: it is not yet a jewel, but material awaiting transformation. He says that he has a task for her in Gion and that, if it succeeds as he hopes, Iwamura Electric will be back on its feet in about a year. When he asks for the concrete back and replaces it with a jewel, he says, the time will have come for him to become her danna.

The promise binds several things that might otherwise seem separate: Sayuri’s return to the district, her usefulness to Nobu’s company, the company’s hoped-for recovery, and Nobu’s expectation of becoming her patron. Sayuri feels cold at the proposal but shows no sign of it, answering by asking what task she could undertake that would help Iwamura Electric. Her response keeps the request open without accepting the personal future Nobu attaches to its success.

Reopening the okiya

While living with the Arashino family, Sayuri writes to Mother at night by the light of tadon burning beneath the dye vats in the annex. She does not know whether her letter changes Mother’s mind or whether Mother is already ready to return. A week later, Auntie arrives at the Arashinos’ door carrying coal and food as thanks for their kindness toward Sayuri. The next day, Sayuri says a tearful farewell and goes back to Gion with Auntie and Mother to put the okiya in order.

The house bears the marks of years of neglect. The three spend four or five days tackling its worst problems: dust lies thick over the woodwork, dead rodents have to be fished out of the well, and birds have torn up the tatami in Mother’s upstairs room to make nests in the alcove. Mother works alongside the others because the household can afford only a cook and one adult maid, in addition to Etsuko, a young girl whose father had employed Mother and Auntie on his farm. At nine, Etsuko is the same age Sayuri was when she first came to Kyoto. Her fearful attention as Sayuri prepares to go out recalls Sayuri’s own childhood watching Hatsumomo, placing the labor of the return beside the cycle through which a new girl may enter the same world.

Reappearing as a geisha

Once the okiya is livable, Sayuri begins visiting people in Gion, starting with Mameha. Returned a year earlier, Mameha lives in a one-room apartment above a pharmacy near the Gion Shrine and has no danna to pay for a larger home. The reunion makes the years of separation visible in both women: Mameha is startled by Sayuri’s protruding cheekbones, while Sayuri notices that Mameha’s neck looks older and that lingering pain from teeth loosened during the war affects the way she holds her mouth.

About a week after Sayuri comes back, she prepares for her first appearance as a geisha again. The day takes her from hairdresser to fortune-teller; she soaks her hands to remove their remaining stains and searches Gion for makeup. Nearing thirty, she is no longer expected to wear white makeup except on special occasions. Instead, she spends half an hour at her makeup stand trying Western-style face powders to disguise how thin she has become. Mr. Bekku dresses her, and Etsuko watches with astonishment. That look convinces Sayuri more than her own reflection that she has once again become recognizable as a geisha.

A changed Gion

Sayuri sets out on a snowy evening under a lacquered umbrella, wearing a kimono shawl. The snow makes her difficult to recognize, as on an earlier visit when she had looked like a peasant. She recognizes only about half the geisha she passes. Those who had lived in Gion before the war give her a small courteous bow even when they do not seem to know who she is; those who had not been there before the war offer no more than a nod. The gestures mark the return as entry into a community reshaped by absence and time, rather than a simple restoration of what was lost.

The Ichiriki, where Sayuri expects to find soldiers and fears what the new entertainment customs may have made of the district, surprises her. Its entrance is lined with officers’ shiny black shoes, yet the teahouse seems quieter than it did when she was an apprentice. Nobu has not arrived when she is shown to a large room on the ground floor. Ordinarily, a geisha would wait in the maids’ quarters rather than let a man find her idle; Sayuri does not mind waiting for Nobu, and privately values the chance to be alone in the beautiful room. Her return has brought her back to Gion’s formal spaces, but neither their social codes nor their atmosphere are exactly as she remembers them.

Resumption and consequence

The return restores Sayuri’s professional presence: she makes the okiya habitable, resumes her ties with Mameha and prepares herself to appear before Gion again as a geisha. At the same time, the sequence gives that restoration an unresolved personal direction. Nobu’s concrete fragment promises a jewel only after Sayuri’s task succeeds, and he places his hoped-for danna relationship at the end of that transformation. Sayuri has returned because the okiya reopens and because she wants to be back; what Nobu asks of her makes the homecoming a new commitment with economic and intimate consequences still to come.