Suruya is a three-room inn in northwest Kyoto where Sayuri goes on General Tottori’s instructions on the first night after their sake ceremony. The setting’s marked shabbiness contrasts with her accustomed luxury and frames the beginning of a patronage arrangement that becomes an unpleasant routine.

Setting and First Visit

Sayuri and General Tottori drink sake together in September, when she is eighteen, at the Ichiriki Teahouse. The ceremony recalls two earlier occasions in her life: the sake ceremony with Mameha when Mameha became her older sister, and the one with Dr. Crab shortly before Sayuri’s mizuage. In the weeks afterward, people congratulate Mother on having made a favorable alliance with the General.

That same night, Sayuri follows the General’s instructions to Suruya. The inn has only three rooms, and its condition surprises her because she is used to more lavish surroundings. The room feels neglected and uncomfortable; a patch of crumbling plaster near the floor and an old man reading aloud in the adjoining room sharpen the contrast with the luxury she expects.

The Encounter and Its Immediate Effect

The General initially does little beyond turning on the radio and drinking beer. After going downstairs to bathe, he returns and gives Sayuri instructions. She is inexperienced with a man’s nakedness and finds the encounter strange; rather than the terror she remembers from her mizuage with Dr. Crab, she feels a vague queasiness. The General leaves both the radio and the lights on, so that the room’s plainness remains visible.

Suruya thus makes the difference between the two experiences concrete without making the inn itself a place of refuge. For Sayuri, the room’s drabness and the General’s matter-of-fact manner form the setting for a relationship entered as an alliance, not a romance.

Recurrence and Narrative Significance

Over the following months, Sayuri’s queasiness fades, and her meetings with the General become an unpleasant twice-weekly routine. The narrative moves beyond the inn, but the first visit establishes the character of that arrangement: a ceremony publicly praised as favorable gives way, in private, to discomfort and repetition. Suruya’s cramped, shabby rooms supply a pointed counter-image to the status and luxury associated with Sayuri’s life in Gion.