Granny dies by electrocution

Granny dies by electrocution when the cord of her electric heater wears through and turns the appliance into a lethal hazard. Her death is both a domestic emergency and a public occasion: it exposes the danger embedded in an ordinary household routine, brings Gion into the Nitta okiya to pay respects, and reshapes the household’s rooms and apprenticeships. For Sayuri, the aftermath sharpens an already painful sense that opportunity is being opened for someone else.

The accident at home

Several months after Sayuri’s earlier experiences in the okiya, she is carrying seasonal underrobes through the entryway when a foul smell coming from Granny’s room makes her drop the clothes. She runs upstairs for Auntie, who hurries down and finds Granny dead. Sayuri does not see Granny’s body; from the doorway, she sees only her legs. The discovery is sudden, and the cause lies in an object that had long seemed part of ordinary life in the household.

Granny owns the okiya’s only electric space heater and uses it every night except in summer. With September’s arrival, she has resumed using it, following the calendar even when the weather itself is not necessarily cool. She is deeply attached to the heater, a habit connected in Sayuri’s account to the many nights Granny had spent suffering from cold. The seasonal return to its use thus brings an established domestic routine back into play.

The fatal failure develops gradually. Granny ordinarily wraps the heater’s cord around it before pushing the appliance against the wall. Over time, the hot metal burns through the cord until the wire touches the casing and electrifies the heater. The police conclude that touching it would have immobilized Granny immediately and may have killed her at once. As she slides to the floor, her face comes to rest against the heated surface. The account identifies no deliberate act behind her death: worn insulation, repeated handling, and a familiar morning routine converge in an accident.

Death and household response

For a week or two after the discovery, the household is occupied with cleaning and funeral preparations. The work has a religious as well as practical dimension: in Shinto, death is treated as the greatest impurity, so the house must be thoroughly cleaned. The family sets out candles, meal offerings, lanterns at the entrance, tea stands, and trays for money brought by visitors. Their grief and their obligations are therefore lived out through an exacting sequence of domestic and ceremonial tasks.

The preparations take a physical toll. One evening, the cook becomes ill and a doctor is summoned; it turns out that she has slept only two hours the previous night, remained on her feet throughout the day, and eaten just one bowl of clear soup. The incident conveys how much labor the mourning period demands from the household, beyond the visible arrangements for visitors and the funeral.

Mother spends money on sutra chanting on Granny’s behalf at Chion-in Temple and on lotus-bud arrangements from the undertaker, despite the Great Depression. Sayuri initially wonders whether this expenditure demonstrates Mother’s depth of feeling. She later understands it as also a matter of public presentation: nearly all of Gion is expected to visit the okiya and attend the funeral. The spending and ceremony fulfill social obligations as well as commemorating Granny.

Gion gathers to pay respects

For several days, visitors stream through the okiya, where they are served tea and sweets. Mother and Auntie receive mistresses of teahouses and okiya, maids who knew Granny, shopkeepers, wig makers, hairdressers, and dozens of geisha. Older geisha remember Granny from her working days; younger ones who never knew her attend out of respect for Mother, while some also have connections with Hatsumomo. The gathering makes the funeral a measure of Granny’s place in Gion, but also of the networks and obligations that continue to organize the district.

Sayuri’s assigned task is to usher visitors into the reception room and keep their shoes in order. Because she cannot simply look directly into each visitor’s face without seeming rude, she learns to identify people by their kimono. The practical difficulty turns observation into a skill: a quick look at clothing can help her connect a visitor to the shoes left in the entryway and return them at the right moment. In the crowded house, the garments become a means of recognizing people without openly scrutinizing them.

One visitor stands out to Sayuri through her attire. She wears a simple black robe appropriate to the occasion, patterned with green and gold grasses sweeping around its hem, and has brought a maid. Sayuri takes these details as signs that the visitor may be a teahouse or okiya mistress, since few geisha could afford such an expense. When the woman looks at the small Shinto shrine in the entryway, Sayuri glimpses her face and thinks of an old scroll in Auntie’s room depicting a Heian-period courtesan. The moment shows how the funeral’s rituals and the visitors’ appearance also become part of Sayuri’s attentive education in Gion’s social world.

Funeral and reorganization

About a week after Granny’s death, a fortune-teller selects the morning for the funeral. Once it is over, the okiya begins to return to order, but its arrangements have changed. Auntie moves downstairs into Granny’s former room, and Pumpkin takes the second-floor room that Auntie had occupied. Two energetic, middle-aged maids arrive the following week. Although the household now has fewer family members, Mother has the house staffed more fully because Granny had disliked crowding and the okiya had long been understaffed.

Pumpkin’s responsibilities change as well. Her chores are removed so that she can practice the arts she will need as a geisha. She is a slow learner and needs additional time, so the unusual opportunity is meant to help her prepare for apprenticeship. Sayuri watches her practice shamisen for hours on the wooden walkway, sometimes with her tongue protruding in concentration. Pumpkin gives Sayuri small smiles, and Sayuri recognizes her as sweet and kind; nevertheless, seeing the training time allotted to Pumpkin is difficult for her.

That contrast gives the aftermath a consequence beyond mourning and household administration. Sayuri is waiting for a chance to resume her own prospects, uncertain whether the small opening she needs will ever arrive. As Pumpkin receives a deliberate path toward apprenticeship, Sayuri feels that the door of opportunity is being held open for someone else. The death that rearranges the okiya thus also makes its unequal distribution of attention and possibility newly visible.

Significance in Sayuri’s story

Granny’s death is presented through the material circumstances of everyday life rather than through an account of her final thoughts. A heater used each winter, a cord wrapped around its body, and a household governed by seasonal routines together explain the accident. The heater’s failure interrupts the ordinary relation between person and appliance: an object relied upon for warmth becomes dangerous through the very habits of its use. The causal detail gives the death its suddenness without requiring Sayuri to witness more than she can bear to describe.

The aftermath moves from private loss to public ceremony and then to the redistribution of domestic space and labor. Gion’s visitors make the funeral a social event; its preparations place pressure on the household’s workers; and its conclusion changes who lives where and what Pumpkin is expected to do. For Sayuri, that final change matters especially because it arrives while she is still waiting for an opportunity of her own. Granny’s death therefore marks not only an ending but a reordering of the household in which Sayuri’s hope and frustration continue to take shape.