Granny’s death is an accidental electrocution that turns an ordinary seasonal change at the Nitta okiya into a household crisis, then into a conspicuous public funeral. Sayuri discovers the death while putting away summer underrobes, and the preparations that follow expose the labor, ritual obligations, and social performance surrounding a loss that cannot be kept private.

Discovery and Cause

The discovery comes during the change from lightweight summer underrobes to September’s unlined hitoe. Sayuri is carrying an armload through the entryway when she realizes something is wrong in Granny’s room and fetches Auntie. Auntie finds Granny dead on the floor. The seasonal change matters because Granny has begun using the okiya’s only electric space heater again, according to the calendar for clothing rather than the temperature outdoors. She used it every night outside the summer months, apparently attached to it after many cold nights in her life.

The accident grows out of Granny’s morning routine. She would wrap the heater’s cord around the appliance before pushing it against the wall; repeated exposure to the hot metal eventually burned through the cord, allowing the wire to touch it and electrify the heater. Police believed Granny was immobilized, and perhaps killed immediately, when she touched it. Her death is thus traced not to a sudden external catastrophe but to the accumulated damage of a familiar object used in a familiar way. The heater’s ordinary place in the household becomes the point at which routine and danger meet.

Funeral and Household Labor

For a week or two after the death, the household cleans the okiya and prepares it for visitors and funeral observances. The work includes setting out candles, meal-offering trays, lanterns at the entrance, tea stands, and trays for visitors’ money. In the account’s explanation of Shinto practice, death is the most impure event that can occur, so cleaning is part of the effort to prepare the house as well as a practical demand of the funeral.

The preparations place a heavy burden on the household. One evening the cook becomes ill; a doctor finds that she has slept no more than two hours, spent the day without sitting down, and eaten only a bowl of clear soup. Sayuri’s own assigned work is to escort visitors to the reception room and manage their shoes. Since she cannot reliably identify visitors from a brief look at their faces, she learns to remember their kimonos instead. The funeral’s scale is measured not only by its ceremonies, but by the repeated tasks through which the household receives and manages a stream of mourners.

Public Mourning and Social Display

Mother spends freely on funeral arrangements, including sutras to be chanted for Granny at Chion-in Temple and lotus-bud arrangements purchased from the undertaker. At first, Sayuri interprets this spending as evidence of Mother’s grief. She later understands it as preparation for the social scrutiny that comes with the funeral: people from across Gion are expected to visit the okiya and attend the service at the temple. The rites must therefore meet public expectations as well as mark a death.

For several days, visitors pass through the house in such numbers that Sayuri feels as if all of Gion has come. Mother and Auntie receive teahouse and okiya mistresses, maids who knew Granny, shopkeepers, wig makers, hairdressers, and dozens of geisha. Older geisha remember Granny from her working years, while younger ones may not have known of her; some come out of respect for Mother, and others because of their ties to Hatsumomo. The funeral gathers people with different relations to the deceased and the household, making mourning a community event whose attendance also reinforces the okiya’s place in Gion.

Mameha’s Arrival

Among the visitors, Sayuri notices a woman whose attendant suggests the expense and status of a teahouse or okiya mistress. Her black crested robe is appropriate to the occasion, but its green-and-gold grasses sweeping around the hem make it especially memorable to Sayuri. The visitor’s face, which reminds Sayuri of a Heian-period courtesan in a scroll in Auntie’s room, deepens the sense of her distinction. Sayuri then recognizes her as Mameha, the geisha whose kimono Hatsumomo had made Sayuri ruin.

The encounter connects the funeral’s public gathering to Sayuri’s earlier history with Hatsumomo’s scheme and introduces Mameha into the household at a consequential moment. The scene is organized around recognition: Sayuri first records the visitor through clothes and appearance, the method her reception duties have taught her, and only then understands who has entered the okiya. Granny’s death brings Gion to the house; within that crowd, Sayuri identifies a figure already linked to the conflict that has shaped her life there.

Narrative Significance

The account sets domestic routine, ritual, and social obligation beside one another without treating them as separate worlds. A heater kept for comfort becomes lethal through long use; death requires the house to be cleaned and remade for ceremony; and the funeral’s meaning is expressed through both personal service and public display. Mother’s spending initially appears to disclose private feeling, but Sayuri’s later understanding adds another cause: the okiya must present itself properly before Gion.

The event also marks a change in Sayuri’s attention. She arrives at the visitors’ faces through the practical problem of matching them with their shoes, then learns to read the kimonos that distinguish them. That trained observation makes Mameha recognizable within the funeral crowd and carries the narrative from mourning into the next stage of Sayuri’s story. Granny’s death is therefore both a loss within the household and the occasion through which a socially important connection reappears.