Mameha devises a bidding contest for Sayuri’s mizuage

Mameha devises a bidding contest for Sayuri’s mizuage as a way to convert two men’s interest in the young apprentice into a financial advantage. The scheme answers Sayuri’s accumulated obligations and Hatsumomo’s efforts to impede her, but it also makes the contradictions of geisha patronage stark: gifts, professional opportunity, sexual access, and economic survival are entangled, while Sayuri’s feelings do not determine the terms of the bargain.

The economic problem behind the plan

Mameha explains the danna system to Sayuri through the wardrobe she can afford: many of her kimono were bought by her wealthy patron, and that material support helps make her more successful than Hatsumomo, who has gone years without a danna. For a geisha, a patron is not a husband; geisha who marry no longer continue in the profession. Mameha’s own costly wardrobe therefore supplies a practical lesson in the economic structure Sayuri is entering: professional standing requires expensive clothing, and patronage can finance it.

The mizuage offers a more immediate route to the money Sayuri needs. Mameha tells her that Dr. Crab likes young apprentices like Sayuri, having once paid a record sum for Mameha’s own mizuage. The earlier contest had drawn two wealthy bidders, Dr. Crab and the businessman Fujikado. Their competition was unusual in Gion, where men generally knew one another and preferred to reach agreement rather than openly compete. Fujikado’s distance from Gion and Dr. Crab’s disdain for self-made businessmen made that contest possible, and its high price showed Mameha what rivalry could achieve.

Sayuri’s circumstances seem less favorable at first. She has not gained the fame that might naturally command a high price, and Hatsumomo’s hostility threatens to keep her from becoming popular. Mameha nevertheless sees an opening when Nobu appears interested in Sayuri. Because Nobu resembles Fujikado in being self-made, Mameha judges that Dr. Crab will find him particularly objectionable. If both men want Sayuri’s mizuage, each may be driven to outbid the other. Hatsumomo welcomes Nobu’s attention without recognizing that it may increase the value of the very transaction Mameha is planning.

Building the bidders’ interest

The scheme depends on Dr. Crab’s continued interest as well as Nobu’s. Mameha warns that without the Doctor, Nobu could offer whatever he wished, assuming he wanted to bid at all. In her view, a man would not cultivate a relationship with a fifteen-year-old apprentice unless he had her mizuage in mind. Sayuri finds this reasoning painful, but Mameha treats his attention as a practical fact to be managed rather than as proof of affection.

Mameha also has to counter the suspicion Hatsumomo has planted. After learning that Sayuri has a boyfriend, she recognizes that Hatsumomo has given Dr. Crab reason to think another man has already taken an interest in Sayuri sexually, potentially undermining the Doctor’s desire to bid. At the same time, Mameha learns that Pumpkin is soon to be adopted. She concludes that there are only a few months before that change and that Sayuri’s mizuage must happen soon, whether or not Sayuri feels ready. The approaching adoption thus sharpens the timetable: the contest is not an abstract financial opportunity but a plan that must be carried out before circumstances shift.

Mameha orders ekubo, small sweet-rice cakes traditionally given by an apprentice when she becomes available for mizuage. Their indented tops, marked by a tiny red circle, give the cakes an appearance that Sayuri finds suggestive; she imagines them instead as little pillows. Most apprentices distribute them to a dozen or more patrons. Sayuri’s presentation is restricted to two prospective bidders, Nobu and Dr. Crab, making the small boxes part of a tightly controlled approach rather than a broad appeal to the Gion clientele. Sayuri is sorry not to give a box to the Chairman, though the prospect of involving him in a transaction she finds distasteful also brings some relief.

Presenting Sayuri to Nobu and Dr. Crab

Mameha arranges Sayuri’s meeting with Nobu through the mistress of the Ichiriki, who asks him to arrive early. In a small room overlooking the entrance courtyard, Sayuri thanks Nobu for summoning her to entertain at his parties over the previous six months and for the gifts he has given her. She then bows and slides the ekubo across the table. Mameha and Sayuri thank him repeatedly, bowing until Sayuri feels nearly dizzy. Nobu accepts the box and carries it away, but later says nothing about it at one of his parties; the exchange seems to have made him uncomfortable. The first approach has therefore been completed, but it does not show whether he intends to compete.

Finding Dr. Crab requires a different kind of preparation. Mameha asks the principal teahouses in Gion to alert her when he appears. When word comes that he is at the Yashino, Sayuri changes clothes and carries the ekubo in a square of silk. The teahouse is built in a Western style, with hardwood floors, a Persian rug, a coffee table, and upholstered chairs instead of tatami and cushions. Sayuri kneels on the rug to wait for Mameha, not realizing that she is expected to use a chair; Mameha arrives half an hour later and tells her to sit as if she belongs. Even before the Doctor is approached, the setting requires Sayuri to adapt her conduct to a room unlike the Japanese spaces where she has learned to entertain.

The later party Mameha helps arrange is designed to put the two possible bidders in one another’s presence. She learns that the Baron will host a weekend gathering for Arashino, a kimono maker whose work he has chosen to buy. Recognizing Arashino as one of Nobu’s closest friends, Mameha sees the party as a chance to have the Baron invite both Nobu and Dr. Crab. She expects the men to dislike one another and believes neither will easily let the other take the prize in a future bidding contest. Nobu is likely to attend because the Baron invests in Iwamura Electric; Dr. Crab, who considers himself aristocratic, is also likely to accept an invitation from the Baron. Mameha’s plan thus joins personal antagonism to the financial contest, though the Baron’s willingness to invite either man remains uncertain to Sayuri.

Jealousy as a managed instrument

At the gathering, Sayuri and Mameha are to prepare a tea ceremony for the men. Instead of an ordinary pavilion, they board a narrow boat on the pond. Wooden seats line its sides, while a small roofed pavilion at one end contains a tatami platform and an open-sided room. A square cavity filled with sand serves as a brazier; Mameha lights charcoal cakes beneath an iron kettle as Sayuri arranges the tea implements. In this composed ceremonial setting, Mameha gives Sayuri a precise instruction: neither man must think she is paying too much attention to the other, but some jealousy may help. If either loses interest, Mameha warns, the consequences for Sayuri’s future will be serious.

The warning exposes the emotional labor that the bidding strategy demands. Sayuri is expected to elicit interest without appearing to choose between the men, and to allow rivalry without letting it become so conspicuous that either bidder withdraws. The tea ceremony is not merely a display of skill; within Mameha’s plan it becomes a controlled social encounter in which Sayuri’s attention is a resource. Mameha can design the conditions, but Sayuri must perform the balance herself.

The transaction’s longer consequences

The later course of Sayuri’s life shows the system of patronage that Mameha’s strategy is meant to navigate. Mother eventually insists that business decisions belong to her and that Nobu’s offer should not be refused. Sayuri understands that he may one day propose to become her danna: he had made an offer for her mizuage and, over the following years, sought her company more often than any other man. That prospect is not emotionally neutral for Sayuri. She does not dislike Nobu, but becoming his mistress would close off the possibility of a life with the Chairman, whom she has long admired.

Sayuri’s eventual arrangement with General Tottori demonstrates what a danna could and could not provide. He covers her lessons, annual registration, medical expenses, and other costs, and his position as director of military procurement enables him to secure an important doctor’s visit and medicine when Auntie falls ill. He also sends tea, sugar, and scarce chocolates to the okiya. Yet Sayuri’s daily life changes little: she continues making her nightly rounds of Gion and receives neither the lavish gifts nor the leisure and dance recitals she had imagined. The material terms of a patron’s support depend on the man and his circumstances; the title alone does not guarantee the life a geisha might expect.

Patronage also reorganizes Sayuri’s relationships. After she takes the General as her danna, Nobu stops inviting her to parties and eventually stops coming to the Ichiriki. He does not answer her New Year’s card. Sayuri feels she has wronged a man who had treated her kindly, and the loss of his patronage also costs her invitations to Iwamura Electric gatherings, reducing her opportunities to see the Chairman. In retrospect, she recognizes that the Chairman’s eventual arrangement with her cannot be separated from this earlier conflict: to keep her out of Nobu’s sight, he wants her to leave Gion, but he is already married and will not marry her.

The agreement that ends Sayuri’s geisha career reveals how thoroughly economic arrangements can shape a life beyond the mizuage itself. Mother refuses to let Sayuri leave the Nitta household, since the okiya would lose revenue from her relationship with the Chairman. The Chairman therefore agrees to pay the okiya a substantial monthly sum in exchange for Mother’s permission for Sayuri to stop working as a geisha. Sayuri remains in the okiya but no longer attends morning lessons, makes formal rounds of Gion, or entertains in the evenings. The bidding contest is one episode in a wider system in which a woman’s professional prospects, patrons’ rivalries, and the financial interests of her household converge. Mameha’s design can turn competing desire into money, but it cannot make the resulting choices free of emotional loss or lasting consequence.