Sayuri's admiration for the Chairman

Sayuri’s admiration for the Chairman turns one brief childhood encounter into a lasting private attachment, shaping how she sees the men around her and what she hopes her future might hold. When she recognizes Iwamura Ken at a sumo exhibition, her feeling is immediate but built on years of imagining him; afterward, she carries the encounter into her thoughts and even overlays the Chairman onto Nobu, whose attention Mameha considers essential to her success.

Origin of the Attachment

At the Kyoto University sumo exhibition, Sayuri first mistakes the Chairman for Mr. Tanaka, the man who had taken her from her village. His familiar presence briefly revives the earlier meeting in her mind, but when he turns, she recognizes Iwamura Ken. The moment is more than recognition: the Chairman seems familiar in a way she cannot explain, and the sight of him quiets the surrounding scene in her perception.

The strength of that response rests on an imbalance between experience and imagination. Sayuri has seen the Chairman only once before, but has spent years picturing him. Her image has changed in the meantime: she expected a higher forehead and less abundant gray hair. The details do not break the attachment. She feels soothed by his presence and takes that feeling as proof that she has found the man she has been imagining.

Attention and Self-Consciousness

Introduced to the Chairman and Nobu by Mameha as her new younger sister, Sayuri is acutely conscious of being observed. She worries about speaking, feels her face grow hot, and is unsure whether the Chairman has noticed her. When she pours tea, she becomes aware that his eyes are fixed on her arm. The attention briefly makes her see her own appearance differently, as if she too could recognize a beauty she had not previously noticed.

The moment ends in an awkward reversal: the teapot she has picked up is empty, and she has poured nothing. Her embarrassment replaces the sense of being captivating, while Mameha turns the mistake into a light observation about Sayuri’s determination. The incident shows the two-sided force of the Chairman’s attention for Sayuri: it magnifies her awareness of herself, but makes ordinary social gestures harder to manage.

The Chairman in Nobu’s Place

During the bouts, Sayuri listens to Nobu’s explanations, but the Chairman’s voice, as he talks with Mameha, keeps drawing her attention away. Later, when she laughs with Nobu, she discovers a way to remain engaged: she imagines Nobu as the Chairman. She mentally replaces Nobu’s roughness with gentleness and interprets his voice as though it were conveying the Chairman’s feelings toward her. For a time, the imagined intimacy makes her feel removed from the crowded exhibition hall.

The substitution is an act of longing, not a change in her actual relationship with Nobu. When she says something that Nobu considers ignorant, his sharp response breaks the calm she has constructed. The scene sets the private continuity of her admiration against the unpredictability of real conversation: the Chairman is distant, while Nobu is present, but Sayuri temporarily uses her imagination to make the two occupy the same emotional space.

Hope, Dependence, and Conflict

Mameha tells Sayuri not to lose Nobu’s interest and hints that he may prove to be her rescuer, while adding that another man she has not met is also important to the plan. Sayuri’s response exposes the limits of Mameha’s practical strategy: if she needs rescuing, she wants the Chairman to be the one who does it. Her attachment thus competes with the demands of cultivating Nobu, whose regard Mameha treats as consequential to Sayuri’s prospects.

The Chairman remains central even when he is absent. After the exhibition, Sayuri presses his handkerchief against her cheek at night and relives meeting him, comparing the persistence of the memory to a temple bell that continues to resonate after being struck. When a secretary from Iwamura Electric requests her company at the Ichiriki Teahouse, she hopes the invitation is from the Chairman, while Mameha hopes it is from Nobu. The two women attach different expectations to the same summons, and the Chairman’s presence at the gathering renews Sayuri’s attention to him even as Mameha expects her to approach Nobu.

Idealization and Narrative Significance

Sayuri’s admiration also affects how she imagines the possibilities surrounding the Chairman. Seeing Hatsumomo at a gathering, she pictures the Chairman entering the okiya to meet her and wonders whether beauty could blind a man to cruelty. She does not treat this imagined scene as an event that occurred; it expresses her fear that Hatsumomo might use her beauty to hurt Sayuri by seducing the man she loves. The fantasy reveals how possessive anxiety can grow around a relationship that has not yet become an intimacy.

The bond is therefore sustained less by shared experience than by memory, attention, and projection. The Chairman’s brief appearance at the exhibition becomes a standard against which Sayuri reads later encounters: his voice diverts her from Nobu, her hopes color a summons from Iwamura Electric, and his handkerchief keeps the memory physically present after the event. Her admiration offers hope at a point when she cannot yet see how Mameha’s plan will lead to success or whether success will bring her closer to him. It is both an emotional anchor and a source of vulnerability, because the imagined future she builds around the Chairman exceeds what their early meetings have established.