Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

Having been persuaded by a broker he was close with and joining in what amounted to an obligation-driven partial investment, the real estate deal unexpectedly hit the jackpot; Keizo used half of the profits to buy stable company stocks and spent the remaining half to set up his regular geisha as his mistress.

Keizo was the second-generation owner of a Chinese goods store long known in the Ogawamachi area; his age was already nearing forty.
Having graduated from commercial school, during his father’s lifetime he had been employed at a foreign trading firm in Yokohama for practical training—regardless of salary—under the rationale that gaining worldly experience was more crucial than merely staying at home.
Perhaps because of this, he still indiscriminately flaunted his connoisseurship of Western cuisine and boasted of his English conversations at every turn like a Westernized dandy, yet scarcely drank alcohol. Rather than making a grand spectacle with a large entourage, he adhered to the logic that clandestine speculative purchases made alone ultimately cost less and preserved social appearances better.
He was a thoroughly astute man of modern sensibilities.

Thus, even in taking a geisha as his mistress, Keizo knew his woman—though she marketed herself with the Westernized affectations of one in her early twenties—was in truth a mid-twenties veteran who had been working on split earnings for three or four years; from this awareness, there was likely no significant debt to speak of.

Thus, after running the numbers—from the teahouse fees for their frequent trysts to seasonal expenses for Bon and year-end—and calculating that paying several months’ worth of bills upfront would merely forfeit a small monthly interest rather than incur significant loss, he neatly balanced the accounts. Then, deeming any ostentatious formal redemption of her contract too scandalous for public ears, he privately settled matters with the teahouse proprietress through direct negotiations, framing it as a debt-free return to her family’s custody.

Thus, Chiyoka—the geisha Keizo had regularly patronized—much like a student or nurse moving house, casually summoned a rickshaw from the street-side stand, loaded a willow trunk, cloth-wrapped bundles, and a single mirror stand onto the puller’s cart, and withdrew from her long-time residence in Shitaya’s Obakeyokocho to her parents’ home near Koishikawa’s Esashimachi.
Immediately after that, at two in the afternoon as previously agreed, she met Keizo at the Tomizaka-shita Kasuga-cho tram transfer station and promptly set out with him to search for a mistress’s residence.

It was a clear day in early May.
Keizo, layered in a summer-weight Ōshima kimono and a haori coat woven with knotted silk threads, lingered at the Yotsuji transfer station precisely on time under the guise of waiting for a tram. Each time a car marked “Mita-bound” came to a halt, he scrutinized every person alighting from it with fierce concentration.
Then Chiyoka—no more than ten minutes late for the appointed time—soon appeared among the thronging passengers heading toward the conductor’s platform of the stopping tram, jostling and being jostled as she stood out.
She too layered a rough Ōshima kasuri kimono with a satin-lined crepe half-coat and parted her hair down the middle in an actress-style.
Chiyoka—having apparently spotted Keizo standing by the roadside from atop the conductor’s platform—smiled cheerfully in his direction while alighting from the tram. No sooner had she stepped down than she strode across the watered tracks’ stones with such vigor that her kimono hem flashed glimpses of white shins, briskly approaching Keizo’s side as she playfully brandished the watch dangling from her wrist by its gold chain.

“You didn’t wait that long, did you? I rushed quite a bit,” she said, then looked at Keizo as if noticing for the first time. “Your haori collar isn’t folded properly. Your wife has no backbone.”

“On the other hand, she doesn’t know a thing. In the end, it’s safer that way,” Keizo replied as he adjusted his haori collar himself.

“Absolutely,” she said, opening her umbrella. “Which way should we go? You decide.”

“Where would be good? Do you have somewhere in mind?”

“Well, the Kanda area is too close to your shop, and the Hongo side doesn’t thrill me either.”

“If we don’t decide where we’re going, we can’t even take the tram.”
“Well, why don’t we stroll around and talk as we go?”

The two followed along the red brick wall of the Artillery Arsenal and, letting their feet lead them, ascended Tomizaka toward Koishikawa.

“For the coming summer, the Yamanote area might not be a bad choice.”

“Well, it might actually be quieter—and better—than a bustling town.”

“I hear they’ve built a geisha house in Hakusan—how about that area?”
“Places with geisha houses tend to have better amenities like caterers, you see.”

“It’s also somewhere one could discreetly carry on affairs.”

“What nonsense are you spouting?”

“Even that prospect worries me somewhat.”
“It’s only human nature.”

Keizo chuckled heartily as if thoroughly satisfied, but Chiyoka—before they had even climbed halfway up the slope—suddenly,

“Darling.”
“I can’t walk anymore.”
“Me,” she snorted, slipping her hand into the sleeve of Keizo—who walked with arms tucked in his kimono—“at least give me your hand, you faithless one.”

Keizo flustered at the midday crowd, glanced furtively about; yet the slope’s broad road showed no prying eyes, letting him relax enough to grip Chiyoka’s hand firmly within his sleeve.

“Straight ahead lies Dentsū-in Temple, but finding a house there’s pointless. Let’s take the tram to Edogawa or Ushigome instead.”

After alighting at Ōmagaeshi, the two wandered from Edogawabata into side streets where their feet led them, eventually emerging onto the broad avenue beneath Tsukudo Myōjin. Crossing the tramway before the torii gate, they saw three or four teahouse lanterns clustered at the corner of a narrow lane ahead; the new two-story houses lining the area seemed to offer precisely the sort of rental properties suited for a mistress’s residence. Local geisha strolled about in summer kimonos worn over bare skin, short work coats draped across their unlined robes. Some hurried toward the bathhouse with their Shimada hairstyles coming undone and thin obi still loosely tied. A man resembling a box peddler passed by. The twang of shamisen practice drifted through the air. Hands clasped together, the pair naturally gravitated from the wide main street toward these back lanes—though without prior discussion, both now began scrutinizing the rental notices posted throughout the neighborhood.

They had walked through nearly every alley and lane branching off left and right from Kagurazaka’s main avenue until their feet ached with exhaustion; yet their efforts bore fruit when, on a single side of the alley that curved deep behind Bishamon’s rear gate—its entrance concealed by the encroaching bamboo fences of teahouses on either side—they discovered an ideal two-story house at the secluded dead end, perfectly suited to their needs.
From the rental notice diagonally affixed to the front door’s casing—which indicated that the management was none other than the Matsukaze teahouse across the street—they had the house’s maid show them the interior layout, promptly paid a deposit, and finalized the contract.
At that moment, Chiyoka went up to Matsukaze’s upper room to borrow the restroom, but as they were utterly exhausted, they decided then and there to have bedding laid out for them in Matsukaze’s inner second-floor room.

In the four-and-a-half-mat room where a single storm shutter closed over the back window cast an untimely dusk, just as the evening lamp flickered on by the pillow where the two had napped, the maid came to announce, "Madam, would you care for a bath?"
Still in their loosely tied rented yukatas meant for sleeping, the two descended to the cramped bathhouse—likely a later addition—at the rear of the kitchen garden, then forced their naked bodies together into a tub so small it could barely fit one person.
Keizo thought that even if he went to Hakone or Shiobara, he probably couldn’t experience such pleasantly comforting bathwater.
After all, having walked half a day and gotten proper exercise before taking a solid nap with the woman and submerging their sweat-dampened bodies into the bathwater, not only did every joint in his limbs but even his very life seem to stretch and relax—Keizo felt something like happiness, or perhaps delight—a sensation altogether dreamlike.
Then when they returned upstairs, a dinner of hot sake arrived just as his stomach growled ravenously.
This too evoked an indescribable flavor that made him completely forget his wife and children—even his shop—in that moment, while his heart ached with boundless imaginings of keeping Chiyoka as his mistress every night hereafter.
After gulping down two or three cups of hot sake in quick succession, Keizo’s already dazed mind grew more intoxicated still, while his bath-softened body radiated a tingling itch of desire from toes to fingertips as though fused into one throbbing nerve. He felt utterly incapable of waiting idly until the mistress house became ready.
He not only summoned the teahouse’s proprietress to arrange a maid for the mistress house but also entrusted her with procuring every household item needed for their new life together.

Two

Chiyoka had now fully become Chiyo the laywoman, moving into the "auspicious" mistress house behind Kagurazaka, where she spent her days lazing about aimlessly with an elderly maidservant—around fifty years old—who had come through the good offices of the Matsukaze teahouse.

Master Keizo came over every evening without fail.
Keizo had been quite adept at romantic pursuits since his school days; even without temporarily abandoning his merchant business to keep mistresses, he had plenty of ways to enjoy women freely.
He had once derided such foolish spending as the act of utter fools, but now, having experienced it himself for the first time, he came to realize there was an indescribable allure to it.
Though she was a woman he had patronized for over half a year, now that he had made her his exclusive possession and occasionally styled her hair into a round chignon, the sight of that carefully arranged coiffure becoming pitifully disheveled by morning—things he had never much considered before—now filled him with strangely novel stimulation and an unbearable urge to never let her go.
Initially Keizo had resolved never to stay overnight even if visiting nightly, yet on that very first night he ended up lodging there without reason.
And the next day too he returned just before noon and came back in the evening as lamps were being lit or still unlit.

Keizo could only wonder at himself why Chiyo had so suddenly become dear to him now, of all times.
Back when she had been called as a geisha, he had never been particularly infatuated with her.
There were several geisha in the same district he had wanted to try pursuing.
Taking advantage of times when Chiyoka was away at other teahouses and couldn’t come, Keizo had often tried dismissing them.
Yet precisely during such times, the geisha he summoned with hopeful curiosity rarely pleased him—indeed, there were instances where even after retreating to a four-and-a-half-mat room and extinguishing the lamp, regret only deepened. Thus it was simply that familiar ones proved safest in the end, and Chiyoka alone lasted the longest.

Chiyo had not only a round face with a low nose and downturned eyes but also a short, thick neck and large hips—a countenance that, in the eyes of other women, was far from merely below average; rather, it ranked among those considered outright homely.

Yet through men’s lustful gaze, her appearance took on an entirely different quality.
The slackness of her mouth and droop of her downcast eyes seemed proof of her pliant nature, while the rounded swell of her ample hips beneath the narrow obi and the soft fullness of her lower belly—as if her undergarments had loosened—appeared especially alluring when she wore a yukata.
Thus even at twenty-four or twenty-five—past her prime as a courtesan—she remained as popular as girls of seventeen or eighteen, with rumors insisting that once summoned, she guaranteed return customers.
In local teahouses, persistent older patrons would invariably request Chiyoka alone, yet among her peers she faced harsh criticism—denounced foremost as miserly and slovenly, deemed the most repulsively unkempt woman imaginable.
To put it plainly, Chiyo lacked even a shred of the fastidiousness expected of Edo-trained geisha who honed their craft in proper pleasure quarters.
The nightclothes she wore at home didn’t faze her even when collars gleamed with grime; her hair stayed utterly disheveled until her patron’s nagging forced her to style it—on the third or fourth day. During busy seasons, she skipped baths for days on end, moving sweat-drenched from one teahouse engagement to the next before casually reapplying powder over flaking makeup.
Her finicky peers sometimes admonished her: “Chiyo-chan, you really ought to take better care of yourself.”
“Regulars might tolerate it, but new clients could think you’ve got some disease,” they’d urge earnestly—yet seeing their advice ignored, they concluded no geisha matched Chiyoka’s filthiness.
“If I were a man, I’d never pay for her,” they began muttering behind her back.

However, that Edo natives’ fastidiousness—leaping into scalding morning baths until they turned as red as boiled octopuses—had long since vanished from customers too, eroded by the changing times.
Keizo felt Chiyo’s frumpy kimono style—its loose drape around her hips failing to accentuate her figure—and the vaguely warm heaviness of her swaying physique exuded a sensuality and abandon uncharacteristic of a geisha; at times, this even evoked the peculiar aura of Western models’ nude bodies he occasionally saw in early motion pictures.
To old-fashioned geisha who prized elegance and refinement, these would have been unforgivable flaws—yet to Keizo’s eyes, every last one manifested as the very traits that rendered this woman impossible to relinquish.

Even when she had been a geisha, it was already so.
When he had finally made her his mistress and secured her as his alone, the thick, heavy sensation emanating from Chiyo’s body seemed to grow increasingly dense day by day—as if syrup were being boiled down to its essence—and even when walking alone through the streets or working at his shop, Keizo could not escape the feeling of her skin’s lingering scent clinging to him like a haze.

Mindful of his wife and shop apprentices, Keizo would vow each visit that tonight would be the last—swearing firmly to never stay again come tomorrow—yet after drinking through the evening and retreating to the six-tatami room upstairs, he found himself utterly unable to rise from the bedding until dawn broke.
To leave things unresolved like this—to abandon Chiyo’s naked form amidst the disordered bedding, her obi cords undone and tangled—was more than he could bear.
To abandon her like this felt both wasteful and unbearably precious.
Even as Keizo had already tightened his obi to leave, Chiyo—disheveled and indecent—would adopt a coaxing tone, saying, “I’m truly lonely,” or mutter something jealous about his legal wife—“After all, I’m just your mistress”—then Keizo would lose all self-control, sweep her into his arms, and feel compelled to stay the night right then and there to settle the matter.

Three

Two months passed like an utter dream.
With the end of the rainy season, the world abruptly took on the full semblance of summer, and in the glass windows of Keizo’s shop, Panama hats and straw hats began lining up.

Around the time the town association’s joint mid-year sales began—an annual tradition—the scorching heat across town had grown markedly more intense.
Rumors of a genuine cholera outbreak in Honjo filled the newspapers daily.
Since people began complaining of the heat, nearly half a month had passed without a single drop of rain, and under the harsh, daily beating sunlight, the entire town lay covered in dust like scorched ruins, while the trees lining the sidewalks had withered considerably.
The ward office issued a directive to avoid wasteful use of water.
Rumors spread that the nearby villages and surrounding areas were suffering from drought.
The clerk had said it was ninety degrees yesterday and already eighty-three degrees this morning, but to Keizo, this unbearable swelter seemed—this year alone—a more pleasurable, delightful, and welcome season than spring or autumn.
The reason was that Keizo had ceased to have any opportunity to see Chiyo dressed in her kimono and tying her obi.
Chiyo had even discarded her sleeveless linen undergarment, lounging about in nothing but a short waistcloth that barely reached her knees.
Whether sitting across from him at the low table drinking beer, standing to go to the toilet, or especially after entering the second-floor mosquito net, Keizo found no moment free from Chiyo’s stark white, plump nude form—thoroughly illuminated by electric light—vanishing from before his eyes.
In the cramped mistress house—comprising a six-tatami second floor and two downstairs rooms—it seemed that wherever one turned, there was no corner left untouched by the brilliant electric light reflecting off Chiyo’s stark white body.

But that wasn’t all—the reason this terrifying summer, said to be unmatched in twenty years, delighted Keizo beyond measure lay not only in Chiyo’s nudity but also in the very surroundings of her mistress house.

Given Kagurazaka’s sloping terrain across its side streets, looking out from the mistress house’s second floor revealed rental houses—mostly teahouses or geisha residences—descending in staggered tiers like stacked boxes, all with their rear sides facing this direction.

Until summer arrived, they had paid no heed, but now that the heat had grown so fierce, every household—whether through windows or kitchen doors—had thrown open every conceivable gap where a breeze might enter. Come nightfall when lamps were lit, it wasn’t merely shadows of shimada chignons cast upon shoji screens.

Scenes of geisha applying makeup bare-shouldered and even customers’ boisterous revelries became fully visible—over fences and wooden walls or through gaps in hedge branches—as if staged for viewing.

One sweltering evening devoid of even a whisper of breeze, Keizo turned off the second-floor lights, opened both front veranda and rear ground-floor windows, and lay with Chiyo beneath the mosquito net when he suddenly pricked up his ears at voices from the neighboring house—the second-floor parlor of a teahouse called Ikuyo—their conversation carrying as clearly as if they stood before him.

The wind funneling through the narrow space between houses felt indescribably cool; surely they had opened their rear shoji screens upstairs too.

Amidst the ongoing murmur of voices came—

“Darling, you absolutely must!”
“You must buy it for me—you promised!” came the woman’s voice, ringing out with particular clarity, followed by what seemed to be the man’s eager assent and their delighted laughter.
Chiyo, who had apparently been listening half-consciously since earlier, suddenly poked Keizo in the side,

“They’re really not being discreet at all, are they?”

“Don’t mock me!”

Keizo, thinking he might catch a glimpse of whatever geisha and customer were there, casually stood up and leaned out the window—only for the neighboring house’s rear-window shutter to jut out right before his nose. But since his side was pitch dark and theirs was lit, he could clearly make out two thumb-sized knotholes in the shutter’s board.
Keizo pressed one eye firmly against it as if through a peephole—but then immediately let out a cry of shock and hastily covered his mouth.

“Chiyo! Chiyo! This is bad!” Keizo called out in a hushed voice that feared being overheard. “Come look at this.” Chiyo, now alerted to something unusual, likewise shut one eye and peered through the knothole in the shutter at the neighboring second floor.

The voices from next door, which had abruptly ceased earlier, now lay silent and desolate as if the space stood empty. Chiyo peered for some time, but gradually her breathing quickened and her chest began to heave.

“Darling,” she said. “It’s sinful—we should stop.”

As if unable to bear the guilt of their silent peeping any longer, she gently pulled Keizo’s hand—but he paid no heed, his face pressed rigidly against the knothole, breath held and utterly still. With no other choice, Chiyo pressed her face to the remaining knothole once more. In their fumbling—whether Keizo or Chiyo reached out first remained unclear—they groped for each other’s hands in the pitch darkness before suddenly embracing with a madman’s ferocity.

In this way, Keizo found himself ceaselessly receiving stimulation of carnal desires—unlike anything he had ever known—not only from within his mistress’s house but from the very fabric of summer nights enveloping its surroundings.
Having grown utterly weary and sated, Keizo—taking advantage of a rare cool haze veiling the afternoon sky—ventured out to handle long-neglected store errands and stopped by the barber’s, where the familiar proprietor,

“Master, you’ve grown terribly thin.”
“This year’s heat is doing everyone in.”

When told this, he looked at his face reflected in the mirror—perhaps it was his imagination—and thought his cheeks appeared slightly hollowed. Growing somewhat concerned about his health, he returned home that day and, unusually, went to bed early that night.
Yet by the next morning, from daybreak onward, an inexplicable faint desolation permeated his entire body. Unable to endure waiting until evening, he finished his midday meal and immediately rushed out into the blazing midday sun without hesitation.

Though he had visited daily until now, it had always been in the evening; having never ventured out this early in the daytime before, when he climbed Kagurazaka and turned into that familiar side street, the world that came alive at night now lay utterly still and silent under the blazing midday sun, with only the distant flute of a pipe seller audible.
The complete absence of passersby made Keizo feel as though he were traversing an unfamiliar alley for the first time—a sensation both curious and novel. Through gaps in reed blinds and lace curtains at the open windows and kitchen entrances of geisha houses lining both sides, he glimpsed dim interiors where women lay sprawled in disarray, utterly sapped by the heat. Their hair tangled, yukata hems and collars askew, thin sashes left carelessly untied, they lolled like invalids in slovenly sprawl. To Keizo’s eyes, these glimpses seized while passing held far greater power to bewitch than their nighttime selves—primped in full makeup with obi crisply fastened.
Suddenly, Keizo found himself wondering—what state would Chiyo, whose sleeping habits were so disorderly they defied description, be napping in during this sweltering midday? The thought alone left him so restless he couldn’t keep from rushing out.
He kicked a pebble from the roadside and flung open the lattice door of the mistress house with a clatter, only to find an unfamiliar young man in Western clothes sitting cross-legged in the tearoom—visible even from outside—while Chiyo, whom he’d assumed was asleep, sat up talking.
As usual, naked except for a single waistcloth, she was talking while raising one arm high and vigorously fanning her armpit with a hand fan.

Keizo froze mid-step in the dirt-floored entryway, caught off guard by the unexpected scene, but Chiyo showed little surprise. “Oh master,” she greeted him brightly, “it was hot, wasn’t it?” then suddenly pressed her lips to his ear: “He’s the young master from the elder sister’s place in Shitaya.” “Don’t worry about it.” Pulled by the hand, Keizo silently climbed straight to the second floor. Chiyoka followed him up and—without once going back down—called for the old maidservant to bring ice.

“They say he had a fight with his sister and ran away from home.”
“So he came to talk because he needed a bit of money.”
“I already refused him, so there’s nothing to worry about,” she said, and as if to take an afternoon nap right then, fetched a pillow from the cupboard herself and lay down.
The very casualness of her demeanor only deepened Keizo’s suspicions.
After a while, when he went down to the lavatory, it appeared the young man had long since left; in the neatly tidied tearoom, the old maidservant sat dozing alone.

From the next day onward, Keizo began coming at almost any hour—sometimes arriving in the scorching August heat around two or three o’clock, other times in the morning around ten, or even late at night past ten to open the lattice door and look inside.
However, as there were no further signs of suspicious men coming and going, Keizo abruptly stopped visiting for two or three days—then suddenly timing it for around four in the afternoon during a brief window—quietly opened the lattice door while observing the house. Finding no one in the lower rooms—not even the old maidservant—Keizo crept up to the second floor as stealthily as if intruding into a stranger’s home.
When he slid open the fusuma door, the six-tatami room lay with its futon spread out, the quilt kicked toward the alcove, and in one spot on the white sheet, an unusual number of small wrinkles had gathered.
To be sure, only a single woman’s pillow was visible, but the tobacco tray placed beside it was crammed from ashtray to tobacco container with Shikishima cigarette butts.

Keizo abruptly tore off the quilt, eyes wide like saucers as if trying to uncover something atop the white sheet. After staring fixedly for a moment, he pressed his nose repeatedly against it in a motion resembling someone sniffing for traces.
And then he thrust his hand further under the futon, seeming to search every nook and cranny—but none of it yielded the conclusive evidence he sought.
Keizo heavily sat down where he stood and let out a deep breath, then suddenly stood up as if struck by a thought. He slid open the closet’s fusuma door to peer inside, then thrust his neck out the window to intently survey the scene below.

The sound of the lattice door opening and Chiyo’s voice—seemingly returning from outside—was abruptly cut off by the old maidservant’s interjection of *“Madam,”* after which everything fell deathly silent as though a flame had been snuffed out.
Keizo strained his neck and upper body out the window until his hair nearly stood on end, desperate to glimpse the two women or overhear their secret conversation—but in the kitchen below, where the blazing August sun streamed in from the west, only the sound of water dripping from the faucet reached his ears.
Having no other choice, he circled around to check the lower staircase entrance this time, but again found the entire house as empty as if devoid of people altogether.
Keizo’s throat grew unbearably parched.
But now that things had come to this, I couldn’t carelessly go downstairs.
The moment I saw Chiyo’s face—what could I possibly do? What could I say?
Depending on how they proceed, I too must thoroughly prepare an appropriate countermeasure…
Keizo stood frozen atop the bedding like a stone statue, unable to move for some time—but when Chiyo’s weeping voice suddenly leaked up from below, he crept toward the staircase landing, holding his breath and straining to listen.

“Old woman, this is your fault.”
“It’s because you didn’t clean up the second floor right away.”
“Do whatever you want then!” Chiyo’s voice tearfully scolded in response, and though the old maidservant seemed to be making frantic excuses, her words could not be clearly heard.
However, the facts were already nearly undeniable.
Keizo kicked away the bedding and no sooner had he clattered down from the second floor with heavy footsteps than he thrust his feet into the geta at hand and tried to bolt outside without uttering a word.
He couldn’t remain frozen on the second floor forever, yet neither could he bring himself to go downstairs shamefacedly from here.
In any case, rather than bickering face-to-face in this situation, he resolved to first assert his presence by stepping outside and then devise some appropriate course of action.

Startled by the thunderous footsteps crashing down from the second floor, Chiyoka—the instant she recognized them—clung to Keizo with every ounce of her strength.
Keizo had already thrust half his body through the lattice door as he bolted outside,

“Let go! Let go! I have no business here.”

“Oh darling. Wait, please.” Chiyo slid down from the upper doorframe while firmly grasping his sleeve.

“Won’t you let go?! Damn you!”

Keizo struck Chiyo’s cheek with his open palm, but she merely burst into loud sobs and refused to release the sleeve she had seized. The old maidservant paced back and forth, alternately pleading “Master!” and “Madam!” in a half-sobbing voice.

Outside the lattice door, three or four passersby had already stopped in their tracks. Just then, two or three neighboring geishas returning from the bathhouse joined the growing crowd, leaving Keizo unable to shake her off roughly and storm out as he’d intended. “Quiet!” he growled. “What a disgrace,” he muttered, forced to climb back into the house.

In this situation, it was already Chiyo’s victory. Chiyo—whether beaten or killed—acted as if to say that since everything was her own fault, he should do as he pleased, all while sobbing pitifully about her circumstances and ultimately seeking his sympathy. Of course, initially, no matter what was said, Keizo did not respond. But such things were not what Chiyo sought to address.

During her time in the trade, Chiyo had occasionally received support from a man in Western clothes—Bon festival gifts, year-end presents, and the like. Recently, she had unexpectedly encountered him on her way back from the bathhouse and brought him home without protest—a mistake that became the root of trouble. Even after refusing him on account of her current status, he brazenly kept coming around, leaving her at a loss for what to do. In the end, she framed it as though consulting Keizo about how to resolve the situation.

Keizo could only shout “Idiot! Idiot!” over and over; unable to hit or kick her now, he stormed out after dismissively telling her to do as she pleased.
Once outside, Keizo began considering with some calmness as he walked how to settle the matter.
The matter was quite simple.
Since she had brought in a former client during the master’s absence, he should just dismiss her outright.
In that case, she would have no grounds whatsoever to complain.
But Keizo immediately followed this thought with another—what would Chiyo do once dismissed?
If she returned to being a geisha—or worse, that young man in Western clothes who’d apparently spent considerable money on her before stepped into my place and did with Chiyo as he pleased, just as I had—the thought made Keizo’s blood boil so fiercely he couldn’t rashly dismiss her in anger.
He resolved that if he didn’t dismiss her, he must endure this incident and strictly prevent that man from approaching again—but then came the question of enforcement method.
Keizo recalled how Chiyo had often shown such indiscretions during her geisha days.
Thoroughly considered, there was no woman as shamelessly careless as Chiyo.
There could hardly exist a woman more perfectly suited to being a man’s plaything.
Chiyo showed no sign of considering such treatment shameful or painful—indeed, at times she even seemed amused by it.
Chiyo was a harlot to her core.
Her body and heart lay open to all comers—a woman of unparalleled accessibility yet impossible exclusivity.

From the very beginning when Keizo first became involved with Chiyo, their relationship had deviated somewhat from conventional norms. Because at that time it struck Keizo as unexpectedly appealing, he unwittingly came to keep summoning her thereafter. When fourteen or fifteen members of a Chinese goods merchants' gathering held an afterparty at a restaurant near Ueno with a large group, Keizo—having casually noticed Chiyo—found her conveniently following him to the restroom. Seizing the moment, he forcibly pulled her into a pitch-dark room adjacent to the brightly lit hall they passed by and began direct negotiations. Even as he drunkenly made advances, Chiyo said nothing at all, silently letting him do as he pleased. For Chiyo, this was neither a scheme nor a tactic—it was nothing of the sort. Chiyo was inherently such a woman toward everyone—depending on the time, situation, and person, this could sometimes yield unexpectedly favorable results, but just as abruptly, it could also sow the seeds for her to be rejected again and again as “that hellish woman.” However, regardless of the outcome, she herself remained carefree and youthful. Why she was loved, or why she was scorned—such things she never considered. Even when told quite harsh things face-to-face by malicious geishas at banquets, Chiyo showed no sign of taking them deeply to heart—appearing to forget such matters faster than most—a testament to her utterly carefree and thick-skinned nature. Therefore, toward customers as well, she never resorted to malicious acts like extorting things from them or intentionally scheming to deceive them. On the other hand, her irresponsibility could also be said to exceed imagination. She would promise a customer, “I’ll finish up and wait for you without fail on such-and-such a date,” yet if an offer came from elsewhere, she’d head off that way as if her prior commitment had been completely forgotten. And if by chance, later on, she were to be severely reproached by the customer from the prior arrangement over that oversight, Chiyo would simply act surprised and artlessly lay bare every detail of the situation without reservation, leaving even the incensed customer so dumbfounded they could do nothing about it.

Once, Keizo had reproached Chiyo at the teahouse in Ikenohata for arriving excessively late and interrogated her about her disheveled hair and loosened obi. Then Chiyo, with utter innocence, retorted, “Oh, you noticed?” Caught off guard by this unexpected response, Keizo could only stare wide-eyed in silence. Then Chiyo, with undiminished innocence, added, “I was in such a hurry that I didn’t have time to fix my hair.” “He was a drunkard impossible to handle,” she said, taking out a compact mirror and ostentatiously smoothing the hair she’d tousled in the outer room before Keizo.

“It’ll just get messed up again anyway.”
“Darling,” she cooed, batting her eyes as she flung herself onto the man’s lap.
Even when the teahouse maid entered, Chiyo made no move to adjust her disheveled state, remaining draped over the man’s body as she said, “Sorry about this, Miss.”
“Excuse me,” she added, already loosening her obi before the customer could react and showing no restraint.
It was an utterly brazen attitude, completely unconcerned with public propriety.
Keizo, though harboring jealous displeasure in his heart, found himself enduring some measure of discomfort and continuing to summon her—for when he considered Chiyo’s unrestrained demeanor, something not even ordinary geishas could be made to display through mere money, he realized that even among those who surrendered themselves as harlots, there was no woman like this Chiyo who so utterly relinquished her entire being to another’s whims.

IV

Even when Keizo had bought Chiyo with a two-yen congratulatory gift and an hourly fee of twenty-five sen, she had already been like this.
Now that he had gone to the trouble of installing a mistress, the mere fact that one former client had slipped in wasn’t enough to give him the courage to cleanly dismiss her in a fit of anger.
Moreover, judging from the woman’s demeanor and manner of speaking, there was no trace whatsoever of her having secretly summoned him herself.
It seemed certain the man had brazenly forced his way in and pressed his advances.
However, even after learning this truth, Keizo sought to uncover its full extent—and even after lying beside Chiyo that night, he continued probing her with relentless questions.

“Why didn’t you cut him off cleanly?”

“But I did cut him off quite harshly.”

“You couldn’t cut him off at all—you just went along with whatever he said right away.”

“Oh, it’s fine. Even I’m different now from when I was in the trade.”

“So during your trade days, you’d listen to anyone who told you something?”

“‘Anyone’?! That’s too much! You too…”

“But you said it’s different from your trade days.”

“That’s what I said.”
“When I was in the trade, it couldn’t be helped, right?”
“It was a vulnerable trade, you know.”

“Then if you’ve quit the trade, why are you still taking orders?”
“You’re smitten with him, aren’t you?”

“Darling, if that were true, I’d have hidden it completely.”
“If he’d called me out of affection—forgive my bluntness—I wouldn’t have confessed everything like this.”
“I told you every detail because I felt guilty toward you.”
“Darling.”
“I was truly wrong—please forgive me.”

“You must absolutely not let him into the house again.”
“If that bastard comes around again, splash him with water or something.”

With matters left unresolved in a vague tangle, Keizo had continued visiting the mistress’s house as before. Then one day about ten days later—on an afternoon when the evening shower came to nothing, leaving a windless, sweltering night in its wake—Keizo, who had shut himself away on the second floor since dusk, heard the clock strike eleven and was about to start preparing to leave when Chiyoka, who had just gone downstairs to use the toilet, suddenly shouted in a loud voice,

“How dare you show your face here? Get out!” she shouted.
With the clatter of the lattice door came the sound of footsteps retreating toward the street.

Keizo sprang up wearing nothing but his loincloth and rushed downstairs.

“Who was it?”
“That bastard?”

“I sent him packing,” said Chiyo, pulling together the front of her nightgown whose thin sash remained untied. “Really—how utterly shameless can he be? That’s just how he is, so it’s truly such a bother.”

In a tone that practically proclaimed all fault lay with the other party, Chiyoka looked at Keizo’s face. Tormented anew by anxiety yet unable to stay—and compelled by next day’s business obligations to return home that very night—Keizo muttered complaints until past one o’clock before finally steeling himself to rise and leave.

With the trains having stopped running, Keizo, buffeted by the late-night wind from his rickshaw, tormented himself once more with trying to uncover the truth of the clandestine affair between Chiyo and that suspicious man.
From how things had been up to now, Keizo did not think that Chiyo was particularly infatuated with that man.
If that were the case, he hypothesized that there might be some ongoing financial relationship from her geisha days.

When Keizo first took Chiyo as his mistress, he had deliberated to cut down future allowances as much as possible in reality, stipulating that within the monthly fifty-yen allowance, even the ten-yen remittance to her parents and all future clothing expenses must be paid from that sum.
In short, Keizo had declared—even amidst their most intimate moments—that all expenses must be managed within this fixed amount, save for unforeseen disasters like serious illness; he then impressed upon her, with meticulous repetition, that she must abide by this arrangement without fail in the days to come.
For Chiyo, above all else, this was a time when the joy of quitting geisha work and becoming an ordinary woman took precedence; having never before experienced the hardships of managing a household, she readily agreed with an immediate yes, convinced that fifty yen a month would suffice.
The first month passed in a blur of confusion, and when the next month’s end arrived, after paying the rent and settling accounts with the rice merchant, charcoal seller, liquor store, and fishmonger, Chiyo found herself with only one or two one-yen bills left in hand—nowhere near enough to send the ten-yen remittance to her parents.
On that very day of the month’s end, Keizo did not come, saying the shop was busy, so Chiyo had no choice but to pawn her ring and complete the remittance to her parents.
There, for the first time, Chiyo realized that fifty yen wasn’t nearly enough to live comfortably.
She had to watch every penny for daily expenses like bath fees, and above all, curb her long-standing habit of indulging in snacks.
In fact, when settling her advance debts by handing over her parents’ allowance, she had already surrendered most of her kimonos from her geisha days to her employer—which meant she now faced an immediate shortage of proper winter attire for going out.
Chiyo had sunk into utter despondency.
After being pressed time and again, she had grandly promised that fifty yen would surely suffice—yet no sooner had she done so than she found herself burdened with settling advance debts from her geisha days, moving expenses, and other outlays. Given this, she couldn’t easily demand an increase in her monthly allowance. Being fundamentally guileless, Chiyo grew increasingly uneasy about her domestic struggles—and indeed, her very future.
On her way back from visiting the public bath—having gone there because staying at home only deepened her gloom—Chiyo unexpectedly encountered at a street corner in the back alley a young man named Hayama, who during her geisha days had been one of her most important clients, on par with Keizo.
He was a young master from a somewhat renowned business family—a client known as Mr. Broom for his reckless spending.

“Well if it isn’t Chiyoka—you’ve gone and put up a married woman’s chignon.”
“Nicely done, huh?” he said—it was this man’s habit to speak in an unrestrained, booming voice, deliberately adopting a rough tone.
Chiyoka—perhaps out of timidity that had made her withdraw into silence—managed only an “Oh, Mr. Hayama” before falling speechless and standing motionless, whereupon Hayama began scrutinizing her appearance.

“Chiyo-chan, where you hiding?”

“Just in the next alley over.”

“Come on, take me there—it’s not like we’re strangers.”
“Everyone’s heard about it—I know everything!”
“If Thumb’s away, what’s the problem?”
“...Not allowed? If it ain’t okay, let’s head to some teahouse around here.”
“Got something to discuss.”

When addressed so bluntly, Chiyoka couldn’t coldly rebuff him given their history. Seizing Keizo’s absence that day, she guided him to the mistress’s house.
Hayama chatted briefly before departing, leaving behind a five-yen note as a “congratulatory gift.”
This marked the genesis—two days later, Hayama reappeared unannounced. Peering through the lattice door into the summer-opened lower room, he spotted Chiyo crouched by the window trimming her toenails and immediately resumed his signature brash tone:

“Chiyo-chan, Chiyo-chan,” he called out, quietly showing his thumb.
In this manner, Hayama eventually established a relationship with Chiyo.
At that moment—before she could utter a word—Hayama declared he would give thirty yen each month and thrust the cash into her pocket.

“I’m out having fun every day, so when the master’s not around—whether it’s midnight or early morning—anytime’s fine.”
“If the master comes, just slip out the back door into the inner room.”
“There ain’t another understanding ladies’ man like me around.” Pleased with himself and having secured her compliance, Hayama left alone.

V

Keizo could not of course pinpoint the exact nature of Chiyo and Hayama’s relationship through direct deduction, but given Chiyo’s lingering vulnerabilities from past entanglements, he gradually came to understand that he simply lacked the resolve to decisively cut her off.
Though Chiyo vowed never to let Hayama into the house again, Keizo later uncovered multiple proofs that such promises meant nothing.
There was the time he had brushed past Hayama—that unmistakable figure—at a back-alley corner while returning from the mistress’s house.
There was the unfamiliar men’s cigarette case he had spotted atop Chiyo’s dressing table.
Yet Keizo no longer felt the same shock or outrage at her infidelity as he once had.
Initially, he had feared Hayama might steal Chiyo away completely, but even after a month of noticing suspicious men coming and going, her attentiveness toward him remained unchanged.
If anything, her service grew more exquisitely tailored to his tastes—a performance so obsequious it rivaled the fawning of picture-book palace maids pandering to actor-obsessed nobles on their rare leaves from court. At times, Keizo even felt as though *he* were the one being paid for his services.
In those moments, he would bask in satisfaction—only to seethe upon leaving, imagining Hayama in his Western suit arriving to claim equal or greater pleasures from Chiyo’s body.
Powerless to act, Keizo let autumn find him adrift in disarray.
The deepening chill of mornings and evenings only sharpened his addiction to Chiyo’s touch—a craving that made Hayama’s presence all the more intolerable.
With no other recourse, the merchant in him sought revenge through finance: he would halve her fifty-yen allowance under some pretext, thereby formalizing their shared custody of one woman.
Near month’s end, as Keizo fixated on this scheme while opening the lattice door around ten o’clock—intending to stay the night—a man’s voice roared abuse inside.
Before he could process this, the violent clatter of shoji panels sent him scrambling into shadows just as Hayama burst through the lattice door.
Forgetting all caution in his rage, Keizo barked from behind: “Hey, you!”
Hayama—clearly recognizing him—turned under the eaves lantern’s glow. Their eyes locked briefly before his voice dripped mockery:

“You’d better watch yourself.”
“I’m not the only one—that woman’s still got all sorts of men clinging to her.”
“She’s a damn slut.”

Having spat those words, he walked off toward the main street without so much as a backward glance, as if fleeing.
Keizo could neither give chase nor bring himself to enter the mistress’s house in his current state. Stranded at the corner of the back alley, he could only alternate his gaze between the distant street where Hayama’s figure had vanished and the eaves lantern of his own mistress’s house.

No sooner had Keizo returned home dejectedly that night than he sent a terse notice of dismissal to Chiyo.
In truth, he had been anxiously awaiting some word of acknowledgment—even a single phrase—from her side, but when no response came at all, he counted himself fortunate to avoid the troublesome matter of severance pay and abruptly closed the matter.

Around three months later, just as the first Tori-no-Ichi festival of the year approached, Keizo found himself in the neighborhood on business and—driven by sudden curiosity—quietly passed by his former mistress’s house.
The door was shut with a rental sign posted.
No sooner had Keizo realized Chiyo’s whereabouts had become unknown than he abruptly felt a pang of nostalgia.
Catching sight of a geisha passing through the back alley only made him recall their former wanton pleasures all the more.
Keizo cast aside all discomfort and hesitation to casually inquire about her new address at the corner liquor store—where a woman around forty, likely the proprietress, readily disclosed,

“She’s been running a teahouse in the next alley over since last month.”
“It says ‘Chiyoka’ on the electric lamp sign there.”

No sooner had Keizo thanked her than he rushed out; entering the alley he’d been directed to—one side lined with geisha houses, the other crowded with small teahouses—he immediately spotted the name.
Though feverish with impatience to rush in without waiting for an introduction, the moment Keizo reached the entrance, an odd reluctance seized him. After pacing back and forth two or three times, he seemed to deliberate—then opened the lattice door of the neighboring teahouse adjoining the eaves.

Taking advantage of a curiously unceremonious, twenty-five or twenty-six-year-old country-bred maid, Keizo first had two geishas summoned and seated, then casually began probing for information.

“The neighboring house seems to have changed management.”

“My, how well-informed you are!”

“I’m always around this area.”
“How’s business? Is the neighboring house thriving?”

“It seems to be doing alright.”
“What’s the proprietress like? A real looker?”
“They say she used to be part of some geisha troupe.”
“So she’s trading on being a mistress now, eh?”

One of the two geishas he had summoned arrived first.
Keizo tried various indirect questions on her as well, but obtained no particularly coherent account.
Amidst this, a geisha who had entered belatedly from the edge of the group’s conversation—
“Ah, the teahouse next door?” she suddenly lowered her voice, as if privy to some secret. “Sister... They say that proprietress next door is this kind of woman.”

“Oh, you can’t be serious!”

“No, that’s exactly how it is.”
“But our Tamachan saw it with her own eyes just now.”

“Oh, is that right?”

The geisha who had arrived later, sipping from her cup, recounted how just three or four nights prior, a colleague named Tamachan had been summoned to Chiyoka’s place.
The customers were apparently a pair, and after that, they tried here and there to summon another geisha, but since it was already past one o’clock, they ultimately ended up unable to do so; Tamachan alone went out to serve one customer, and when she innocently went down to the toilet late at night, she found the other customer and the proprietress thoroughly entangled—or so the geisha chattered on with torrential eloquence, as though she herself had witnessed it firsthand.

Keizo, convinced this story was no lie, struggled to suppress his already racing heart. When the lights were lit, he settled his bill, took a brief turn around the main street, then quietly slipped back into the alley.
To Keizo, Chiyo’s misconduct no longer seemed either unclean or unpleasant now.
Rather, it made him yearn for her all the more.
The woman called Chiyo was a consummate prostitute through and through.
The mingling of an inherently good-natured disposition and the promiscuous habits compelled by her circumstances had caused Chiyo to utterly abandon any notion of a woman’s self-preservation.
Thus, from a man’s perspective, there was no need to pay for exclusive rights—and even if one tried to claim them, it would prove impossible.
In other words, while publicly positioned as belonging to someone, she remained a woman who could be freely had at any time if approached privately.
This time—fully assured and fully expectant—Keizo resolved he himself must assume a position like Hayama’s and seize the advantage; already moving with the furtive air of a secret lover, he had begun stealthily opening the lattice door of the teahouse labeled “Chiyoka.”

Summer Silhouettes – End