Prologue
In the winter of 1986, my mother had taken me to a festival in Okinawa, Japan.
While there, I had seen, smelled, eaten, and heard things that I was not usually accustomed to. I had spent the week in bliss, slightly worried that this dream was going to end.
On the second to last day, my mother took me to a geisha house. I found this odd, since only men were allowed to visit these sorts of places--or so I thought. There were also women, but they were not interested in what the men around them were doing, but rather to the woman that was on the stage.
Interested in what had ensnared the attention of so many people, I naturally looked at the stage.
The second I laid eyes on the attention grabbing wonder on stage, I was in awe. Dressed in the most exquisite kimono, and yet moving as if it was her skin that she was wearing, was a geisha.
As I stared in bewilderment at the elegance of the artist on stage, I wondered how much painstaking, backbreaking, nerve-wrecking work it must have took to have had such an elegant air around one single person.
I had decided that I wanted to know the labor of being a geisha, but I had no friends of the Asian decent. So at that moment of realization, my dream had been shattered.
When I was first introduced to Haruno Sakura, I my first thought of her was, 'She has beautiful eyes.' Her meeting me was purely accidental.
She had lost her way to a meeting with an official, and I bumped into her. I apologized, and nodded slightly out of respect.
Although I had thought that it was going to be my last encounter with the older woman, I was to be proven wrong. It had turned out that she was moving into the apartment next to mine.
I had found this out when I was taking out my garbage, and heard a familiar sound coming out of the apartment next to mine.
Curious, I knocked on the door of Haruno-san's apartment. The sound had stopped abruptly, and Haruno-san opened the door.
"Hai?" Was what came out of her mouth when she answered the door.
"Um… Do you know English?" I asked uncertainly.
"Gomenasai… Only little bit."
"Oh. Okay… Um… what was playing?"
"Nani…? O-oh. It was shamisen."
"Shamisen? Don't geisha play that?" I asked.
"Yes. I was a geisha."
After realizing that, I was ecstatic. I decided to visit her every day just to hear her play her shamisen. Yes, she played, and talked about how she had been a geisha.
After two years, Sakura had requested a favor for me.
"Hisana-san, can you write about my life?"
Her question had surprised me. I felt honored at her proposal, so I accepted. Though she had one more request for me.
"Do not publish this until I have died."
I asked her if I could record her through a camera and a tape recorder, so I could review if needed. She allowed herself to be recorded, but every time I would visit her, she would not talk to the video camera, but to me.
She had told me of everything she had remembered.
I wondered why she had decided to tell her life's story, and I had asked her.
She simply shrugged, and said, "What else do I have left of me?"
Sometimes she would sing to me. Her voice was soft, but vivid.
When she died, she died the way she wanted to. She died right when she finished what she was saying of her life. Then she died sleeping.
Her funeral was in Yoriodo, her hometown. She was buried right by the ocean, so she would be happy.
When I had gotten home, I remembered that I had nothing to do. I decided so watch a movie.
I put in an unlabeled video cassette, and I saw Sakura's face on the screen. She was somber at the beginning, then angry, then happy, then pained. There was so much emotion in her voice that many times I was crying, giggling, in awe, confused, and amazed.
Haruno Sakura's life had sad times, and happy times.
At first, I only wanted the tapes for the memoir, but then I realized that I needed the tapes, just to be happy.
It made me realize, that even though her body had died, she hadn't.
I am glad that I was able to tell about Haruno Sakura, and I hope you enjoy as much as I did, her memoir as a geisha.
Hisana Kuchiki
Friend of Haruno Sakura
Always a novice geisha.