“Fumi says being beautiful is not the most important thing here. She says even if I’m not beautiful, I can be successful by being good,” said Shino.
“Fumi is, like, todally
wrong.
Being beautiful
iz
most important,” said one of them. “Izn it?”
They said that a lot.
“Izn it?”
I had started to say it to my mother, to tease her. It got my father in trouble for leaving me in the brothels while he worked. Still, she didn’t ask that I stay at home.
“Even if I were to believe you,” said Shino in her careful way, “and I am not certain I do, can you tell me who determines what is beautiful?”
I slurped my soba noodles. The artists did, I thought.
“That’z a very good question,
yakko,
” said Fumi.
Everyone laughed. She was supposed to call her Shino.
“Nobody decides. It’z not for, like, deciding. It’z just for, like, kno-owing. Duh-uh!”
“That’s not true! Men decide.”
“They doan.”
“Do too.”
“Do not!”
“Who’s beautiful is just, like, obvious. Like Hana-ogi.” She was the top courtesan.
“Or Fumi.”
Kana was thoughtful. “But the weird thing is, it
changes.
Like the whole idea of who’s beautiful and for what reason
changes
year to year. I c’n remember. . . . Like, now the girls have to be thin. But before, when I was first in the biz, the famous girls were round.”
“Never! I doan believe you. Yu mean, like, fat?” That was Takao, stuffing her face.
“Yu doan remember ’cause yu’re too young, but yeah, it’s true—like
round.
The girls were, like, round.”
Everyone made various noises of disgust.
“And men liked it,” Kana added as an afterthought.
Everyone laughed.
“So who decided we hafta be thin?”
“I tell you who decided.
We
decided,” said one girl.
“We did?”
“Yah.
We
make the fashion. ’F I wear this, like, bamboo-leaf pattern in my kimono and let my red underskirt show, and ’f I tie a purple and green obi around, really wide—like, way wider than anyone else—and I go strolling down the boulevard, then the artists paint me, even the noblewomen will think thaz a new style an’ it’z gorgeous. Izn it?”
“ ’Member when Hana-ogi went to the Spring Festival dressed like a man? They thought that was beautiful too.” Everyone laughed.
“Yah, maybe yu’re right. We decide.”
“That is, like, so cool! We’re, like, the
evil
ones, but they wanna dress like us? Even the little girls in the samurai families?”
“And talk like us. They copy our words, like
iki
—”
“Because we’re so clever. We set the styles. And we’re
fuh-ny
—”
“We’re
fuh-ny
till they suddenly decide we’re very bad for their
health
!”
Everyone laughed again.
“Well, we are. Bad for their health. Izn it?”
Everyone laughed more, and some leaned sideways on the floor, they were so full.
“Not to mention
our
health.” Kana looked pointedly at one girl. It’s true she was very skinny. And pale. And she kept coughing. “You don’t look so great, Sanae.”
“Doan say that!” she wailed. “If they think I’m sick, they’ll sen’ me home, won’t they?”
“We might all hafta go home if Sadanobu enforces these rules they’re talkin’ about.”
“But they doan really mean it. They’ll
never
shut down the brothels.”
“The only way we
close
’em down is if we
burn
’em down.”
“Mmmm, great idea,” murmured someone.
More laughter.
Our stomachs were bursting with food. We were lying around groaning.
“So what did we decide beauty is?” said Shino.
“We didn’ decide.”
“But we c’n give you the list.”
Fumi recited. “Best between fifteen and eighteen years of age.”
I thought most of them were a few years older than that.
“The skin must be pale pink, like cherry blossoms.”
Their skin was not pink but sallow; they never went outside.
“The eyes must be the shape of a melon seed. Nose depends on the face—not too large, not too small. Mouth should be very narrow across, and lips puffed as if a wasp has stung them. Eyes large and very black in the center. Eyebrows close together.”
The girls fell silent, each one reflecting on how far away she was from the ideal. I did too.
“The teeth must be white and the nose must be gradual. The ears must be long and far away from your face, not fleshy.”
“Oooh.”
They curdled at the thought of fleshy ears.
“When you lift up your hair, the nape should be clean and your neck long.”
“How do you know all this?” said Shino.
“ ’S written in a tablet, and we’re measured. We’ve all bin assessed.”
“Waist must be very narrow and legs long in proportion to the back. Top of the head flat, like you can rest a plate on it.”
A couple of them stood up and put plates on their heads and tried walking. The plates slid off.
“And don’t forget the feet—a lovely arch.”
“And the toes should curl up!”
Here all the women put their hands over their mouths and giggled. Shino didn’t get the joke. Neither did I.
Fumi whispered, “ ’F yu have curled-up toes, it means that yur a wanton woman.”
“I am not,” said Shino indignantly. “Izn it?”
Everyone roared. Fumi patted her leg. “Good girl,” she said.
I looked at Shino and she looked at me. Her eyes were nothing like the shape of a melon seed. They were flat on top and curved on the bottom: they looked like little boats sailing across a placid sea. And her nose—the slope was not gradual at all but rather hasty. It had a big bump in it too. I put my hand on my chin to cover it because I knew how it stuck out.
“Fingers!” said the nice one. “Fingers must have tapered ends and be long and supple.”
“Got that one.” Shino had graceful long fingers. We all looked at them. They didn’t seem enough somehow.
“The
yakko
will become more beautiful as she gets a little older,” said Fumi.
“Not possible. Your basic face can’t change.”
“Yeah, but the rules c’n change. F’r instance, it used to be yur eyebrows had to be far apart, and now, it’s easy to see, the most beautiful thing iz to have the eyebrows close together,” continued the older courtesan. “We can pluck some and get them to grow t’wards each other. I’ve seen it done.” She paused. “And yur face will grow into this nose.”
Shino did not look hopeful.
“Wait. Doan give up,” said Fumi. “Think of those hands.”
Shino held up her hands. They looked very nice to me.
“They are large,” said the courtesan dubiously. She bent a finger back. “But so flexible!”
“I play the koto.”
“And she makes paintings,” I said. “She can write many Chinese characters too.”
“There, already ’z better news! It’s as Kana says—you have talents! We poor girls have no talent, nuthin’. Probly you write poetry?”
“I like to write down my thoughts . . .” Shino ventured shyly.
They all fell over laughing.
“Oh, no. No, no. No one wanz to hear a prostitute’s thoughts.”
Shino led me back to my father and let go of my hand. He was crouched as usual and chuckling to himself as he copied the antics of a trainer and his monkey with his darting brush.
“Go,” she said, pushing me. “I will see you again soon.”
“But, Shino,” I whined loudly. I wanted to see my father’s reaction when he knew she was near. And sure enough his head came up, his face colored and softened. He put down his brush—he never did that for anyone else—and scrambled to his feet. He was barely taller than her, and while she made herself taller, like a sapling straining for sun, he made himself shorter, swaying and bending his knees.
“It is the beautiful
yakko
herself,” he said. “She has kindly returned my daughter.”
“She is much obliged to you for letting Ei entertain her in her quiet life,” said Shino.
They both laughed softly. I could feel the currents running between them. “I wonder if you would be walking on the boulevard some afternoon,” he said, “and I could thank you properly.”
She inclined her head just slightly. She seemed to think about this. “My time is not my own. But it is just possible I could find myself getting tea and treats for Fumi the day of the coming festival. She is very fond of the tea in that shop where we first met.”
I
T WAS THE
eighth month, and one of those warm days before the cold set in. The Mad Poets group sat on the bank above the Sumida. My father was there, with Tsutaya the publisher, Utamaro the artist, and a jack-of-all-trades writer called Sanba. Sanba had the best cosmetics store in Edo, where he sold the white lead paint the actors put on their faces. He also wrote plays and critiques of the actors’ performances. And to ensure it all flourished, he had invented and sold a popular elixir of immortality. He made a lot of jokes and kept the others laughing. There was also Kyoden, author of yellow-back novels, which he sold along with smoking materials at his tobacco store. And Waki the tattooist, who now made beautiful little drawings and poems, too.
The courtesan Yuko carried a telescope; she kept lifting it to her eyes. It was trained on the distant racecourse at the edge of town. She murmured the name of the horse her lover had bet on. If it won, her lover would buy out her contract and free her. She believed that. She was silly and a bit pathetic but not a bad poet.
Like a courtesan’s
vowels the green strands
of a willow tree
stretch out extra long.
It wasn’t true what the brothel-keepers said: that people did not want to hear courtesans’ thoughts. Courtesans were very stylish. All Edo was keen to know the details of their lives in the Yoshiwara. And everyone went there, even though it was forbidden. People from all walks of life came in disguise. The pleasure district was a great vat of soup that way, and even though the
bakufu
insisted that the higher classes disdain us, it turned out that the samurai wanted to mingle with merchants, and their daughters found it exciting to sit down with peasants.
Because they were so strange, these proximities were titillating. Waki the tattooist sat beside Akemi, a merchant’s daughter. Her father was paying the bill, which meant we had plenty to eat. Everyone was drinking wine from stemmed glasses, making like Europeans. They were planning their next publication: the poets would write and the artists would illustrate a book, which the publisher would print. It was all very convenient.
Below us in the riverbed were wide, dry spaces on either side of the water. A dance troupe had set down a mat, and the women were tuning up their instruments. From our position on the bank above we had a good view.
I rolled in the weeds listening to the cicadas and the crickets. Their lifetime was nearly over; soon cold would silence them. On the rare occasion that someone would look at me, I would cross my eyes. The Mad Poets were completely involved with themselves, timid when sober but now drunk and boasting. And the serving girls—all about my age—didn’t want to wait on me. The poems were always about sex. “More so than the maiden flower which is charming from the front I prefer the purple trouser plant best seen from the rear.”
It was my father’s verse that made the poets laugh: purple trouser plant, ha, ha. I laughed along with them.
Hokusai looked up as if he’d just remembered I was there. Did he think I was too young for little rhymes about men who flee women? I made a face at him. I heard this kind of stuff all the time. It was nothing to me.
He went back to his composition.
I decided to make a painting. I grabbed a brush and paper and painted an inlet with a little sailboat crossing it. I wasn’t very happy with it. Something was wrong with the distance and the shapes. I couldn’t make it appear on paper the way it was in front of me. I took it across to my father. He sat up and paid attention then and showed me how to correct it.