I am a fisherman's daughter from a small town called Yorocho near the Sea of ​​Japan.In that town, I lived in what I called a "drunk house."The house was near a cliff, and the wind from the sea blew all day long.As a child I thought the sea had a bad cold, because it was always panting and sneezing and it would send up huge waves.I think our little house must be very disgusted that the sea is sneezing in its face from time to time, and in order to avoid it, it decides to lean back.The house would have collapsed if my father hadn't hewn a huge log from a wrecked fishing boat to prop up the eaves.But this way the house looked like a drunken old man leaning on his crutches.

Since childhood, I have looked a lot like my mother.We all have the same special pair of eyes that you hardly see in Japan.Unlike other people's dark brown eyes, my mother's eyes were a translucent gray, and mine was exactly like hers.When I was very young, I told my mother that I thought someone poked a hole in her eye and all the ink drained out of it.Fortune tellers say that her eyes are so pale because she hits five elements with a lot of water, so much that she can hardly see the other four "elements". My mother always said she married my father because she hit too much water and my father hit too much wood.My father was a fisherman, and he took everything so slowly that when he tried to put on an air of concentration, you could run out and drain a tub of bathwater while he was readjusting his expression.His face was covered with wrinkles, and each wrinkle contained worry or other emotions, making this face no longer like his real face, but more like a tree covered with branches. A tree full of bird nests.

I was very much like my mother, and my sister Satsu was very much like my father.Satsu was six years older than me, and she had the thing about making everything seem like a complete accident.For example, if you ask her to pour a bowl of soup from a pot on the stove, she can do it, but she will act as if she just accidentally spilled the soup into the bowl.At one point, she was even cut by a fish, I don't mean she was cut by a knife while washing the fish, but when she was carrying a paper wrapped fish up the hill from the village, the fish slipped out of the paper and stuck As her leg fell, the fin cut her.

When I was seven years old, my mother became seriously ill.But by the time I was nine, her cheekbones were starting to protrude, and her life was being drained by illness.Just like the originally moist sea vegetables, it will become brittle a little during the drying process. Dr. Miura came that day. "Little Chiyo," my father said to me, "give the doctor a cup of tea." At that time my name was Chiyo, and I didn't change my name to Sayuri until I became a geisha many years later. "Sakamoto-kun," said Dr. Miura after examining my mother, "you have to make a good new gown for your wife. She shouldn't be walking around in this worn gown."

"Then she is dying?" "Perhaps it will be a few weeks. She is suffering a great crime. This death will set her free." Dr. Miura left.My father sat silently with his back to me for a long time. Finally, he whispered my name and asked me to go to the village and bring back some incense from the altar. It was raining outside. I crossed the street and ran towards Okada’s house, which sells dry goods. The muddy road was slippery in the rain. My feet slipped and I fell forward, half of my face on the ground.I almost fainted from the fall, and then someone lifted me up and sent me to the Japan Offshore Seafood Company. After I woke up, I saw the face of Mr. Ichiro Tanaka on my back.I had met Mr. Tanaka many times in the village before, and his family opened the Japan Offshore Fisheries Company.

Mr. Tanaka pulled my lips down with his fingers, and tapped my head here and there a few times.Suddenly, he noticed my gray eyes.We stared at each other for a long time - so long that I couldn't help shivering, even though I was in the sweltering fish company. "You have an eggplant on your face, Sakamoto's little daughter." He went to open a drawer and took out a small mirror for me to take a look at.As he said, my lips were swollen and blue. "But what I really want to know," he went on, "is how you got such unusual eyes? And how did an old man with a wrinkled face and a head like an egg give birth to a daughter as beautiful as you are?" ?”