Chapter 5 chapter Five

In the afternoon I finally got to watch Hatsumomo make up.My aunt told me to sit an arm's length away from Hatsumomo, and I could see her face in the small mirror on her dressing table.She was kneeling on a cushion, holding half a dozen makeup brushes of various shapes.Some brushes were as wide as fans, while others looked like chopsticks with a tiny tuft of soft bristles at the tip.Finally, she turned around and showed it to me. "These are my brushes," she said. "Do you remember this?" She took a glass container of pure white makeup from a dresser drawer and waved it in the air for me to see. "This is the makeup I tell you to never touch."

"I haven't touched it," I said. She sniffed the capped bottle a few times and said again, "Yeah, I don't think you touched it." Then she put down her make-up, picked up three paint sticks, and showed me in the palm of her hand. "These are for shadowing. You can take a look." I took a paint stick out of her hand.It was about the size of a child's finger, but was hard and slippery like a rock, so it didn't leave any color on my skin.One end of the stick is wrapped with a layer of exquisite silver foil, which is already mottled due to being often used by hands.

"So think about it, why am I showing you these things?" "So I can see how you do your makeup," I said. "My God, that's wrong! I'm showing them to you so that you can understand that there's no mystery in it. Poor you! Because it means that makeup alone can't turn poor Chiyo into a beauty. " Hatsumomo turned back to face the mirror, humming and opening a jar of pale yellow face cream.You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you that this cream is made from nightingale droppings, but it's true.Many geisha in those days used nightingale poop as a face cream because they believed it was good for the skin; but it was too expensive, so Hatsumomo just took a little and applied it around her eyes and mouth.Then she tore off a small piece of wax, softened it on her fingertips, and applied it first to her face, then to her neck and chest.She took some time to wipe her hands clean with a cloth, then she soaked a flat makeup brush in a bowl of water and used it to blend the makeup until she got a chalky white paste things.She brushed it all over her face and neck, leaving only her eyes, nose and mouth.If you've ever seen a child cut out holes in paper for a mask, Hatsumomo looks like this, and then she dips a few small brushes and uses them to fill in the "cutouts".

Now, she wets the paint stick to add some blood to her cheeks.During my first month at the art museum, I had seen Hatsumomo several times after she finished her makeup, and I noticed that she would apply various colors to her cheeks depending on the color of her kimono. After brushing the blush, she asked her aunt to brush the back of her neck for her.I must tell you about the Japanese way of thinking about necks, Japanese men feel about a woman's neck and throat the same way western men feel about women's thighs.That's why geisha wear kimonos with their collars so low in the back, exposing the first few joints of their spines; I suppose it's the same effect as Parisian women wear short skirts.Auntie drew a pattern called "three legs" on the nape of Hatsumomo's neck.It's a dramatic image because you feel as if you're looking at the bare skin around her neck through a thinning fence.It took me years to understand its erotic effect on men.In a way, it's also like a woman covering her face and peering through her fingers.The fact that a geisha leaves a small patch of skin along her hairline free of make-up makes her make-up look even more unnatural, like a mask used in Noh plays.When a man sits next to a geisha and looks at her mask-like makeup, his lust for the naked skin beneath her becomes even stronger.

Auntie and I walked out of the room to the stairs, where Mr. Biegong was waiting by a full-length mirror.In the first week I came to the art hall, I learned that pulling girls out of the house is not Mr. Bekiya's job at all. He is a dresser, which means that he has to come to the art hall every day to help Hatsumomo dress in her complicated clothes. kimono. The kimono Hatsumomo was going to wear that night hung on a hanger next to the mirror.Auntie stood there smoothing the kimono until Hatsumomo came out of the room.She was wearing a red-brown shirting gown with dark yellow leaves patterned on it.The next steps, I had no idea at the time, because the complicated kimono would confuse people who are not used to wearing it.But if properly explained, it is easy to understand why kimonos should be worn that way.

First, the way a housewife and a geisha wear a kimono are very different.When a housewife wears a kimono, she uses various padding to cindle the waist of the gown unattractively, so that the final effect is that the whole person is completely cylindrical, like a wooden pillar in a temple hall.But geishas wear kimonos so often that she hardly needs any padding, and cinching never seems to be an issue.Both housewives and geisha would first take off their make-up robes and wrap a strip of silk cloth around their bare buttocks, which we call a "wrap".Then you put on a short-sleeved kimono shirt, fasten it at the waist, and tie the pads, which look like little shape-fitting pillows with strings attached to secure them where needed. Location.Hatsumomo had the traditional small ass and slender waist, and she had years of experience wearing kimonos, so she didn't use pads at all.

But the undergarment she was going to wear next wasn't really a piece of underwear.When a geisha dances, and sometimes even walks down the street, she may use her left hand to lift up the hem of her kimono for mobility.This exposes the slip below the knee, so the pattern and texture of the slip must match the kimono. When Shitao came out of her room, she had already put on these clothes.She also wore a pair of white socks with a button on the side for a snug fit.At this time, it was Mr. Biegong's turn to help her dress.Watch him at work and you immediately understand why his help is essential.No matter who wears it, the length of the kimono is uniform, so except for those women who are particularly tall, the long part must be folded in and hidden under the belt.When Bekiya-san folded the excessively long part of the kimono around Hatsumomo's waist and fixed it with a string, there was never an iota of wrinkle in that part.If, by any chance, a crease appeared, he would tug here and there to straighten it.By the time he's finished all the work, the kimono always fits perfectly to the curves of the wearer's body.

Mr. Bekiya's main job as a dresser is to wear a wide belt, which is not as simple as it sounds.A wide belt like Hatsumomo's was twice as long as a man's height and about as wide as a woman's shoulders.Wrapped around the waist, it covers the area from the sternum down to the navel.It seems that most people who know nothing about kimonos think that the obi is just tied behind the back and acts as a rope; this idea is far from the truth.It took half a dozen strings and pins to hold the belt in place, and a fair amount of padding to get a sharp knot.It took Mr. Bekkiya several minutes to fasten Hatsumomo's obi.After he finished, there was almost no wrinkle anywhere on the fabric, and the drape of the fabric was perfectly presented.

At this point, all that's left is a final touch of makeup and a few accessories in her hair.Auntie and I followed Hatsumomo back to her room. Hatsumomo knelt in front of her dressing table and took out a small lacquer box containing lip gloss.She uses a small brush to color her lips.The fashion at the time was to leave the upper lip unpainted so that the lower lip would appear fuller. Now, Hatsumomo took out a branch of the paulownia tree that she had shown me earlier, and lit it with a match.After waiting a few seconds for it to burn, she blew it out, squeezed it with her fingertips to cool it, and went back to the mirror to paint her eyebrows with the burnt charcoal.The brows are drawn in a lovely soft gray color.Then, she went to the closet to choose some hair accessories, including a tortoise shell and a very special long pearl hairpin.When she had them in her hair, she sprinkled some more on the nape of her bare neck, and tucked the flat wooden bottle of perfume into her belt for a rainy day.She also tucked a fan in her belt and a handkerchief in her right sleeve.When everything was ready, she turned to look at me with the same smile on her face as before, and even Auntie had to sigh, Hatsumomo looked so extraordinary.