Memoirs of a Geisha: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

To stop Chiyo from leaving again, Mother has the maids lock the front door gates every night. With the doors locked, Chiyo lies awake for the next few nights wondering how she will escape the okiya to meet Satsu. On the day before Chiyo and Satsu plan to run away, Chiyo washes the wood floors in the maids’ room. While she cleans, the soapy water snakes across the room. The sight of the water flowing makes Chiyo daydream of flowing to the second floor and then to the roof. Chiyo suddenly remembers that she can get onto the roof of the okiya, but she doesn’t know how she’ll escape once she gets up there.

The following evening when everyone goes to sleep, Chiyo sneaks up to the roof. She swings her legs over the side of the slanted roof and hears people talking in the street below. Chiyo tries to gently slide herself down the roof, but she quickly gathers more speed than expected. Unable to stop herself, she slips off the roof and lands in the street outside the okiya. In a daze and with her entire body in pain, Chiyo sees Auntie come out of the okiya. More angry than Chiyo ever has ever seen her before, Auntie pulls Chiyo inside and begins to beat her mercilessly, telling her that she will never be a geisha now.

The next morning a doctor comes and sets Chiyo’s broken arm. In terrible pain, Chiyo goes to Mother’s room. Mother says that she won’t invest any more money in a girl who might just run away. Mother says that Chiyo must now pay back the substantial debts she owes by working as a maid.

In the months after Chiyo’s failed escape attempt, everyone in the okiya ignores her, treating her as if she isn’t even there. All that winter, she wonders what happened to Satsu and if her mother and father are still alive. During this time, Chiyo’s only comfort comes from imagining herself returning to Yoroido and running along the path to her house. But something always stirs her from her daydreams, causing her to return to her lonely reality.

When spring comes, a package arrives for Chiyo from Mr. Tanaka. Auntie takes the box and opens it, revealing mortuary tablets from her family’s Buddhist shrine. There is also a note from Mr. Tanaka that Auntie reads aloud to Chiyo. The note begins with Mr. Tanaka musing on how the spring’s beautiful “flowers that grow where old ones have withered serve to remind us that death will one day come to us all.” Mr. Tanaka then writes that six weeks after Chiyo left for Kyoto, her mother died, followed soon after by her father. Mr. Tanaka writes that he knows Chiyo will succeed as a geisha and turn her suffering into beauty. At the end of the letter, he briefly mentions that Satsu arrived in Yoroido last winter and immediately ran off with the Sugi boy.

As Auntie reads the letter, Chiyo feels the tears streaming down her face. Hearing that both of her parents died, Chiyo feels as if her mind is a broken vase. Pitying Chiyo and her grief, Auntie helps Chiyo place the tablets on a shelf near the base of the stairwell. Auntie tells Chiyo never to forget her parents, because they are all that’s left of her childhood.