Read "Kimiko" by Lafcadio Hearn online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
There is no more Ichi-dai-me Kimiko: she is only a remembrance. Kimika was quite young when she called that Kimiko her professional sister.
"An exceedingly wonderful girl," is what Kimika says of Kimiko. To win any renown in her profession, a geisha must be pretty or very clever; and the famous ones are usually both -- having been selected at a very early age by their trainers according to the promise of such qualities. Even the commoner class of singing-girls must have some charm in their best years -- if only that _beaute du diable_ which inspired the Japanese proverb that even a devil is pretty at eighteen.[2] But Kimiko was much more than pretty. She was according to the Japanese ideal of beauty; and that standard is not reached by one woman in a hundred thousand. Also she was more than clever: she was accomplished. She composed very dainty poems -- could arrange flowers exquisitely, perform tea-ceremonies faultlessly, embroider, make silk mosaic: in short, she was genteel. And her first public appearance made a flutter in the fast world of Kyoto. It was evident that she could make almost any conquest she pleased, and that fortune was before her.