Hatsumomo

Hatsumomo is the antagonist of the bestselling novel of 1997 and 2005 film of the same name, "Memoirs of a Geisha". She is portrayed by Chinese actress Gong Li in the film.

Appearance
In both the book and movie, Hatsumomo is as cruel as a spider, but is described to be just as beautiful and fair. She has a small hourglass frame, with petite bone structure, and looks more lovely chewing on her finger nail than most geishas look while posing for a picture.

The Hostile Personality of Hatsumomo
Hatsumomo has no backstory. Her history is a mystery. She was most likely sold by her family who couldn't take care of her and quickly bought into the Geisha lifestyle like most girls in Japan who were sold off at that time.

Hatsumomo was one of the most beautiful and successful geisha of Gion in Japan. She even won and paid back her purchase price when she was only twenty, which was unheard of. Thus, being the talk of Hanamachi ever since. Despite the success of Hatsumomo and good fortune she had as a high status Geisha, she was far from beautiful on the inside. Behind closed doors Hatsumomo was sociopathic, selfish and a very jealous woman full of hatred and malice. She was a Geisha of cold blood who hated competition or anyone more successful than she. She would stop at nothing to get what she wanted and would sabotage anyone who dared try to stop her or got in her way. She dominated the Nitta Okiya and bossed all of it's residents around.

Behind her evil, Hatsumomo was ironically a helpless romantic despite it being strictly forbidden for Geisha to love. She had a secret lover, named Koichi who was already married. Koichi did seemingly care about Hatsumomo at one point. But he eventually left her and never came back to see her again when they were caught making love on the Okiya grounds.

In the film before he left her he told her, sneaking around like criminals was degrading and she was told by Nitta Mother, she was never to see him again. For Geisha is not free to love.

This broke the heart of Hatsumomo, making her even more angry and bitter inside in both book and movie.

The story of Geisha Hatsumomo


In 1920's traditional Japan, the famous Hatsumomo is the only resident geisha living in the legendary Nitta Okiya before the arrival of nine years old Chiyo. Pumpkin, a girl around Chiyo's age lives at the Okiya who is a maid and virtual slave of Nitta, the Geisha Mother of the house.

When Chiyo first lays eyes on Hatsumomo she is completely floored and taken away by the breathtaking and jawdropping beauty Hatsumomo is. And is impressed by her flawless and elegant appearance and performance. But soon after, Chiyo sees her true character and learns about Hatsumomo's evilness that dwells deep inside her. She has no respect for authority nor her elders, she constantly bosses everyone around the Okiya, and even finds little Chiyo to be a potential rival one day. Hatsumomo is jealous of Chiyo, who has a natural beauty and rare bluish-gray eyes, the color of rain. So Hatsumomo thinks she is a threat to her own Geisha status, since it would put Nitta Mother in a great position to throw her out in the streets. As a result, through the whole plot, evil Hatsumomo makes several attempts to get Chiyo restricted from being a geisha and learning the ancient arts or prohibited and banned from the town of Gion all together as she has done to other girls in the past.

The Evil of Hatsumomo
Hatsumomo and her friend named Korin, who's also a geisha come home to the Nitta Okiya late at night and are very drunk from attending an event and we're forced to drink. They both convince Chiyo and manipulate her to paint on an gorgeous and extremely expensive Kimono, owned by another high status Geisha by the name of (Mameha), who is also beautiful and older and is a rival geisha to Hatsumomo. Mameha is not as attractive as Hatsumomo, but more kinder, wealthy and wise.

The Kimono is ruined with ink being marked all over it. Permintally staining it, and Chiyo is blamed. However, Hatsumomo finally tells her that her sister, Satsu is a prostitute in "District Pleaser" Miyagawa-Cho Gion, under the house brothel of Tatsuyo.

Chiyo makes plans to escape with her sister where she breaks her arm in the process and is caught, resulting in her expulsion to learn the arts of being a a geisha. And pleasing Hatsumomo to no end.



In the book version, Mameha reveals to a 12 - year-old Chiyo (15 in the film and still a maid) that Hatsumomo can not tolerate competition. And is jealous of Chiyo because of her natural beauty of her rare blue-gray eyes. She mentions to Chiyo also about what made her childhood friend, Hatsuoki a potential geisha in training who was also pretty and popular, ultimately get banned from Gion due to Hatsumomo's jealousy for her as well. When she was trained under the great Tomihatsu.

Mameha also reveals that Hatsumomo is much more threatened by Chiyo rather than Pumpkin, with Chiyo out of the way, she not considered a threat to her due to her being unable of becoming Geisha of the Nitta Okiya by being adopted by Nitta Mother one day. Pumpkin is in the lead of being the adoptive daughter. Thus, with her as adopting the Okiya, Hatsumomo as Pumpkin's big sister will use Pumpkin as a puppet to control and take over the Okiya by calling all the shots. She also reveals that, despite her stunning beauty, popularity and talent, Hatsumomo is not as successful as she seems. For she failed at finding a secure and rich Danna of her own. This is because a long time ago, Hatsumomo made ​​the terrible mistake of being rude and angering the owner of the Mizuki Teahouse. As a result of her silliness and behavior, she could never find a Danna as she was banned. Thus, needing Pumpkin to be picked as adoptive daughter to continue her manipulation and evilness.

Later, Mameha takes Chiyo under her wing and as an apprentice geisha and her younger sister, changing her name from Chiyo to Sayuri. Meanwhile, Hatsumomo punishes Chiyo for this by forbidding Pumpkin to ever talk to her friend, now named Sayuri. Hatsumomo quickly changes Pumpkin's name to Hatsumiyo. Unfortunately for Hatsumomo and Pumpkin, everyone keeps calling her Pumpkin because the geisha name of Hatsumiyo, failed to impress the social scene of Gion.

This causes Hatsumomo to try and fire back at Memeha, as she tries to sabatoge Sayuri in the process of her training. Hatsumomo stalks and follows her Memeha from party to party. Appearing at all the same events they go to, all in an attempt to ruin her reputation by spreading vile rumors all through the town of Gion. The attempts were all initially ssuccessful at some degree but Memeha comes up with a plan to get Hatsumomo banned from Gion. And her and Sayuri give her a taste of her own medicine.

The Downfall of Hatsumomo
After Sayuri's mizuage is bought from the highest paying bidder in all geisha history, and Sayuri was a huge success, now with her own clientele of businessmen who want to be her Danna, even having a General Tottori. Hatsumomo's own once high status and impressive reputation as a geisha rapidly declined to the point that she tries to save her own career before Pumpkins. She is drunk almost everyday, and accuses Sayuri of stealing and reads her diary but it backfires in her face when she discovers that the emerald brooch she once accused Sayuri of stealing as a child to get her in trouble by framing her with, comes up found again by Sayuri herself. Immediately Chiyo takes this piece of evidence to Nitta Mother to prove her innocence and reveals Hatsumomo's dishonesty, Hatsumomo is finally caught red handed in a lie and punished.

Hatsumomo is forced to pay back the money Chiyo had to replace for the item she supposedly stole, angering and humiliating Hatsumomo further. And she is forced to leave out of the Okiya to meet her clients and attend the events she schedules much earlier than normal, in order to prevent her from bumping into Sayuri and getting in the way of her making money. Sayuri now is the main breadwinner, bringing more income in the house of Nitta than Hatsumomo. Thus, weakening Hatsumomo's power.

Hatsumomo is finally defeated when she gives in to her insanity, driving her to the breaking point (the same way she did with them early in the career of Sayuri).



Memeha does this in a sneaky yet smart way. With the help of Sayuri they spread lies of concern for the rival, telling everyone that a doctor has declared Hatsumomo an alcoholic and mentally unstable. There was no doctor around who ever said this, but everyone believed Memeha because she was a nice and good hearted and not known to ever lie. Later on, at a banquet party, Hatsumomo gave into her rage by biting and viciously attacking a friend, a gay actor named Kabuki. This was triggered when he angered a drunken Hatsumomo by kissing Memeha in front of everyone at the party and making Hatsumomo look like a fool. Hatsumomo snaps and when she does attack her actor friend, she is then thrown to the street drunk and delirious and dissapears until the morning.

In movie, as a final blow to her, the older geisha has a fight between her and her rival Sayiru for her possessions. The candle that Hatsumomo had planned to use to burn her things falls over and starts a fire which soon engulfs the whole room. As Sayuri and Mother both try to extinguish the fire, she leaves the room and takes several oil lamp candles from the walls in the Okiya hallways and throws them as they shatter to the ground to destroy the Okiya, throwing alcohol oil on the fire nearby, making the flames even higher fiercer and deadly. Thus damaging the interior of the Nitta Okiya even more.

The Hatsumomo's fate
The next day, in both versions, Mother throws Hatsumomo out of the Nitta Okiya and prohibits her from Gion permanently. In the book version, she was only wearing a simple white robe of plain thin cotten, which Nitta Mother gave her to wear and her hair was loose and in her face. No ornaments of decorative hair pins were placed in her head. She was also carrying all her life-long belongings of jewelry, purfumes, photographs, scrolls and skin ointments all in simple cloth bag and left the Okiya without saying goodbye to anyone. In the film, she was wearing the same black kimono she wore earlier when she deliberately caused the fire, but all her nice belongings now belonged to Sayuri.

In both versions of the story, she is never involved in the plot again, even after the Second World War. Although the book had many rumors in Gion specualted that Hatsumomo did survive the war and that she was currently working as a prostitute in the District bastard Miyagawa-Cho (the same Satsu was sold to a brothel under the house Tatsuyo) she was never physically seen. This rumor however, was probably true, because no other Okiya in Japan wanted to take her in as the main geisha because they were too afraid of her. However, it was implied that she was successful in drinking to death, possibly in Suicide.

Even Chiyo, who suffered more under her never-ending wrath, felt sympathy for Hatsumomo when looking back on her life memories.