In 1914, at the age of eight years, I was caught spying on my father Prince Su as he made love to a fourteen-year-old girl. The girl had glycerine eyes and marvellous lips that had no bow but were the shape and colour of a segment of blood orange, a soft, sanguine red. 

I watched from behind a carved screen as he removed her silk shoes, then dipped her tiny feet into his bowl of tea before drinking from it. The girl sat motionless and completely naked on a plump floor cushion. There was not even a comb in her long hair, which shone like laurel leaves. Deep into this amorous ritual my father pressed a sweet almond between her toes, lowered his lips to it and slowly ate the nut as though it were the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. She remained silent even as he mounted her, reaching his climax with groans of ecstasy. When he had finished and rolled away from her, she gave an exaggerated sigh of pleasure and whispered something to him that made him smile and look proud. After a little time had passed she rose, filled a bowl with warm, scented water and carefully washed between my father’s legs. Then she slipped into her doll shoes and, with her robe unbuttoned, she fluttered from the room. 

Under her shoes and bindings the girl’s feet would have been putrescent and fetid; yet crushed into the shape of a lotus flower so that, as legend had it, her lord could enjoy ‘eating the gold lotus while driving his jade spear into her jade gate until the moment of clouds and rain’, it hardly mattered. To please one’s master was all. 

I was destined never to experience this ritual, this passion brought on by the sight of those childlike feet. It is not customary for Manchu women to indulge in the practice of foot binding. We were the lucky ones. In those days in China, women’s lives were ruled by the whims of the men who were their lords. Bound feet kept them from straying too far, like ducks on a domestic pond. At least we Manchu women could run away on our big feet. 

I was a Manchu princess named Eastern Jewel, the fourteenth daughter of Prince Su, one of the eight Princes of the Iron Helmet in the old Imperial Court of Peking. Like my father I am a direct descendant of Nurhachi, the founder of the Manchu dynasty, and a distant cousin of the boy Emperor Pu Yi. Yet despite my heritage, I am female and considered by Manchu men to be less than them, an unimportant person hardly to be thought of at all. Yet, by my actions I make them think of me all the time. I have always believed myself a match for my brothers and made them angry by not kowtowing to them. Ninth brother said I must have been a warrior in a previous life. 

I was discovered at my spy hole by Jade Lute, the thirteenth of my nineteen sisters, the daughter of my father’s second and most jealous concubine. My own mother, a poised, elegant woman, was Prince Su’s fourth and youngest concubine. She was thought to be of Japanese descent and considered to be the second most beautiful woman in my father’s household. For the sake of good manners his wife accepted the compliment of being the first. My mother was named Yuzu after the prized citrus fruit of that name. She had a sweet, oval face with eyes as dark as muddy pools, rosy lips and a tiny provocative gap between her front teeth. Like most concubines she had an obedient nature but there was a streak of fun in her that sometimes overtook her at inappropriate moments. 

I was so completely spellbound by what I was witnessing through the intricately carved screen that I did not hear thirteenth sister coming. She pulled at my hair, screaming, ‘I have found a nasty little spy, a horrid little worm.’ She shrieked and held on to me until the whole household came running to see what all the fuss was about. 

My father was outraged by my behaviour and had me confined to my mother’s rooms. For hours he paced the halls and courtyards of our house, calling my mother to his side and going over and over my many misdemeanours. Her shame was deep and painful, made worse by the pleasure taken in her disgrace by my father’s wife and concubines. I vowed to myself that I would one day poison them all. Meanwhile, I took my revenge in dreams where Jade Lute, made half Gorgon half girl, was pursued by demons and devoured. 

It was fortunate for my mother that she had already given my father a son, my brother Xian Li, otherwise she might have been cast out for burdening him with me. She was accused of being a woman without character, on whom her daughter’s outrages reflected badly. My father said that it was unheard of for a daughter to be so vile, so without modesty or honour. 

‘Since Eastern Jewel burst into the world covered in blood, straining at the wet nurse until she had nothing left to give, you have allowed her will to succeed over your own,’ he told my mother coldly. He reminded her that it was I who had made sexual overtures to his servant boy Pao, causing him to be flogged and given away to a less generous master. The truth was I had only asked to see Pao’s snake because he was always boasting of its size and I wanted to prove him a liar. I had inspected and even touched at least two of my brothers’ members and couldn’t believe that a servant might have a finer one. I had thirteenth sister to thank for that betrayal too. It is irksome in the extreme to live in a house of women where the air is cloyed with envy and bitter with the smallness of their lives. 

My mother, bent double with humility, tapped along beside my father in his rage, her murmurings of regret barely audible. I had gone too far this time and she knew better than to make excuses for me. While other concubines had daughters who busied themselves in feminine pursuits, I was a wild and uncultured girl who was openly interested in sex, capable of cruelty and rebellious to the point of stupidity. Although she loved me I was my mother’s burden and her shame. 

The days passed and my father’s anger cooled, but I was still confined to my mother’s quarters without even a servant for company. Lonely and bored, I resorted to small mischiefs. I ate a whole box of fragrant dried lychees, which were my mother’s weakness, I wasted her precious supply of rouge papers, colouring my face a bright peony pink and dancing madly around her room. Finally when I had run out of things to occupy me and my screams and kicks on her door no longer brought my mother to my side, I braided my hair into two long pigtails and, using her bone-handled fruit knife, I liberated one of them. It lay on the floor like a small, dark, dead serpent. 

When she saw it my mother moaned and put her fist into her mouth to stop her cry lest she be heard by anyone listening at her door. She spent hours searching in her book of medicine for a concoction that would both speed the growth of my hair and cool my temper. She settled on a snake and chrysanthemum soup which, although delicious, had little effect on either. In her distress she made the mistake of seeking comfort by confiding in third concubine. And thus my fate was sealed. 

This time my father did not shout but was alarmingly quiet in his rage. His concubines talked in whispers so as not to provoke him further. Finally, when it seemed that his anger would never reach its peak, he called the women of the household into the central courtyard and sent word to my mother to bring me to him. They all knelt, humble and expectant, as I stood before him. As though he was catching a cat by the tail he lifted my remaining pigtail so high that the pain of it made my eyes water. Then he cut it off and threw it to the ground. 

Some of my sisters gasped while second concubine sniggered in the moment before my father silenced them all by raising his hand. He pushed me towards my mother, who was hot with embarrassment, and addressed his audience. 

‘It is my misfortune to be the father of Eastern Jewel,’ he said. ‘This unimportant daughter continues to disgrace her name with her ignoble behaviour.’ He looked towards my mother and continued, ‘She is like an unlicked cub, which perhaps is not her fault. I have no inclination to bother with these irksome concerns. Eastern Jewel will be sent to Japan to the house of my blood brother Kawashima where she will be taught the manners fit for her station in life, which is high, but still only that of a woman. Go about your business in this house as women and do not let the news of your small affairs reach my ears again.’ 

Minutes after his declaration, my father accompanied by his running servants left the house on horseback, shouting for them to keep up. A great sigh of relief was heard as the women began to chatter and gossip, knowing that my father, having made his decision, would eventually return home with his mood restored. I was led away by my dry-eyed mother to the hostile hissing of my sisters. I never saw my father again. 

I could not believe that I was to be sent away to this strange place called Japan. My father’s ‘blood brother’ sounded as scary as the dragons I had heard of in the stories told to me by third concubine, who had a vivid imagination and suffered terrible nightmares populated with the legendary creatures. Filled with a fear so strong that I couldn’t eat or sleep, I begged my mother to keep me with her. 

‘Please, Mother, save me from the blood man,’ I pleaded. But with sadness in her eyes she said that my father was not to be approached further and that I was to make the best of the situation I now found myself in. At the thought of losing my mother, as well as the only home I had ever known, my heart felt hollow. I was frightened by what lay ahead of me, but strangely, accompanying that fear a run of excitement at the thought of the unknown kept my blood singing. 

Each night for a week I slept in my mother’s arms as she cried herself to sleep. I breathed in the scent of her hair and grieved for her as though she were already lost to me. 

During that time my father did not call my mother to his bed once. From dawn of day to dusk she busied herself with the packing of the chests that would accompany me to the Kawashima household. She told me that Kawashima Naniwa was a great man. He was the son of an ancient family, the head of a large merchant empire and was involved in Japanese politics at the highest level. She knew nothing of the women or children in his household but felt sure they would treat me well and that I would prosper. Later I was to discover that Kawashima, finding me a pretty child, had requested of my father that I be given to him to be raised in his Japanese household two years before thirteenth sister betrayed me. However, my father chose to justify my banishment, it had always been the case that whatever my behaviour I would be given to Kawashima merely because he had requested it. Of my nineteen sisters and ten brothers, I was the only one to be given away. 

Ours was a rich home filled with fine silks, the most delicate of porcelain, soft blankets for winter nights and rosewood furniture intricately inlaid with ivory and jade. We had many servants, stables full of horses, kitchens that were well supplied with the best noodles, the finest rice and such superior cuts of meat that they hardly needed chewing. We were never short of sugar cakes or frosted apricots, and even the servants ate meat dumplings at least once a week. I wondered what I would be given from this wealth of luxuries to accompany me on my journey. I was then as I am now a greedy person, but, I should add, not an ungenerous one. In my opinion greed is not a bad thing, it spurs you on, makes you good at living. What is the point of life if nothing is demanded from it? 

As the trunks began to fill with gifts of exquisite linen, embroidered silk runners and delicate rolls of calligraphy that were to be presented to the Kawashima family, so I came to know that I truly was being sent from my mother and my home. There was to be no last-minute reprieve. 

Carefully, in the chest set aside for me, my mother placed my favourite rice bowl, a pair of her coral and silver gilt earrings, a good luck charm of a bee caught in amber, a fine leather writing case engraved with my family crest and a box of dried lychees. She said the lychees would sustain me and remind me of her until I had eaten the last one and then it would be time to forget her. I asked her if it would be easy to forget her. She said that I was not like other daughters so perhaps I would not find it hard, whereas it would break her heart to part with me. She said that she would never forget her beautiful, rebellious girl. 

I stored the precious box of lychees in my writing case and determined that however hungry I might be I would only eat half of them. I did not want the memory of my beautiful mother to fade before I could return to her. 

‘Surely I will see you again, Mother?’ I said. 

‘Only if that is your fate, Eastern Jewel,’ she replied. ‘You must be brave, little daughter, and remember that the stronger the wind, the stronger the tree needs to be.’ 

I left our house for the first part of my journey in a plain sedan accompanied by a fat servant woman with blackened teeth and a sweet smile. The luggage followed behind with two male servants cursing their luck that they had to leave my father’s comfortable house to go on a long and difficult journey with his disgraced daughter. As we clattered through the gate of our courtyard a beggar banged on the sedan’s door expectantly, only to be disappointed at the unpromising sight of a skinny girl with her fat servant woman. I took a coin from my pocket and threw it at his feet. I have always delighted in confounding people’s expectations of me, and in any case it is good luck to give alms to the poor. 

I looked back hoping to catch a last glimpse of my mother, but all I saw was one of our cooks carrying the pot of snake and chrysanthemum soup from her quarters back to the kitchen. A great sadness spread through my body, my mouth went dry and I was sick over the skirt of the servant woman. 

I wished I had been able to show my mother that I loved her, but something in my nature finds it hard to give people what they want. I don’t believe she ever knew the depth of my affection for her, ever knew that it was she who made me capable of love. The cruel gene inherited from my father was more urgent in me and often drowned my mother’s gentle one. All the same, I should have overcome my nature and left her with assurances of my love and gratitude. With hindsight, I imagine that she lived her days with a brick in her heart from the loss of me. 

As we bumped along the potholed roads I determined that I would not allow myself to indulge in such sadness again. After all, if one is to live a healthy life it is only natural to be the most important person in it. To feel sadness at the loss of others is like choosing to be ill when you could be well. Yet whatever we may determine, the memory of a loved mother accompanies us for the rest of our lives. 

My journey to Japan was a long and exciting one on which I discovered the world was a larger place than I could ever have imagined. We went by train to Shanghai and then across the sea to Yokohama. I enjoyed the adventure of being at sea and the unusual things that happened on board ship. One morning the deck was completely covered in jellyfish that had landed there during a night storm. The captain said that it was a bad sign when the creatures of the sea were not content to stay in their own element. 

There were three Europeans on the ship. They were tall and white and almost as translucent as the jellyfish. I had never seen a foreigner before and I thought them very odd. Everything about them looked out of proportion, especially their noses, and I felt very glad to be Chinese. When they spoke they sounded as though they were moaning, but I liked the blue of their eyes and the way they slapped each other on the back in greeting. 

The other passengers spoke of a war just begun in the land of these lofty aliens and I tried without success to picture those pale giants in battle. They were always stumbling about as though their heads were too far from their feet so it was difficult to imagine them wielding swords. 

All three of my servants suffered terribly from seasickness and spent the journey being sick or lying on the deck moaning. I was ashamed of them, especially as, like myself, the foreigners were fine sailors. 

We were tired and dusty by the time we arrived at the house of Kawashima, only to be greeted by the colour of death. White lanterns hung on either side of the tall gates and fluttered from the trees in the gardens that surrounded the house. A watchman, shaking his head as though he were praying for the dead, ushered us along a narrow footpath that was edged with swept shingle. The house, a large traditional timber-built residence, was circled by a stone wall with a western-style wing built on at one end where the garden sloped to a carp-filled pool. Half hidden by winter plum trees a wooden shrine sat on one side of a deep pond and was reflected in the water. 

I followed a servant into the dim interior of the house, leaving my own to follow with my possessions. The scent of camellias hung thick in the air, their ghostly blooms staring from vases arranged like sentries along the length of the hall. Because their flowers drop so abruptly they are thought to symbolise death, yet how beautiful they are in the brief time they have to prosper. 

Kawashima’s mother had died the previous week, and arriving as I had at a time of death was a bad omen for me. So it was that from the moment I set foot in the house the women thought me unlucky and therefore did not seek my company. 

The servant beckoned us on. We passed a long room half screened with white muslin drapes where a small elderly woman, tightly wrapped in a grey kimono, was bent over a table, fat with delicious-looking food. Softly outlined against the pale drapes she appeared like a ghost at the banquet but was probably a cook or a servant of some kind. Hunger rumbled in my belly and I remembered the last proper meal I had eaten in my father’s home, fish cooked with ginger, little honey dumplings and ground almond paste wrapped in rice paper as thin as tissue. I darted to the end of the table and grabbed a rice ball that was dripping in a glossy, plum oil. The old woman hissed with shock at my savage manners. My Chinese servant woman, whom I had named Sorry, because of her habit of constantly apologising, mumbled an appropriate excuse for my forgotten manners. She pulled me from the room, wiping my hands on the hem of her skirt. 

The two male servants who had accompanied us from China were to return to my father’s house. Sorry was to remain with me in Japan as my personal servant. I was glad of it as I had come to care for her over the course of the journey, just as she had decided to love me as best she could, and to be loyal. 

We were shown to small quarters on the north side of the house that overlooked a narrow strip of garden. Although it was summer there were no flowers, no roses or peonies, nothing to sweeten the air or stir the senses. It was a garden of stones, flat and uninteresting. Compared to the spaciousness of my mother’s quarters the small rooms felt like cells. Even Japanese as rich as Kawashima did not live in quite the same splendour as their high-ranking counterparts in China. Sorry went in search of food for us and to take her leave of our servants, who would enjoy a much-needed sleep before returning to Peking. 

Left alone in the three almost empty little rooms, I felt sad and frightened. Compared to the noisy hallways of my family home the house was silent and full of melancholy. I ached for my mother and I wondered what would become of me without her. I missed my brothers and sisters and wondered who would there be in this house that I could play and fight with, as I had done with them. I was a person without family, banished in shame from my home. It dawned on me then for the first time, but by no means the last, that perhaps I was truly an unlovable person. I think that unconsciously I chose to live up to that expectation of my nature rather than to change it. That was a mistake, as so many things have been in my life. 

I was deep in my musings when one of the household servants, a woman as skinny as a stick, came to tell me that the Kawashima family could not greet me, as they were visiting the shrine of their ancestors to pay their respects and to seek consolation. They were to return in a day or two. The stick woman gave me a cricket in a brass box pierced with tiny breathing holes. She said its chatter would keep me company. When she left I opened the box and let the cricket out. It hopped dismally to the corner of the room and sat in the dust looking as forlorn as I felt. 

As in most of the difficult times in my life, all I could think of was sleep, so I curled up on the lowest bed with my back to the wall and slept. I had no idea how much time had passed when I was woken by Sorry bearing a bowl of egg noodles and some uncooked white fish. I knew that she had been gone a long time because the light had changed, but the news she returned with was worth her long absence. My Japanese family, she told me, comprised Kawashima Naniwa who was to be my new stepfather, his father Kawashima Teshima who was in his seventieth year and in deep mourning for his recently dead wife, my stepmother Natsuko and her unmarried half-crippled sister Shimako. Kawashima and Natsuko had two sons, Hideo and Nobu, and six daughters, one of whom had an unlucky birthmark marring her face. All the Kawashima offspring had the strawberry birthmark somewhere on their body. It was usually a small stain on the foot or hand; only their daughter Itani was disfigured by it. 

To my amazement, Sorry told me that there were no concubines in the house. The cook, who was a great gossip, had confided in her that Kawashima took his pleasures away from home in the teahouses and brothels that flourished in the streets of Tokyo. He often went away for long periods of time to Osaka, the great merchant city, where he was said to keep a geisha in enviable luxury. This geisha was rumoured to have a hundred kimonos and many jewels which Kawashima lavished on her because of her various and delightful ways of welcoming his snake into her pit. Sorry laughed with pleasure at the vulgarity of this and apologised to me for the language she used. She said that Kawashima did not love his wife and this was Natsuko’s tragedy as well as the fact that she had given him more daughters than sons, which displeased him greatly. Although Kawashima did not desire his wife he did have great respect for her, for she was the daughter of a most influential and refined family. It was whispered in the house that Natsuko’s grief for her mother-in-law was false, a show to impress her husband. Kawashima’s mother had been a difficult woman to please and had treated Natsuko badly, implying that her daughter-in-law had fooled her son into believing that her womb would be rich in sons. 

I thought that Sorry had done well to gather so much information in so short a time. I loved gossip, it made me feel at home and I always felt safer when I knew what was going on around me. I told her that she would make a good spy. She laughed and said that we had come to a household where the servants were indiscreet and we would be wise to keep our secrets to ourselves. I knew that I would not find being secretive too hard as I had been brought up with concubines and their competitive daughters and thus had an untrusting nature. 

It was to be six weeks before I met Kawashima himself. His wife and her sister Shimako welcomed me formally and without warmth on my fourth day in their home. Their coldness filled me with gloom and I was glad I had Sorry to discuss them with. I told her that I did not like them at all and she said even though it would be difficult, I must try to please them, if only to make my own life easier. She advised me to pretend that my mind was as young as my body, for they would find my knowledge of life vulgar in a girl of my years. 

But whatever I said or did I would not gain the affection of my stepmother Natsuko or her sister Shimako. They were set against me from the start and the best I could hope for from them was indifference. They were an odd pair, quite different in appearance but devoted to each other. Natsuko’s great beauty, her long dark eyes, high cheekbones and rare smile, belied her nature. Shimako was plain with a broad face and a bent body and seemed made by the gods to mop up misery. It must have been hard for her to live in the shadow of her beautiful sibling and her charmed brother-in-law Kawashima. 

The only person I could truly rely on was Sorry. She was always on my side even though there were times when I tested her patience to breaking point. Her loyalty to me never wavered and without her my early life in Japan would have been very bleak. After a few months I settled into the rhythm of the house, my homesickness faded as I grew out of my shoes and out of my misery. I discovered in that long house with its monochrome garden a place for myself that was more interesting and complex than the one I had occupied in my Chinese home. It took me some time to get used to a house without concubines. At first I had thought it novel, but I soon realised that I missed the chatter and the constant dramas that a house confining thirty women is bound to host. But my life was freer and more independent in my new home as no one other than Sorry seemed to be in charge of my welfare, and I grew more autocratic and more determined to have my way than ever before. Sometimes I found myself in the company of the women of the house but I never felt myself to be one of them. I had a secret desire for Natsuko to favour me but I could not bring myself to court her, and so instead I became the adversary she had from our first meeting taken me to be. While Shimako mostly ignored me, Natsuko broke my heart with her sarcasm and coldness. The Kawashima women never relented in their dislike of me and my own contempt for them was confirmed as I grew up an outcast amongst them. It was not in my character to be a victim and so I set out to shock them by being their opposite in both morals and manners. 

As the years passed I wove myself into the fabric of the Kawashima family life while never losing sight of the fact that my thread was of a different colour to theirs. Japanese society was unlike the one I had known in China. It was not my heritage but I liked it better, especially as I had no predetermined place in it. 

With Sorry more in my charge than me in hers, I had the freedom to expand boundaries and to take my pleasures in a variety of ways that would never previously have been allowed me. As neither true daughter nor guest, I may have thought of myself as special, but in hindsight I think that I was simply abandoned. I was the daughter of a prince, high born and equal in status to my adoptive family, but I know now that to Kawashima I was just a novelty with a good dowry. 

Unlike China, Japan was coming to terms with the modern world, but in the Kawashima household old traditions still held sway. Had Kawashima’s daughters been born just a few years later, they would have been educated at a ladies’ seminary, shopped in department stores and enjoyed a life outside the home. As it was, they were on the cusp of that time and spent their days perfecting the tea ceremony and enduring hours of calligraphy lessons. 

No one questioned that I chose not to join the women in their delicate pursuits. Sometimes though, when I heard their soft laughter or saw Natsuko’s head close to one of her daughters as she explained a stitch, I felt a pain as real as toothache. 

Like my father Prince Su, Kawashima was not much interested in me, that is, until my body ripened and my face became the sort that excited men. Unlike my father, though, he allowed me an education. I shared lessons with his sons and, like the women warriors of Japanese legend, I was taught judo and fencing. I picked up languages early and had adjusted to Japanese. Along with Hideo and Nobu I was instructed in the English language and quite soon I overtook them in my knowledge of it. I never questioned why Kawashima’s blood daughters were not offered my opportunities, I just believed I was special and not cut out for their predetermined lives. 

On the rare occasions that I came to Kawashima’s attention he seemed mildly amused by my boyishness. He knew the women did not like me and that their shunning of my company had turned me to his sons for companionship. He was entertained by my swaggering and indulged my extreme naughtiness with his indifference to it. In common with many of the men of his generation, Kawashima was half in love with western culture and I convinced myself that he had chosen me over his daughters as the one to take advantage of the liberation of the new century. 

Firmly rooted in the traditional camp, Natsuko was outraged by me, my very existence in her world unsettled her. I knew that she resented her husband’s interest in me and was on the lookout for a good enough reason to have me sent back to China. Although her sister Shimako said little to my face and was always polite, I knew that she encouraged Natsuko’s animosity. Bitter with grief for her crippled body which made her unmarriageable, Shimako loved intrigue and constantly whispered in her sister’s ear, exaggerating everything and keeping the household in a state of tension. Secret enemies are always the most dangerous and despite her slyness, I knew Shimako to be mine. 

I liked the old man Teshima well enough and often ate with him in his rooms, but over time his insistent fondling became boring and I began to seek excuses to avoid his company. I had a friendship of sorts with Natsuko’s third daughter Ichiyo, who was eight months older than me. Ichiyo spied for me, partly for the pleasure of sharing secrets but mostly because she was afraid of me. 

I liked to win and having my father’s superior traits I naturally and enthusiastically adopted the Japanese code of conquest and courage into my own philosophy of life. This, Natsuko said, was so unfeminine that men would be repulsed by it. 

By the age of twelve I was wandering the house and grounds at will and had found my way out into the winding back streets of the city. The life of Tokyo spilled into those streets, thrilling me with its smells and colours, its endless noise and its parade of people. I saw geishas being carried to their assignations in rickshaws, businessmen making their way to their places of work, busy tea houses run by the mama-sans in their crude-coloured kimonos and the women of pleasure calling to each other from dark doorways and painted balconies. Once I saw a man in an alleyway force a girl to her knees before him. I was close enough to smell his sweat and desire and her fear, and to experience a wrench in my stomach so powerful that I found it hard to breathe. A few days later I tried to find the alleyway again but it had been reduced to dust and rubble. There were building sites everywhere as modern Tokyo emerged from the ancient city. New hotels and offices sprang up almost overnight amongst the little traditional shops and wooden temples, and whole streets were demolished in a single day. 

Once, during a bitterly cold winter, I discovered the beggar who stood daily outside our gate frozen to the iron pillar he had watched over since his youth. His body was bent with his right hand still cupped in the begging position. The air was so cold that winter that carp froze in the water and in the dawn hours birds dropped frozen from the sky. Sorry worried that my blood would turn to crystals and wrapped me up in so many layers that I could hardly walk. At night she put hot stones in the bed and brought me only cooked food. Unlike our gate-beggar we survived that bitter season, but ever since I have dreaded being cold; it is too close to death for my liking. In the company of Kawashima’s sons Hideo and Nobu and their newly found college friends, I would sneak to the cellar beneath the western wing where the sake was kept. We would make a fire and heat the sake in an iron pot, dropping crushed ginger into it as it came to the boil. I loved the way it would fizz and heat me up in a thrilling way moments after I had downed a glass. I had first heard of the boys’ ‘Secret Sake Club’ through Ichiyo who had discovered it while spying in my service. At first Hideo was furious that I had found out their secret, but, suspecting that I would make a dangerous enemy, he allowed me to join, as a junior member. The price of my entrance to this male ritual was to allow the boys to touch my breasts and to rub their hands between my legs. Nobu said that as an initiation the boys had cut their fingers and mingled their blood, but he thought that too harsh a rite for a girl. The first time Hideo approached me he clumsily unbuttoned my jacket and put his sweaty hands on my breasts. I knew that he was excited by the way his body trembled but he wouldn’t look me in the eye and so I could not share the moment with him. One of the students, a fine-looking boy with a thin nose, said that he could have the servant girls from his father’s household any time he wanted and that he had no interest in me. He was the only one to decline the childish game of feeling the Chinese princess. 

The initiation was a small price to pay as I enjoyed it as much as they did. I especially liked being half naked while they were buttoned to the neck in their student uniforms. It may be that it was in the dim cellar, full of warm sake and the scent of masculine sweat, that I developed my passion for dressing as a male myself and for men in uniform. I hugely enjoyed what I considered was my private fun, but nothing much remains secret in a household where servants go too quietly about their business and delight in trading gossip. Ichiyo told me that her mother and her aunt, hearing of my exploits, thought me wild and uncouth. I didn’t care as I felt only scorn for their diluted experience of life. It seemed to me that they were trapped in the past, conditioned like geishas to live on their knees, rarely grasping the truth, which is that we are alive only in the dangerous moments. 

I secretly longed for Natsuko’s affection but I could not bring myself to behave in a way that might have secured it. I never pardoned my own mother for being so powerless and I didn’t dare trust another to take her place. Yet Natsuko’s rejection of me affected me powerfully and led me through my life to value, even above passion, the true friendship of women. 

If the women in my life at that time were unsatisfactory, I had no trouble with Japanese men. In their arrogance and unquestioning use of power I admired them even above their Chinese brothers. I thought of Kawashima as a great man who knew how to live his life and make the most of his opportunities. I believed that I would have made a better son for him than either Hideo or Nobu. 

That freezing winter that our old gate-beggar died I was officially adopted by Kawashima. I became a Japanese citizen and was renamed Kawashima Yoshiko. Japan was to be my new country and I felt overwhelmed with happiness. If a mother’s acceptance was no longer possible for me, at least I could belong here in Japan. Sorry celebrated with me, even though she was not sure she approved of my new nationality. She continued to call me Eastern Jewel when addressing me formally, but Little Mistress was her usual and more affectionate choice of name. We ate a celebratory dinner and lit a firework that rocketed to the stars. Memories of my Chinese family, strong at first, began to recede as my new life took precedence. Occasionally Sorry would cook me a Chinese dish to remind me of my heritage. She would oversee everything in the kitchen to make sure I had the finest rice and noodles and the choicest fish and meats. Despite her fussiness she was well liked by the other servants for, as she often said, she was a humble person with a most interesting mistress. 

Although I was delighted to be officially Kawashima’s and Japan’s daughter, it was an honour Natsuko begrudged me. She had me moved to the western wing of the house, the nearest she could get to banishing me from her sight without incurring her husband’s anger. The wing, more generously proportioned than the main house, had been built mostly for show. I think that the Kawashimas found its European furnishings odd and uncomfortable and Shimako described it as being fit only for barbarians. It suited me very well though as the rooms were spacious and the furnishings deliciously foreign. I slept in a bed carved from ebony and walked on floors scattered with Persian rugs. The thing I most loved about it was that it was linked to the main house by a narrow hall with a sprung wooden floor that sang like a bird when walked on. I always knew when someone was coming and became expert at recognising people by their footsteps. 

In those years of my youth life progressed well enough. I was often at odds with Natsuko and Shimako, but I had friendships of varying sorts with the children of the house. I was always occupied and never bored. I indulged my passion for food, my interest in sex and my need for information. I took life on without fear, but I could not control the terror in my dreams, which were filled with death and the cold and images of me alone in a barren landscape.

I learnt early that to know other people’s secrets was to have power over them. Sorry procured information that was to ease my path through life and allow me to bargain to my advantage. One spring she told me that Natsuko had been soaking sponges in bitter green tea and putting them inside herself to stop her conceiving. A fortune teller had predicted that she could now only conceive girl children. Six daughters was shame enough and Natsuko, deeply in love with her husband, was terrified that he would find out and never call her to the marriage bed again. Shimako had suggested that eating live stag beetles had been known to reverse the trend, but desperate as Natsuko was she had a horror of all insects and could not summon up the courage to do it. So when she threatened to tell her husband of my behaviour in the cellar, I said that in return I would tell him what she had been up to with the sponges and bitter tea. At first she was furious, her lips went white at the edges where they were unpainted, she said my behaviour was so low that she could hardly believe I was a girl of high birth. When I stood my ground, bending her will to mine, she became confused and crumbled before my eyes. She began to weep and begged me to keep her secret. 

‘My husband will be furious if he finds out. A good marriage is essential to a woman’s happiness, Yoshiko, you will come to understand that one day. Please do not betray me.’ 

I was not one to be touched by another’s tears, but Natsuko’s affected me deeply. I had no intention of telling Kawashima of his wife’s pathetic secrets; that would have been a betrayal of my hidden affection for her. Yet I enjoyed my power and I wanted to pay Natsuko back for never accepting me as a daughter in her house. 

‘What can I give you?’ she cried, reaching into a chest elaborately painted to resemble bamboo. ‘Take this perfumed rice powder, Yoshiko, it is pounded twice to make it the softest you will ever feel; your skin will glow more richly than gold.’ 

I did not move to take it. 

‘Give me your black pearl,’ I said simply. 

Natsuko stiffened, a tiny nerve flickered in her forehead, but her hand fluttered to her neck to release the pearl that seemed to me to have more lustre than ever before. She held it out to me tentatively as though she was feeding a tiger. I should have said, ‘Oh Natsuko, save me. Do not give me the pearl. Give me your love instead.’ But I didn’t. I hung the dark globe on its silken thread where it lay between my breasts, a good-luck charm to remind me that information is power. I was twelve years old. 

When Shimako, getting fatter and plainer as she aged, found out about Natsuko’s gift to me she said, ‘A black pearl to complement your nature, eh, Yoshiko?’ 

A year later I began my monthly bleeds. Sorry told me that I was becoming a beauty of the kind that did not need fine silks or hair combs to be noticed. She stood me in front of a mirror and told me to look at myself. ‘What do you see, Little Mistress?’ she asked. I looked and saw a girl with eyes the shape of the sloes that bear fruit in winter, a soft pink mouth and small teeth that were very white and even. I had my mother’s skin, paler than that of my Japanese sisters. Like my mother’s my breasts were round and well matched. I had slim hips not made for childbearing, and beautiful unbound feet with toenails like pearlescent shells. 

I no longer trailed after the boys but left them to their own devices. In no time at all they began to seek my company and instead of me playing their games they began to play mine. They offered me full membership of the ‘Secret Sake Club’ but I declined the offer, saying that I had grown out of the childish games they played. To test my powers I would set them against each other, showing Hideo more affection than Nobu, delighting in their misery and their competitiveness. Just as they had negotiated my entrance to their rituals by the intimacies they took with me, I now took payment in kind from them. An ivory letter knife might secure a second of my tongue in their mouth, a goldfish fashioned in jade the run of my hand along the length of their member. 

Sorry sold my trophies to the shopkeepers in the back streets near the house, and I gave her a share of the proceeds so that her old age might not be too hard. She often bought opium from the Chinese shopkeepers and I frequently smoked it with her. The Japanese do not care for opium and most never enjoy the pleasure of an opium dream. For me it has been a lifelong delight, its musky smoke redolent with memories and the promise of oblivion. 

My life in the household continued as though it would never change. I spied on the Kawashima family and prided myself on knowing their secrets. I allowed the brothers their privileges, sparred with Natsuko and occasionally crossed swords with Shimako. I smoked opium with Sorry and Turkish and American cigarettes when alone. I listened to western music on a record player that I bought second-hand from a college friend of Hideo’s. Hardly a day passed that I did not venture into the labyrinth of Tokyo’s streets. I did not think of myself as an ambitious person, only as one with an enthusiasm and lust for life. 

Kawashima was a member of Japan’s prestigious intelligence network and often entertained visitors who came to discuss politics with him. Through his numerous connections he distributed patronage to those prepared to further his own cause, which he claimed was to sustain the glory of Japan. The men who came were themselves powerful, with strings of their own to pull and information to share. Like Kawashima they came from the Samurai class and included politicians, businessmen and the odd high-ranking officer, usually from the Imperial Guard. I loved their talk of honour and the way they linked the ideas of courage and loyalty to Japan, rather than to their families. I suppose it made me feel more like them, less like the orphaned outsider that I now realise I was. 

With no thirteenth sister around, spying on the meetings was an easy matter. I would conceal myself between the bamboo-and-paper wall screens, or behind the fruit trees in summer when the screens were open to the fine weather. I was rewarded with news of the outside world that never failed to thrill me. The fate of emperors and the progress of revolutions informed me that, despite my adventurous nature and my escapes into the city, I lived in a small confined world. 

The war in Europe had ended with Japan claiming the German concessions in China for themselves. I heard that China was weak and stood by too helpless to do anything about it. I felt proud when I heard Kawashima say that Japan would continue to bite chunks of China to fatten its own empire. I had developed feelings of shame about my Chinese origins and I once bit Hideo’s hand, drawing blood, when he referred to me as his Chinese sister. 

My distant cousin Pu Yi had been restored to his rightful place as Emperor of China, but I had no wish to claim kinship with him. Kawashima called him the Son of Heaven, and laughed. I envied Pu Yi’s wealth and power and wondered how he spent his days in the delightful Forbidden City that I remembered from my childhood. I did not know then that his power was limited to his immediate surroundings and his wealth was finite. 

I discovered in myself a passion for knowledge of the world. I wanted to understand its history, and to understand too the emotions that powered revolutions and wars. Battles excited me, and I longed for the freedom men had to pursue their ambitions and to claim what they wanted from life. I never wanted to be a man, only to have the privileges of men. 

Kawashima and his cohorts would talk late into the night and sometimes I would fall asleep between the screens and wake stiff and cold, urgently needing to relieve myself. I would be so frustrated at having missed the conversation that I taught myself to stay awake by keeping hungry and pinching my cheeks so hard that they bruised. As the men talked, they drank bowls of tea and shots of sake served to them by the geishas who came to the house with the men who had ‘adopted’ them. It was called adoption, but in my eyes it amounted to a master–slave relationship. Most of the Japanese men I have known tend to disguise their ownership of women in a form of language that speaks paternally of care and guardianship, but however they choose to term it, it is the woman who is on her knees. I have never understood how any woman can bear to be owned by a man, which in effect they were, like a horse or an ornament. The geishas heard much but said nothing. Although mostly young, they could be relied upon to be discreet, as they prided themselves on the trustworthiness of their profession. Of course, they knew that the slightest betrayal of confidence would see them thrown onto the streets to end up as common prostitutes. 

Personally, I would have preferred the freedom of a prostitute to the rule-bound life of a geisha, but in general geishas, particularly young ones, are a timid lot who take refuge in the customs and protections of their trade. Like western nuns, geishas are pumped with the idea of service, of sacrifice to a master who they hope will act benignly towards them. Still, at least they have sex, while nuns, ecstatic with the denial of it, save themselves for the God to whom they are impotently married. 

Kawashima often overindulged in drink, but at those meetings he liked to keep his wits about him and would sip his sake frugally. He took pleasure in observing the weaknesses and subsequent indiscretions of his colleagues. I admired him greatly for his cunning and his intellect. Sometimes, one of the men would seal a daughter’s fate by arranging a marriage to another’s son. They disposed of their womenfolk more casually than they did of their stocks and shares. I was sick at the thought that one day I might hear of my own destiny decided in this way; I knew that despite the indulgences shown to me by Kawashima, he would never allow me to choose my own path in life. Notwithstanding his flirtation with western ideas, he believed, like Confucius, that women, although human, were lower than men and that it was the law of nature that they should be allowed no will of their own. Also, and more to the point, I came with a large dowry, which was his to dispense where he would. I knew that one day he would use it to seal a deal, or receive a favour, and I might find myself with a husband not of my choosing. If that was to be the case I vowed that I would not be a compliant wife. 

More than seven years of my life passed following this pattern until on a day when she was far from my mind, I was told that my mother had died in great pain from taking bad medicine to bring about the abortion of a child caught in her fallopian tube. My hurt at the news was so deep that I could not weep and wail as people do at the death of a heroine in an opera. I was too like Prince Su in nature for that. I dug my nails into the palms of my hand until they bled and I cursed the gods for their cruelty to so sweet a subject. 

I have never been able to bring myself to throw away the half-eaten box of lychees with their promise of reunion, for we cannot know in this life which of our ancestors will greet us in the next; I pray that it will be my gentle mother.

Excerpted from The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel © Copyright 2012 by Maureen Lindley. Reprinted with permission by Bloomsbury USA. All rights reserved.