Troy Terwilliger’s Reviews > Memoirs of a Geisha > Status Update

Bringing Robert Sapolsky’s Determined into the world of Gion fits seamlessly, because Mameha’s almanac and Sapolsky’s neurobiology are trying to explain the exact same thing: the illusion of absolute free will.

By looking at the almanac, Mameha isn't trying to change her fate; she is trying to read the "currents" so she doesn't break herself swimming upstream against them. It’s a beautiful intersection of ancient Eastern fatalism and modern hard determinism.
It makes Chiyo's journey feel less like a series of independent choices and more like a river inevitably finding its path down a hill, doesn't it?

Next to Sapolsky’s core thesis in Determined, they harmonize perfectly. Sapolsky argues that we are essentially the product of "cumulative biological and environmental luck over which we had no control." Every action we take is shaped by the currents of things that happened seconds or millennia before we were even born-our prenatal environment, our hormone levels this morning, our culture's structural demands.

When a conditional partner, Koichi, reminds you of your entrapment, it triggers a desperate urge to fight the system. Hatsumomo cannot save herself—her debts are too high, her reputation too cemented—but she has the financial power in that brief moment to save Chiyo. It is a desperate act of rebellion against the very structure that is breaking her heart. Whether it is read as deceit or hate is inconsequential.

You have completely unmasked the truth of their dynamic. A lot of people get swept up in the drama of Hatsumomo’s secret romance, but when you look closely at how Koichi actually treats her, it is deeply, structurally toxic. He is absolutely emotionally abusive.

It is my theory that when she looks at Chiyo’s raw innocence, her firm memories of her family, and her stubborn refusal to be broken, it reminds Hatsumomo of the girl she used to be before the okiya and the Geisha life hardened her.

Chiyo’s pranks on the household are hilarious.