Kamaishi, Japan:
The requests to see her perform had dwindled over the years. But when the earthquake struck at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, this city's last geisha was, fittingly, at home getting ready to sing that night at Kamaishi's 117-year-old ryotei, an exclusive restaurant featuring fine food and entertainment where she began working as a 14-year-old seven decades ago.
She had already put on the white split-toe socks she would wear with her kimono and was preparing to put her hair up. Hired to entertain a party of four in honor of a colleague's transfer from Kamaishi, she had picked just the right song, one meant to steel young samurai going to their first battle.
But a tsunami would engulf this city within 35 minutes and, as Kamaishi trembled from at least 15 big aftershocks during that short time, the geisha, Tsuyako Ito, 84, fought to survive. She had lived through three tsunamis before in Kamaishi, a place that the waves have destroyed with regularity over the centuries, and as a girl she had listened to her grandmother's tales of the great 1896 tsunami.
"My grandmother said that a tsunami is like a wide-open mouth that swallows everything in its path," Ms. Ito said from a local hospital where she was being treated for asthma, "so that victory comes to those who run away as fast as possible."
Her mother carried her on her back to safety at the time of Ms. Ito's first tsunami in 1933. This time, after her legs gave out, an admirer carried Ms. Ito on his back to higher ground. Ms. Ito, who had planned to retire on her 88th birthday, a milestone in Japan, survived her fourth -- and "most frightening" -- tsunami.
The waves, however, swept away her shamisen, a three-stringed instrument, and kimono, the two tools essential to a geisha's art.
The recent tsunami is believed to have killed about 1,300 people in Kamaishi, whose low-lying areas have been transformed into a dusty ghost town where the smell of ruined buildings now mingles with that of the sea.
The birthplace of Japan's steel industry, Kamaishi played a key role in the country's modernization and militarization, so that it became the first target on mainland Japan of American warships during World War II. During Japan's postwar boom, the city's population swelled as it easily overcame the ravages of two tsunamis.
Kamaishi became famous for its delicious seafood, the winning ways of its main employer's rugby team, Nippon Steel, and its diversions.
As Japan's fortunes have declined in the past two decades, Kamaishi's fall has been faster and steeper.
Its population, nearly 100,000 two generations ago, has now fallen below 40,000 and is aging. Many who have lost homes and businesses here are not expected to remain.
But Ms. Ito vowed to sing and dance again in Kamaishi. A famous beauty, she both danced and played the shamisen, while most geishas were skilled only at playing the shamisen, said Setsuko Kanazawa, whose family owns Saiwairo, the ryotei where she performs.
To cultural preservationists here, she is the guardian of a local culture that was fast disappearing.
The last ryotei in Kamaishi, Saiwairo was also its most exclusive. It was built in 1894 on the most elevated point of an area that would be dotted with bars, brothels and other ryoteis. While tsunamis washed away Saiwairo's neighbors, they never reached its first floor.
It was at Saiwairo that Ms. Ito began an apprenticeship at the age of 14.
"I loved to dance," she said. "And I simply wanted to become a leading geisha in Kamaishi."
The truth, whispered for decades inside the family home, was darker, said Satoshi Ito, Ms. Ito's nephew. Ms. Ito's father ran a small-time construction business and, her nephew said, had ties with Japan's gangsters, the yakuza.
"He would repair roads here and there, using yakuza to control certain areas," said Mr. Ito, 63, who lived with his aunt here but is now staying at an evacuation shelter.
"Her father is supposed to have told her she was suited for that life," he added. "But to put it harshly, I think that he did it to guarantee some debts."
After a marriage to a sushi restaurant owner, the birth of a daughter and a divorce, Ms. Ito went to Tokyo to study dance under a famous instructor. Back in Kamaishi, Ms. Ito and a dozen other geishas were constantly on call at this city's ryoteis, as Kamaishi's economy began booming in the 1950s. At Saiwairo, steel industry executives occupied some rooms as owners of fishing vessels held parties in others, Ms. Kanazawa said.