Kiku's evening, Mariko's gift

Mariko bargains with Gyoko, the Mama-san whose "heart was an abacus", from five koban down to one for Kiku's evening, and raises the contract, for which Gyoko weeps and names five thousand koku. Gyoko rushes home in a panic: the client is the barbarian. Kiku decides to gamble; a six-year-old fisher-child renamed Hana is told the Willow World puts away sadness. Walking to the Tea House, Mariko tells Blackthorne the old custom by which a woman who belongs to another gives the man she cares for the most perfect courtesan she can afford: "Tonight I am thine." Kiku abandons her samisen for comic mimes and eats meat for the first time. In the pleasure house she lays out harigata, Pleasure Pearls and belled rings, while Blackthorne rages at the filth and priests of his English home. Mariko leaves. Kiku lies beside him and he does not want her: "Heaven on earth is here."

Gyoko's arithmetic and Kiku's professionalism make the Willow World a business before it is an erotic set piece. The gift of a courtesan is Mariko's declaration in the only form her code allows. Clavell then withholds the consummation: Blackthorne does not want Kiku, and the refusal says what the Latin could not.