Udekurabe, published in 1918 and here translated as Geisha in Rivalry, has a secure place among Kafu's masterpieces. In this novel, against the backdrop of Tokyo's Shimbashi geisha district, he brings upon the scene a company of vivid characters to
play out their drama of illicit love, shady intrigue, and unrelenting rivalry. In the forefront are the geisha鑸ome powerful and spiteful like the imperious Rikiji, some crude and obvious like the gaudy Kikuchiyo, some naive and pathetic like the heroine Komayo, and all engaged in finding a place for themselves in a world that offers no easy route of escape from their profession.
Here too are the patrons of the geisha: the playboys, the actors, the successful businessmen, and the "upstart gentlemen" of late Meiji society. And here, again, are those who make the machinery of this world function: the geisha-house proprietors, the teahouse mistresses, the actors' retainers, the servants. And, finally, here are the arasites of the demimonde, who live off its other denizens through guile and deceit. It is, in a sense, a pageant that Kafu presents, and through it move the figures of the geisha Komayo, her lovers, and women who conspire to steal them from her. The pageant is often a sordid one, but it holds the reader fascinated from beginning to end.
