KAMAISHI, Japan - 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 an 117-year-old ryotei, a type of exclusive restaurant, in Kamaishi 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 the geisha, Tsuyako Ito, 84, fought to survive. She had lived through three tsunamis before in Kamaishi, and as a girl she had listened to her grandmother's tales of the great 1896 tsunami.