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My Japanese Wife
[Illustration: MOUSMÉ AND CYRIL. PAGE 79.]
My
Japanese
Wife
_A Japanese Idyl_
By
Clive Holland
_Author of_
“Mousmé,” “Marcelle of the Quarter,”
“A Writer of Fiction,” etc.
[Illustration]
New York
Frederick A. Stokes
Company
_Publishers_
COPYRIGHT, 1902,
BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY.
_SECOND EDITION._
_To the real Mousmé with my love_
INTRODUCTION.
That the present edition of “_My Japanese Wife_” has been called for is
a source of satisfaction to the writer. Of previous editions some 60,000
copies have been sold, and it is hoped the present version will prove
none the less acceptable from the fact that the story has been revised
and a considerable amount of new matter added to it.
The author has done this to enable the final form of the novel to be
that in which it was originally written, but which for purposes of first
publication in a particular series it was necessary to alter.
BOURNEMOUTH, ENGLAND.
April 2, 1902.
MY JAPANESE WIFE.
[Illustration: CHAPTER ONE]
CHAPTER I.
Mousmé is leaning over me as I write. Mousmé, a butterfly from a far
Eastern land, her dress of apricot silk, with a magenta satin _obi_
(sash), a blot of bright colour in the dulness of my English study. My
Mousmé! with Dresden-china tinted cheeks, and tiny ways; playing at life,
as it always seems to me, with the dainty grace of Japan, that idealised
doll’s-house land. Mousmé, who goes with me everywhere, whose _bizarre_
clothing attracts notice to her even when the delicately pretty face of a
child-woman with innocent, soft eyes and finely arched brows is hidden
behind the ever-present fan, which she draws from the ample folds of her
_obi_.
My friends at Nagasaki told me that I was foolish to marry a mousmé,
especially as I was to return to England so soon.
“Why not hire one for the remaining period of your stay?” suggested
Kotmasu, who dined with me at my little toy-like villa so often that he
began to offer advice as a matter of course. “Misawa would find you a
mousmé,” he continued, “whom you could put off as easily as an old glove.
A real mousmé, not a _geisha_ girl with a past, an ambiguous present, and
a who-knows-what future.”
Others of my friends laughed till they made the paper partitions of my
house shiver like the strings and parchment of the _samisen_. “You will
tire of her,” said they.
Yet others with a knowing smile, “She will tire of you. They are all the
same. Butterflies that change with the day. Moths which the night-air of
reality blows to pieces.”
But I would not be advised.
Advice is so cheap one seldom values it. Besides, had I not lived in
Japan long enough to know what I was doing?
The only soul on earth who could have deterred me was Lou, that terrible
sister who, before I had come out East, had formulated so many plans for
my “settling down!” Who had selected—much as she would have a bonnet or
a dress, and with almost as much care—several nice girls, any one of
whom she had thought would make me a good wife. But Lou was thousands of
miles away—how I revelled in that fact!—and would only be made wise after
the event. Now as Mousmé is looking over me as I write—she knows as much
English as I Japanese—I must set down how I met her.
It was one night at the Tea-house (_chaya_) of the Plum Grove. I had come
up there with Kotmasu. The _djins_, bare-legged, panting runners, had
rushed us along in the inevitable _rikishas_ to this suburban resort up
the hillside.
The town, illuminated with thousands of lanterns hung outside even the
smallest of the houses, became, as we climbed upwards to our destination,
a fairyland of colour and delight, as it always did at nightfall. In the
silent waters of the harbour this gay scene was repeated by reflection in
the glassy surface.
Upwards we went, Kotmasu and I; he calling to me every now and then, as
his _rikisha_, spider-like phantom of a vehicle, was momentarily lost in
the gloom to reappear just as suddenly in the patch of light thrown by
some paper lantern swinging to mark the gateway of a villa retired from
the road.
A Japanese night! Balmy, delicious; intoxicating with the odour of the
flowers which came sweeping down on us in the breath of the mountain air,
or creeping in varied scents over the hedges or toy-like fences of the
gardens we passed; so soothing that Kotmasu, more used to the jolting of
the _rikisha_ than I, felt drowsy, and left off talking.
The sounds of the town, the music of guitars or _samisens_ being played
in the tea-houses or gaming-houses, had grown gradually indistinct and
distant. Now scarcely any noise save the whirring chirp of the cicalas
broke the still, sweet-scented air.
Soon we reached our goal, where I was fated to meet and be enslaved by
the charms of Hyacinth—for so Mousmé was called. Above us, an inky mass
against an indigo sky starred with points of light, rose the mountain,
tree-clad, as I knew, on whose sides gleamed here and there the beams of
light emanating from paper lanterns or paper-shuttered casements, marking
the presence of houses or huts deep-set among the fantastic greenery of
the woods.
“Will the sir get out?” exclaimed my _djin_ respectfully, panting with
the exertion of the ascent. I climbed down into the darkness, almost
falling over Kotmasu, who had already alighted, laughing at our adventure.
Beside us, just where our _rikishas_ had drawn up, was the ghostly
gateway marking the entrance to the tea-garden, which lay at the top of
a narrow path sloping upward; this wooden gateway painted Indian red and
white, the white timbers showing like some spectral skeleton in the dusky
gloom.
“Up there, sir,” pointed my _djin_, who bowed low whilst acting as
spokesman.
Telling them not to wait, because we should, as Kotmasu put it, “be many
hours,” we two entered the gateway, which marked the line of the palings
of bamboo, and made our way up the narrow flower-bordered path to the
_chaya_.
Through an avenue of sweet odours we walked, the mingled scent of
tea-roses, gardenias and the soil making the atmosphere almost cloying
with sweetness.
This wonderful garden of the tea-house, with its miniature ponds, bridges
and grottoes, now all hidden in the darkness, was mysterious and even
uncanny as all Eastern gardens are at dusk.
Set back a little from the path were serried ranks of sentinel-like
sunflowers, of whose black, vacant faces, yellow-fringed, I felt
conscious, staring at me out of the gloom.
A turn of the path and we were in a fairyland, whose existence none a
hundred yards off would have suspected. Light for darkness; sounds in
the place of silence.
We made our way beneath the paper lanterns of many hues, suspended in
mid-air by slender, undistinguishable cords: dragons, green, yellow
or red, as their bellying background of variegated paper demanded or
the taste of the artist dictated, are there; and cats, monstrous and
eccentric-limbed, such as provoke memories of such things drawn on slates
in childhood’s days.
There is a flood of yellow, orange, white and blue light on the paths and
flower-beds stocked thick with asters, zinnias, strange fringed-edged
ragged carnations and chrysanthemums, whilst bushes clipped and trained
into fantastic shapes form climbing stations, so to speak, for huge and
lesser convolvuli.
Through the paper shutters of the house itself stream more light and
sounds of music played upon the _samisen_.
Kotmasu, an _habitué_, knocks upon the lacquer panel of the big door,
which is speedily drawn back in its grooved-way. The wife of Takeakira
the proprietor appears at the opening, a queer little old woman,
silhouetted, with all the ugliness which so often comes with age, against
a background of light; behind her a pretty attendant mousmé, just as
if she was a figure taken from a vase. Both bow so low on recognising
visitors that their faces touch the floor, and then they take off our
shoes.
The mousmé conducts us upstairs, along a narrow passage, over the floor
of which is stretched, stainless and wrinkleless, a matting of bamboo
fibre, into a room which is bare and clean-looking almost to desperation
and chilliness.
“_Shibaraku_,” says the mousmé, addressing us both with a smile of
welcome, as she leads the way, which speech Kotmasu tells me is meant
for him, as well as the smile and show of white teeth between pretty red
lips. Perhaps it is, “What a long time since you have been here!” being
obviously inapplicable to me on a first visit.
The paper walls of the room—spotlessly clean—into which we are eventually
ushered with a great amount of ceremonious bowing, are just like those
in my own little doll’s-house of a villa down in the outskirts of
Nagasaki—mere sliding panels, each one in its own ingenious groove. And
these by some wonderful process all fit into one another and mysteriously
disappear. It is here we have to wait; in this bare room, with its long
verandah running in front of it, from which “The Garden of a Thousand
Lights,” as its proprietor loved to call it, can be seen; and in the
daytime the harbour, an irregular segment of the ocean beyond, calm,
green, but animated by the presence of sampans—gondola-like, graceful,
with indigo beaks and queer odd-shaped cabins—junks with sails of
matting, traders of all nations, hulking colliers, and here and there a
man-of-war belonging to a friendly or unfriendly Power.
We are given squares of matting on which to squat, in lieu of chairs, by
the ever-smiling mousmé, who then stands mute, awaiting our orders.
“Are there no other guests?” asks Kotmasu, with a quick glance at the
little standing figure.
“Yes, several,” replies the mousmé, smiling. And, as though to verify her
words, and dispel Kotmasu’s enigmatic and somewhat incredulous smile, we
hear unmistakable sounds of hilarity arising from the room beneath our
feet, and from a distant chamber on our right.
“But,” continued our mousmé, glancing curiously at me, and adjusting her
_obi_ of some flower-sprinkled material with minute care, “the English
sirs mostly like to feast alone.” Such was, at all events, Kotmasu’s
translation of the remark.
Kotmasu orders our repast; it is to be ultra-Japanese.
Sometimes at my own villa I regale him and seek to revive my own
gastronomic memories with pseudo-European fare, which he pretends to
like, but in reality loathes because of its immense portions—in the
estimation of my Japanese chef; at these I always laugh because the meal
seems so grotesquely disproportionate to one’s needs—in Japan.
There is another reason than that so naïvely given—“the English sirs
mostly care to feast alone”—by the almond-eyed mousmé; and Kotmasu
explains it when the dainty little figure has disappeared through a
sliding door to execute our orders. I must not set it down here. What is
common and picturesque in Japan, is so unspeakable in English. Kotmasu
sits silent, thinking of the meal to come, perhaps, in which “teal duck,”
raw spinach, raw shrimps, and even dog, were to find a place—all save the
first, thank goodness, in minute proportions.
The sounds of revelry by night went on all the while that Kotmasu and I
waited, coming to us softened and indistinct through chinks in the floor
and through the paper panels forming the walls of the room—the voices
of women and the accompanying music of the _samisen_, with its note
of sadness. Then we heard the muffled sounds of the feet of _geishas_
dancing, in their shoeless, gliding motions.
The strains of the monotonous music, punctuated with Japanese phrases,
echoed in the bare passage outside.
Kotmasu got up and opened the door of grey paper leading on to the
verandah, which had black and vermilion storks in flight across its two
long panels.
We stepped out.
I for the first time; for Kotmasu I cannot answer. The sounds of the
music became clearer, because the others had also slid back their paper
doors, perhaps so that the sweet-scented air of the garden might enter,
or a whiff of fresh night-wind from off the mountain come in to cool the
breathless _geishas_.
The garden of a thousand lights, with its fountain of doll-like
dimensions, in the lower and larger basin of which swim gold, silver
and copper-hued fish, lies just beneath our verandah, and, after an
artificial plateau, runs away down-hill into the darkness, following each
side of the narrow, flower-edged path.
The paper lanterns with painted, bulging sides, some round, some like
two mortar-boards of college days which had taken each other into
partnership, some like elongated helmets of a Uhlan, and others like
monstrous fishes, birds, or reptiles swimming and floating in ether,
diffuse a soft, subdued light. A puff of air makes the whole lot swing
to and fro so wildly, with a rustle of their paper emptiness, that
Kotmasu and I are set wondering idly whether an immense lantern, meant
to represent a gold-fish with vermilion fins and black vertebra, which
is obviously troubled in its interior, will not flare up and hang, a
blackened skeleton, amidst its gay companions.
A white cat flits ghost-like and silent-footed across the path and
vanishes down it in answer to a dissonant call of its fellow, and in that
moment the disaster happens. The gold-fish, which has regarded us with
vacant vermilion-rimmed eyes, is instantly a mass of flame, and then, in
another instant, a blackened travesty of a fish.
There are trees in the garden, also fantastic; green grotesques tended
and trained with the minute care of a singular taste. There are little
nooks, little rockeries in which strange toads and reptiles hide in the
fresh moss and darkened crannies, coming out occasionally, sometimes
to slip unawares or through ungainliness into miniature lakes—toy
ponds—frightening the lazy gold-fish and making the water-lily buds and
blossoms nod and curtsey in the ripples caused by their immersion.
The moon is rising, and the wall of blackness which begins where the
lights of the garden end becomes gradually less inky, till at last, as
the moon tops the mountain ridge, like some laborious and persistent
climber, and floods the harbour with her pale, silver light, the vastness
of the scene is disclosed.
Down below in the streets of the town the lights of art are paling in
that of Nature’s lantern. The harbour is a huge replica of the glass of
frosted silver I bought last week in a curio-shop for twenty _yen_. The
ships at anchor are mere spectres, narrow lines of ink, some of them with
dots of light along their sides; the shadow of the hills, over which the
moon peeps with cold, white face, just the breath on the glass as when a
woman looks too closely into it.
The sounds of singing and dancing appear fewer now it is less sombre. Why
does darkness exaggerate noise?
A steamer is going out; it is the mail, a thin thing like the match P.
and O. boats I often swam in a bowl when a boy—the lights of her saloon
mere glow-worms at this distance. But my companion must have seen all
this many times before. Of course he has. And being more interested just
now in “teal-duck” than the night side of Nature, he vanishes through the
opened doorway, and I hear him drumming with his stockinged heel upon the
floor to summon the mousmé.
“_Ayakou!_” sings out Kotmasu, who has sung “Hi! hi!” till there came an
answering voice from below.
I leave my post on the verandah and enter the room, and along the passage
at the back comes the sound of a mousmé pattering barefoot, her quick,
short steps making a gentle thud, thud on the matting.
The panel door is thrust aside, and our attendant enters with a bow, and
many ingenious excuses for the delay.
[Illustration: CHAPTER TWO]