hotel rose a mansion of pine, surrounded by iron railings of
curious pattern, a line of storks in zigzag flight, and surmounted
by a stork of gold with outstretched wings. The Governor’s house,
we thought, or perhaps a court of justice, resplendent with carven
symbol to impress the natives with reverence for the new _régime_.
But no: this was the principal bath-house. As we passed from storey
to storey and remarked the beauty of rafter and balustrade, my
companion, who speaks with knowledge, declared that he had never
seen such superb carpentry. In many of the chambers were flowers
and _kakemono_ by modern painters; in short, we had found a more
lordly palace of bathing than even Ikao could boast. The baths were
of granite and the dressing-rooms hung with silken curtains. As we
had paid the highest tariff, ten _sen_ (about twopence-halfpenny),
before entering the bath, we were served by daintily-robed
waitresses with cherry-blossom-and-water, a rather saline
concoction prepared from the national flower. When we issued from
the hot salt waters the same attendants brought tea and cigarettes.
Enchanted with our first experience of Dōgō fashions, we returned
to the hotel and demanded of the landlord what other sights the
town possessed.
The public garden, the wood-carvers’ shops, the big temple of
Ōkuni-nushi and Sukuna-bikona, which crowns a hill on the outskirts
of the town, were duly visited, and pronounced inferior to those
we had seen elsewhere. But O Yoshi San informed us at dinner that
every stranger who came to Dōgō was considered unlucky if he
departed without seeing and hearing two beautiful sisters, geisha
of shining notoriety. We sent a summons at once, and by good
luck it happened that one hour of their deeply engaged evening
was at our disposal. Our room was brightened up with flowers
and sweetmeats, _saké_ and cigarettes were lavishly provided,
cushions set and lanterns lit. The geisha were announced by their
professional names--White Jewel and Young Butterfly--made smiling
obeisance to the “honourable strangers,” and took their seats in
the centre of the room, while their duenna, the Katti Lanner of
Shikoku, whose pupils had spread the fame of their teacher all
over Japan, remained respectfully in the doorway. The age of Young
Butterfly cannot have exceeded thirteen years. She wore a white
silk _kimono_, heavily embroidered with gold, and gold dragons on
a green sash chased one another round her slender waist. In her
coiffure was an ivory pin, terminating in a miniature birdcage,
from which a red tassel fluttered defiantly. Her pantomimic dances
(in which she required occasional prompting) represented the wooing
of a coy damsel and the capture of a standard in the Chinese war;
her childish emphasis of amorous and martial gesture was extremely
piquant. White Jewel was, however, not only a clever artist but a
most intelligent woman. About ten years older than her sister, she
was dressed far more simply. Her _kimono_ was of black _crépon_,
her sash of iris-coloured brocade, and her hair had no ornament
but a purple iris. She sang, like all her tribe, with nasal
intonation and harsh lower notes, but her smile when she talked
was as bright as her wits, quick to grasp my questions and explain
the meaning of her songs. Indeed, I owe to White Jewel some of the
prettiest instances of popular _dodoitsu_ collected in a previous
chapter. She was very pleased with her calling, which she had found
lucrative, and was not offended by the assertion that most people
considered geisha to be like cats, sly and treacherous; otherwise,
how was it they had acquired the nickname of “Nekko” or “Pussie”?
She replied by singing a quatrain which conveys in the original two
meanings for every line:
’Ware of the Pussie!
Pussie, seen smoothing
Coat of striped velvet,
Trimming her claws.
’Ware of the geisha!
Geisha, seen folding
Soft-striped _yukata_,
Binding her shoes.
At this point Mr. Bates manifested a desire to bask in the rays of
White Jewel, and completely ousted me from favour by a fraudulent
piece of palmistry. As he traced the lines in her sensitive hand he
discovered pledges of prodigious prosperity--rich lovers, increased
fame, long life, and ultimate marriage to a deputy-judge! The only
prediction which missed the mark was a prophecy of twin daughters,
who should rival and perpetuate the glory of White Jewel and Young
Butterfly. The Japanese consider it rather gross and catlike to
have more than one child at a time. White Jewel made a grimace of
playful disgust and offered to sing another song, which would be
the last, as other houses had engaged her to appear at ten o’clock
and at eleven. It was exactly half-past ten; if she went now, her
punctuality would be unimpugned. So she took leave of us with a
chansonette as dainty as her own personality.
LIGHT LOVE.
If love be thoughtless,
Then is love shallow;
Though love be shallow,
Do not forget.
We devoted the second day of our visit to Matsuyama, the capital of
the province of “Lovely Princess,” not more than four miles from
Dōgō. There is little to be seen there, however, except the castle,
one of the largest in Japan, and some excellent curio-shops, in
which the zeal of my companion was rewarded by some precious
finds. Leaving him to indulge his master-passion, which I found
less amusing than the pursuit of living curios, I laid siege to
the castle. At the bureau where tickets are to be obtained many
officials referred me to one another, and requested me to wait
until certain formalities were complied with. After two hours’
stolid patience the fortress capitulated, and I was assigned to the
care of a gallant sergeant, who spoke a little English and proved a
most competent guide. From the summit of the tower a fine panorama
was visible: below us the fertile Matsuyama plain stretched away
to the shore of the Inland Sea, and on the opposite side the
horizon was shut in by forest and mountain. To tell the truth, my
conductor’s account of the castle’s history, as illustrated by its
structure and some surviving weapons of war, interested me much
less than his own exploits. For had he not with his own hand slain
five Chinese braves in the battle of Port Arthur? My compliments
on his heroism must have touched his heart, for, turning suddenly,
he grasped my hand and cried: “I like you. You shall be my friend.
I will dine with you.” This abrupt proposition at once solved for
me the embarrassing question of remuneration. I could not press
surreptitious silver into the palm of this obliging lover of
England and slayer of Chinamen, but a friendly dinner would put us
on terms of franker intimacy. So we descended the winding path from
the ramparts, crossed the moat, and marched home to the Iwai-ya.
We drank cherry-blossom and _saké_; we bathed, and dined off the
best fare which our host could provide; we discussed the character
of native and foreigner, arriving at the conclusion that, while
the best type of Japanese inhabited Shikoku, the wiliest and worst
of foes were Russian. We had not time to go deeply into ethnology,
for at half-past eight my guest buckled on his sword and with many
protestations of affectionate regard returned to barracks.
No shadow of trickery marred our joyous reminiscences of Dōgō. When
we left the landlord presented a bill so ridiculously low, that we
bestowed on him as much again in tea-money. Not to be outdone, he
loaded our departing rickshaws with four bottles of beer. And the
photographer, whose camera was worth a fortune to him as a means of
gratifying all sorts and conditions of men, took an excellent group
of that smiling host and his cheery household.
The voyage to Kōbe was no less agreeable. We had for
fellow-passenger a distinguished middle-aged officer, who
had fought on the losing sides in the revolution and the
Satsuma-rebellion headed by Saigō Takamori, whose grave we had seen
at Miyajima. Experience had long since convinced him of the folly
of anti-progressive movements, and he realised as clearly as the
most democratic reformer that national security was best served by
adopting Western ideas. We had no idea of his rank until a small
boat put off at Tadotsu, in which were three officers of inferior
grade, who had come to escort him ashore. From his seat in the
boat he waved his hand genially to us, while the men pulled in to
harbour, but the three officers remained standing, as unmoved by
the shock of the waves as by the rattle of Chinese artillery.
Kōbe received us, weary and late, with hospitable arms. In that
prosperous port, so rapidly distancing Yokohama in commercial
importance, an English colony is solidly entrenched with pews
and cricket-bats and pianos. I went to the club, and was at once
in England. _The Saturday Review_ was reviewing and _The World_
revolving on the same lines as when I was last in Fleet Street. Mr.
Bernard Shaw was still unmasking demerits in Shakespeare, while
Mr. William Archer was inventing merits for American comic opera.
In a moment of nostalgia I sauntered into a well-filled church,
whose congregation were listening with rapture to a beautiful
rendering of Gounod’s “There is a Green Hill”: finally, I learned
at a friend’s table that a cricket-match between the ladies and
gentlemen of Kōbe was the burning topic of the week. Between Mr.
Bernard Shaw and Buddha (vegetarians both), between Gounod and
geisha, between batting and bathing, lay the gulf which separates
the hard-hitting West from the lotus-loving East. I could not
bridge the gulf without a violent effort. In fact, I felt a little
ashamed on mixing with my fellow-countrymen, so pious and strenuous
and practical. While they had been working and playing as only
Britons can, I had utterly forgotten that any country except Japan
could enthral and stimulate. I had been taking the waters--of
Lethe.
PLAYING WITH FIRE
PLAYING WITH FIRE
I
This is the love-story of René Beauregard and O Maru San. It does
not illustrate the cynical conceit of a French dandy, æsthetically
explaining and profaning love to amuse an indelicate public,
nor does it demonstrate the folly of mixed marriages, in which
nuptial ceremonies, high-flown speeches, adultery, and suicide
are hypocritically served up to suit the British palate. It is
the straightforward story of an ordinary attachment in the Far
East between two rather bad and rather good friends of mine, whose
notions of “good” and “bad” as translated into deeds were lax, but,
in their eyes and in that region, not absolutely damnable.
M. René Beauregard had been in Tōkyō about a fortnight, when I
found him one evening at a print-seller’s shop in the Ginza,
surrounded by an inquisitive crowd of admirers and much embarrassed
by inability to declare his meaning in Japanese. He was accompanied
by an hotel-boy, who, knowing no French words but _Oui_,
_monsieur_, and _Bon jour_, recognised me with relief and solicited
assistance. I was able to extricate him from the curiosity of the
bystanders and the plurality of prices to our mutual satisfaction,
for we returned together to the Métropole, the richer by some
rare prints and the promise of congenial companionship. Literary
reminiscence furnished many bonds of common interest. We had
witnessed, it seemed, simultaneously several incidents which marked
the waning of old and the rising of new constellations in the
firmament of French art. The _première_ of Rodenbach’s “Le Voile”
and Rostand’s “Les Romanesques,” the funeral of Paul Verlaine,
the students’ repudiation of Brunetière and acclamation of Zola
at the Sorbonne, the banquets to Puvis de Chavannes and Emile
Verhaeren, had strangely enough united us in the same company
without opportunity of introduction. But community of tastes counts
for less in friendship than charm of character. What particularly
pleased me in M. Beauregard was a modesty, not too common among
his compatriots, and a chivalry towards women which the Quartier
Latin had failed to destroy. I had known so many _petits féroces_
(as Daudet called them), vaunting their talents and their _bonnes
fortunes_, for whom a mistress ranked somewhere between an
advertisement and an absinthe. He was not an _arriviste_, then; but
neither was he a worker. Too self-critical to write badly, too lazy
to write well, he ended by not writing at all, and, as his means
permitted him to play the _rôle_ of spectator, he followed various
movements in art and letters with amiable, intelligent passivity.
He had come to Japan with the object of studying on the spot the
Kōrin and Shijō schools of painting, but found his progress much
hindered by ignorance of the language, which he had not seriously
tried to learn. As we were both anxious to see the _Matushima_,
or Pine Islands, perhaps the most lovely of the _Sankei_, or
Three Views, which the Japanese celebrate above all others, it was
resolved to travel there together in search of grammar and scenery.
About the grammar he was rather fastidious. A personage of high
rank, whom he had met at an Imperial garden-party, had said
jokingly: “Why not follow the example of M. Pierre Loti and find
a second ‘Madame Chrysanthème’? We call such persons in our idiom
‘pillow-dictionaries,’ and they are the most instructive manuals
in the world.” The young Parisian was, of course, neither shocked
nor offended by the suggestion. Not only had he no moral scruples
himself about forming temporary ties such as nine Frenchmen out
of ten contract before marriage, but he had come to a country,
or so he had been told, where such ties were neither illegal nor
dishonourable, but openly recognised, and where a mistress did
not forfeit her chance of ultimate marriage when the relationship
should be dissolved. But the idea of buying a mate as one buys a
horse or a picture was repugnant to him, and he preferred to wait
a while, in the hope that Fortune would provide an occasion of
affection preceding purchase rather than of a purchase which might
or might not precede affection. The geisha of the capital did not
attract him: they were too openly venal or brightly conspicuous for
his quiet taste, which desired gentle companionship without such
publicity as the appropriation of a Tōkyō geisha would involve. So,
for the moment, scenery took precedence of grammar.
The journey to Sendai on the Northern Railway is generally
tedious, but was made more so by delays and uncertainties of
transit owing to extensive inundations of the Tonegawa. Many
passengers contemplated the advisability of quitting the train and
proceeding by relays of boat and rickshaw. Happily this troublesome
alternative was avoided, and we contrived to reach the dull but
important capital of the Rikuzen province shortly before midnight.
The next morning we travelled by a branch line to Shiogama, the
little port on the bay of Sendai from which passage is taken to
the hamlet of Matsushima or the more distant Ishinomaki. We chose
the latter route, since it traverses the entire archipelago and
gives a more complete idea of the number and disposition of the
Pine Islands. Legend counts them to be precisely eight hundred and
eighty-eight, and, if one disappear, eaten by the sea, another
pushes up its head, conveniently severed by a sword of water from
some broken peninsula. As the rocks never increase nor diminish
in number, so the thousand pine-trees, which start from crag or
shelf in every conceivable posture, are never more nor less than
one thousand. From this banquet of volcanic tufa the ravenous
Pacific had crunched odd morsels, leaving for future meals bizarre
and bitten fragments, as capricious in shape as its own appetite.
Unfinished bastions, wild arches, irregularly tunnelled rocks, cone
and staircase and plateau, lie densely or sparsely scattered over
an expanse of forty miles, like a herd of amorphous sea-monsters,
badly made and willingly abandoned to the solvent action of time
and tide. But then, as if to apologise for the Originator’s
clumsiness and to prove that his failure may have been expressly
intended to ensure their success, on the backs and in the crevices
of the else uncouth stone creatures wave the thousand arms of pine,
softening rough contours with their clinging green, protesting and
protecting with graceful curve, or beckoning with siren gesture to
passing mariners. Every island has its name, rooted in historic or
legendary allusion. To the Japanese one has suggested “Buddha’s
entry into Nirvana,” another “The island of question and reply,”
while a third group is symbolic of “The twelve Imperial consorts.”
But our Western eyes could well dispense with that strange bias of
Eastern fancy which prefers to associate form with meaning: for
us it was enough to glide slowly through the haunted waters, to
watch the blue waves foaming at the island’s edge or leaping in the
sunlight to meet the pine’s tentacular caress.
From the last of the islands to the mouth of the Kitakami River,
on which Ishinomaki stands, is a rough stretch of sea exposed
to the full force of the Pacific rollers. Our tiny steamer was
buffeted by wind and rain, and my companion suffered such agonies
of sea-sickness that it took him two days to recover health and
spirits. By good luck we found in the Asano-ya one of those cosy
and coquettish hostelries which only Japan can boast, where the eye
is as constantly charmed by good taste as the body is comforted
by good cheer. The sliding doors which divided our apartment from
others had panels of white paper, flecked with clouds of gold-dust
and framed in black lacquer. In the _tokonoma_ or alcove stood a
pink-flowered shrub and a peacock of bronze beneath a beautiful
painting by Kano Tan-yu. In vain we offered to buy this _kakemono_
from the landlord, or the screen, which displayed fighting dragons
on one side and a noble tiger on the other. They were heirlooms,
which his children must inherit. Nearly everything was pretty in
the Asano-ya, except O Maru San. She was the landlord’s niece,
an orphan Cinderella, condemned by destiny to wait on her uncle’s
guests. While her better-looking sisters had found husbands, she
trotted contentedly about her work, laughing a great deal and
singing snatches of song. She was about four feet ten inches in
height; her face was too large and too round, though this fault was
somewhat redeemed by fine teeth and soft eyes. She tried to atone
for plainness of feature by elaborate coiffure and punctilious
toilette; but, do what she would, she could not escape from the
category of ordinary squat village girls, who remain at home while
their prettier neighbours fill the tea-houses and geisha-houses of
Tōkyō. Her parents must have had excellent judgment, for instead
of calling her Lily or Chrysanthemum or some other flower-name
whose irony must have pursued her to the grave, they hit upon O
Maru (Miss Round), an unromantic but felicitous description of her
person and character. She had no angularities, moral or physical,
but was just an elastic, docile ball of Japanese womanhood, both
useful and playful; one of those domestic conveniences which
Confucian moralists regard as admirably adapted to promote the
peace and happiness of man.
From the moment of René Beauregard’s entrance until his departure
from Ishinomaki, O Maru devoted herself to his service. While
his illness lasted she sat beside him, bathing his forehead and
anticipating his desires. When he grew well enough to take part
in the expeditions which I proposed to neighbouring temples or
islands, she was waiting with his shoes and hat on the threshold,
bowing low as he went out; and, when he returned for the evening
bath, she attended him with towel and soap, as assiduously and with
as little false shame as Nausicaa attended Odysseus. Observing
that he seemed anxious to learn the language, which she was quite
incompetent to teach, she managed, with much laughter and many
misunderstandings, to increase his vocabulary. She was particularly
proud of having interpreted two inscriptions which hung framed in
the vestibule of the hotel. One, equivalent to “Welcome the coming,
speed the parting guest,” was thus worded:
“Asa okuri yu mukai.”
More literally it reads, “At morning, honourably send on his
way; at hot-water time, honourably receive.” The other was more
difficult to render. We disputed two versions, of which I commended
the first to M. Beauregard’s notice, while preferring the second in
our common interest. Like many maxims, it was plausibly vague:
“Omoi yokoshima nashi.”
Could it mean “Love without naughtiness”? Or had it the particular
application of “Hospitality without fraud”? I hoped the latter.
We remained for seven days at Ishinomaki, charmed with the busy
life of the place, which owes its prosperity to slate-quarries
and salmon-fisheries, with the boats for ever passing up and down
the Kitakami, with Kinkwa-zan, “the golden-flower mountain,”
that sacred island on which in ancient times no women might set
foot, though the deer roam freely round the pilgrim’s circuit
or ascend to the shrine of Watazumi-no-Mikoto, the Shintō god
of the sea. During this week two circumstances revealed to my
French friend the fact that O Maru was actuated by quite as much
tenderness as dutifulness in her solicitude for his welfare. One
day a Norwegian captain, coasting from Sendai to the northern
island of Yezo, put into harbour for a day, and proposed to the
landlord that the girl should take passage with him for a couple
of months in return for fifty _yen_ (about £5), but she displayed
strong repugnance to this not ungenerous proposition. On another
occasion O Maru, having innocently introduced a handsome brunette,
her bosom friend, to Monsieur René, who did not disguise his
pleasure at the presentation, was discovered by him at the foot
of his bed convulsed by tearful jealousy. At first she would only
give negative replies to his questions. “Nakimasen” (“I’m not
crying”), and “Shirimasen” (“I don’t know why I’m crying”), she
said. But at last she gave the reason. “Because you are now tired
of O Maru, and will honourably take notice of O Kiku.” I must
suppose that he found a way of reassuring her, as the next day
they were warmer friends than ever; and it became plain to me that
a dictionary, plainly bound but a devoted pocket-companion, had
been providentially deposited for M. Beauregard at the Asano-ya,
Ishinomaki. Indeed, the book was more anxious to be bought than the
buyer to acquire it, for as soon as the date of our return to Tōkyō
was given out O Maru begged her foreign lover to take her with him,
and extracted a promise that, if her family made no objection, as
soon as he had made suitable arrangements he would send for her to
continue the studies which had begun so pleasantly on the banks of
the Kitakamigawa.
II
It is one thing in Japan to make a bargain; it is another and far
more difficult thing to secure its fulfilment. Though by no means
infatuated with O Maru, Beauregard had been touched by her devotion
and amused by her simplicity. What seemed to him certain was that
he had merely to send word to Ishinomaki, and the faithful girl
would fly to his side. But this showed his utter ignorance of
Japanese character and methods of procedure. Before the two were
reunited, an interchange of six letters and thirteen telegrams,
spread over six weeks, taught him some useful lessons touching the
unimportance of time and the futility of haste.