and peculiar. The master, or _teishu_, though compelled to live on
the premises, was seldom visible. His was the unseen hand which
directed and received. He engaged at least three _wakaimono_
(young fellows), supplied to him by a detective agency, of whom
the _banto_, or clerk, made purchases and kept accounts; the
_mise-ban_, or lady’s attendant, walked behind her with open
umbrella to avert sun or rain, when she passed in procession
through the main street, Naka-no-cho; the _nikai-ma-washi_, or
upper-storey man, looked to the lamps, the bedding, and other
details of domestic comfort. Beside these were messengers,
gardeners, bath-men, cooks, and night-watchman, who hailed the
advent of each nocturnal hour with noisy wooden clappers. The
staff of female assistants varied with the status of the house.
If the girls belonged to the highest class, called _taiyu_ or
_oiran_, to each was allotted two child attendants, _kamuro_,
whose dress must be of white bleached linen, decorated with a
pine-tree pattern and crossed on the left shoulder by a black cape
bearing in gold letters their mistress’s name. When these little
girls reached the age of fourteen, if their parents so wished it,
they became _furisode shinzo_, or _shinzo_ with flowing sleeves,
and, without altogether ceasing to be attendants, began to learn
the arts of singing, and arranging flowers and making tea. Yet a
third class of servants bore the name of _banshin_. These were
generally discharged _jōro_, who wore striped crape with a sash of
black satin, and had the right to refuse admission to any whose
respectability appeared doubtful. But the most powerful and most
unpopular person in the whole establishment was named _Yarité_, or
Spear-Hand. She was responsible for the behaviour of all under her
charge, and might administer corporal punishment. If a girl were
summoned before the local justice, it was she who escorted her and
answered the questions of the judge. Her room faced the top of
the staircase, and none could pass to the inner chambers without
propitiating the dragon on the threshold.
But to pass from the inner chambers to the world without the
Yoshiwara was rarely permitted to such closely guarded prisoners.
The prison might be known as the “House of the Myriad Flowers,” or
the “House of the Eight Banners,” or the “House of the Ten Thousand
Plums,” but it was none the less a prison. Not one of its inmates,
neither “Evening Mist,” nor “Filmy Cloud,” nor the “Face of
Evening,” could glide imperceptibly from its vigilant constraint.
If her parents were dangerously ill and lived not too far away,
a girl was sometimes allowed to visit them, being given a label,
which she must return at sunset. If she were ill herself, she might
consult a doctor outside the quarter; and all had the privilege of
going in a party to Mukōjima in the season of cherry-blossom. But
no other _exeat_ was accorded. A runaway was invariably caught, and
the expenses of capture were deducted from her subsequent earnings.
At the age of twenty-five she was sure of regaining her liberty.
It must not be supposed that the five years’ durance were years
of unrelieved servitude. As month followed month, the monotony
was broken by a round of kindly festivals. On New Year’s Day the
whole household was assembled by Spear-Hand to pay conventional
compliments to the master and mistress, who requited this courtesy
with handsome presents. Every _jōro_ received two dresses of silk
crape; every _shinzo_ two of pongee; every child attendant a dress
of white linen with pine-tree pattern. Branches of pine and bamboo
were suspended from the entrance, and above the lintels of the
door-posts flamed a scarlet lobster. On each associated tea-house
were bestowed _saké_ cups of _kiri_ wood, stamped with the donor’s
crest. At least three grand processions were held to celebrate
the planting of the flowers. In April, when cherry-blossom
was set before the tea-houses and along the main-street of
Naka-no-cho, the balconies were crowded with spectators, the
doorways hung with cherry-coloured curtains, as the stately line of
magnificently-attired beauties with their attendant children and
umbrella-bearers moved slowly on its way to the temple of Inari.
In June, when iris was planted, the heavily-wadded dresses were
laid aside, and lightly robed, like winged zephyrs, as though to
personify their names, “White Cloud,” and “A Thousand Springs,” and
“The Smell of the Plum Blossom” would pass with all their fanciful
_cortège_ through the sun-lit Place of Reeds.
“It ver et Venus, et veris prænuntius ante
Pennatus graditur Zephyrus, vestigia propter
Flora quibus mater præspargens ante viaï
Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.”
October brought chrysanthemum and signalised the close of summer.
The imperial blossom soaked in _saké_ was eaten on the ninth day;
the big _hibachi_ were lit; the human butterflies took a last
flutter through the streets, their frail wings sheathed in velvet
and brocade against the winter.
Other festivals, more intimate than these, assuaged the rigour of
imprisonment. Though Inari had four temples in which to welcome
her votaries, other divinities, too, offered distraction and
consolation. When the evil spirits had been exorcised on the
fourteenth day of the first month, the field was clear to garner
divine favour. Ebisu, the jovial, pot-bellied god of good luck,
claimed his meed of fish and _saké_; the sacred monkey-dance
preceded the _fête_ of Inari; Tanabata, the star of happy
marriage, was warmly greeted with poems and fans and paper stars,
which budded on bamboo branches fastened to the door; the feast
of lanterns lasted a month, flooding the dark with radiance,
but on the evening sacred to the memory of ancestors no guests
were admitted, and the girls were free to hold communion with
those parental dead whose exigence pressed so hardly on their
flower-sweet heyday of life. Then O Tsuki San, the Lady Moon, must
be “looked at” on three successive nights, while persimmon, rice
dumplings, boiled beans, and chestnuts were set outside the house
on tiny tripods, to catch her auspicious rays. On the occasion of
the annual fire-incantation oranges were scattered about the garden
and scrambled for by children, and three weeks before the year
ended came the great cleaning, the preparation of rice-cakes and
countless emblems for New Year’s Day.
The observance of _oyaku_, when one of the little girls in waiting
became a Shinzo with flowing sleeves, involved much expense for the
_anejōro_ to whose service she had been attached. First _ohaguro_,
to blacken her teeth, was collected from seven friends; presents
were made of buckwheat and red beans and rice to the tea-houses
which they had visited together; a row of cooking vessels, filled
with steaming food, was covered with lengths of silk crape and
damask outside the house, while indoors a table was set out with
fans, tobacco-pouches, and embroidered towels for the geisha and
servants. For three days the newly promoted damsel would promenade
the Naka-no-cho, wearing on the first day a long red cloak, on
the second a purple cloak, on the third one of pale blue. The
coiffure also varied from day to day, and the total expense of this
ceremonious coming of age varied from twenty to forty pounds.
Occasionally it would happen that a guest fell in love with a girl
and wished to marry her. Such a consummation was the object of
many vows to Inari and the subject of many poems addressed to the
Star of the Weaver at the festival of Tanabata. If he could raise
the sum of 600 _ryo_ (about £60), the rest was easy. Debts had to
be paid, innumerable gifts conferred on patrons, companions, and
attendants, of whom farewell was taken at a great feast on the
day of departure. It requires much suffering and evil influence
to uproot from the heart of any Japanese woman the flowers of
gratitude and affection. If tradition may be credited, more than
one suitor who anticipated Aubrey Tanqueray’s experiment was
rewarded for his courage with a happier fate. When the heavy
black gate clanged behind her, happy indeed was the Scarlet Lady
to put off her state-robes and become the obscure angel of a
long-prayed-for benefactor. Sometimes she turned out badly. In that
case the husband had the right to send her back, wearing a gown of
penitential grey, to finish out her term in Yoshiwara.
II
How much colour had been washed out of the foregoing picture by
Western disapproval, filtering through merchants and missionaries,
I was curious to learn. To their credit or discredit be it said,
none of my Tōkyō friends cared to visit the Shin-Yoshiwara in
the company of an alien. They were not exactly hindered by moral
scruples, but rather by a disinclination to disclose the seamy
side of their fellow-countrymen to censorious eyes. They professed
ignorance and changed the subject to railways or ironclads.
However, one evening I met by chance the secretary of a famous
lawyer-politician, who was taking a country cousin to see the
sights of the capital; and, as he obligingly invited me to join the
party, we made our way together through the maze of variety-shows
and toy-shops which surround the Temple of Kwannon at Asakusa,
until we reached the high embankment of Nihon-tsutsumi.
As we stood on the great dyke in a whirr of hurrying rickshaws,
the country on the outer side stretched away into darkness, like
the waste tracks which border the northern exterior boulevards of
Paris. But at our feet, brilliant with light and clamorous with
_samisens_, lay a clustering mass of lofty buildings, their roofs
adorned with wooden seven-pronged rakes, which I had seen so often
in old prints and knew to be emblems of good luck, purchased in
November by pious traders from the priests of the Temple of the
Eagle.
We walked down the slope of Emonzaka (the hill of the collar),
which perhaps took its name from the habit of the Tōkyō blood
to adjust the _kimono_ collar in careful folds at the moment of
entry, and traversed Gojikken-machi, the street of fifty tea-houses
leading to the ponderous gate, where two dapper policemen, neatly
gloved and sworded, kept watch and ward. Now we are between
handsome edifices, four storeys high, adorned with balconies
and electric light, in the broad central Naka-no-cho, which
three narrow turnings intersect on either side, containing shops
of less imposing dimensions. The upper storeys tell no tales,
though their paper-panelled shutters give twinkling and tinkling
signs of revelry. On the ground-floor is an unbroken series of
shop-windows, not fronted with plate-glass as in Piccadilly nor
open to the street as in the Ginza, but palisaded with wooden bars
from three to seven inches wide. And behind the bars, on silk or
velvet cushions against a gaudy background of draped mirrors and
ornamental woodwork, sit the wares--a row of powdered, painted,
exquisitely upholstered victims. Most of them look happy enough,
as they chatter or smoke or run laughing to the barrier to greet
a passing acquaintance, but I know what heroic endurance is
masked by a Japanese smile, and the sight of caged women turns me
sick. Then I reflect that Western sentiment, however justified by
inherited ethics, is scarcely the best auxiliary of fair judgment,
so, striving to convert my conscience to a camera, I follow my
companions through the strange avenue of animated dolls. If they
were really dolls of cunning fabrication, how much more readily
could one inspect and appraise them! It seems that the most costly
are reserved for their own compatriots. An English painter was,
indeed, permitted to begin the portrait of one of these, but, when
he came back to finish his work, admittance was refused. It was
easy to believe that the inmates of the best houses were socially
superior to the rest, for those whom I saw had gentle, refined
faces, and did not raise their eyes from book or embroidery.
The least expensive dolls’ houses--they were of four grades--were
decorated in execrable taste, and the Circes who cried or beckoned
from their red-and-gilt dens had harsh voices and were of ungainly
build. But between these extremes were some groups of prettily
dressed exhibits, whose rich yet sober colouring harmonised
admirably with the vision of whatever artist had been invited to
decorate their show-room. There was the House of the Well of the
Long Blooming Flowers, which should have been isolated for sheer
loveliness from its flaunting neighbours. Behind the motionless
houri, whose bright black tresses and mauve _kimono_ were starred
with white flowers, ran a riot of branch and blossom on wall and
screen. Had Mohammed been Japanese, here was a tableau to win
believers with the lure of a sensual paradise, but for the fact
that, having realised so material a heaven on earth, the most
inquisitive nation in the world would have demanded less familiar
felicity. Beautiful, too, was the House of the Three Sea-shores,
whose triple tide of waveless blue seemed silently advancing
to reclaim the mermaid-daughters of Benten, who waited in such
pathetic patience on the beach for a new Urashima. My fancy
was most taken by the House of the Dragon Cape, for the ancient
ferocity of the saurian symbol, wrought in dusky bronze, not
only fascinated with its boldness of coil and curve, but hovered
with appropriate cruelty over the meek prisoners, coquettishly
disguised. By the time we arrived at the lair of the Dragon I
was thoroughly tired. We had been tramping and gazing for more
than an hour at nearly two thousand replicas of the same figure,
watching its movements and conjecturing its feelings. The cages
were beginning to empty, as the more attractive centre-pieces found
purchasers. I detected a certain impatience in my companions’
bearing, and I was on the point of taking leave of them when the
secretary suggested that, if I would like to enter the Dragon-house
and take notes of the interior, he would explain my mission to the
proprietor.
It was needful to release three damsels from the public gaze if
we would enter, and this we cheerfully did, bidding Young Bamboo,
Golden Harp, and River of Song escape to their chambers. Then,
leaving our shoes in charge of bowing attendants, we climbed to
the first floor and began the evening with a mild tea-party. The
Shinzo, in black dresses, brought in lacquer trays, on which were
scarlet bowls containing eggs, fish, soup, and other delicacies.
_Saké_ flowed more copiously than tea. I was sorry to hear that
the old-time processions were falling into disuse, and, though
not yet abandoned entirely, were losing their antique splendour.
The _taiyu_, too, was a thing of the past. The aureole of combs,
the manifold robe over robe, the child attendants, had all gone.
Varying now only in costume and accomplishment, all the women alike
were cage-dwellers, whereas in former days the superior classes of
them were spared that indignity. So far from evading questions, the
presiding representative of Spear-hand, an elderly woman with a not
unkindly face, seemed amused by my interest and answered readily.
I began to think we had made a mistake. This decorous tea-party,
removed from the glare and hustle of the street, bore small
resemblance to an orgy. But now and then wild incidents surged up
in the low ripple of current gossip. Six months before a fire had
broken out in Ageyamachi, consuming half an alley of too contiguous
wooden dwellings and costing twenty lives. Recently a brawl between
Russian sailors and Tōkyō students had fluttered all the dovecots
of Sami Cho, but had been speedily quenched by the fearless dapper
police.
A sound of thrumming from the floor above hinted that the next item
on the programme would be musical. We mounted and found ourselves
in presence of two geisha, Miss Wistaria and Miss Dolly, who had
been summoned by my cicerone while I was interrogating the Shinzo.
The status and performance of these geisha differ considerably
from those of their more respectable sisters, and Europeans, by
confusing the two, have no doubt helped to affix a stigma to the
whole class. Miss Dolly was no more than a child, and Miss Wistaria
looked about sixteen. Both songs and dances, without being vulgar,
were decidedly lax; and, as the songs were topical, I followed them
less easily than the dance, which might have been named after a
primitive Japanese goddess, “The Female who Invites.” Yet I must
confess that the indelicacy was not blatant, but redeemed by a coy
conscientiousness as of one who, half laughing, half shrinking,
complies with an inevitable command. After some forty minutes of
minstrelsy (my companions joining in the songs), the entertainment
concluded with a polite request to the “honourable stranger” to
return, and, handing us their cards--dainty cardlets, one inch
square, inscribed with tiny hieroglyphics--the performers returned
to the tea-house whence they had been hired.
At this moment Young Bamboo, Golden Harp, and River of Song, whom I
had completely forgotten, reappeared on the scene. They had changed
their scarlet robes for looser ones of white satin, and awaited
our pleasure. I explained to River of Song, whose intelligent
expression had influenced my choice, that if she would tell me her
story and describe her impressions of Yoshiwara life, her duties
would be at an end and her fee doubled. Entering readily into the
_rôle_ of Scheherazadé, she began by declaring that, though eagerly
awaiting the day of liberation, which was yet two years off, she
was not so unhappy as many of her companions. At first, when the
bell rang before the shrine at evening for a signal to enter the
cage (_mise_, “the shop,” she called it), the ordeal was both
long and painful. But time had assuaged this feeling, and she had
made many friends. Moreover, the Spear-hand of Dragon Cape had
taken a fancy to her and made her life easier. Then she recalled
her childhood. Her real name was Miss Mushroom (Matsutaké), and
her father had been a fisherman of Shinagawa. Ever since she
could remember, it had been her habit to patter bare-footed along
the beach and gather shellfish at low tide. But bad times drove
her parents into Tōkyō, where an uncle had a small shop in the
main street of Asakusa. On him they built their hopes, but his
business failed, her mother died, and at last the father, hoping
to make a fresh start by capitalising his daughter, sold her to
the house of the Dragon Cape. At this point I asked if I could see
the _nenki-shomon_, or certificate of sale, which would probably
be in the possession of Spear-hand. The River of Song hesitated,
not liking to ask, but I volunteered to accompany her, and we
finished the story in the actual sanctum of Spear-hand, whom I had
propitiated with coins and cigarettes.
The document (except in the matter of names) was thus worded:
_Name of Girl_--Ito Matsutaké.
_Age_--Eighteen years.
_Dwelling-place_--Asakusa, Daimachi 18.
_Father’s name_--Ito Nobuta.
You, Minami Kakichi, proprietor of the House of the Dragon Cape,
agree to take into your employ for five years the above named at
a price of:--
300 _yen_ (about £30).
30 _yen_ (about £3) you retain as _mizukin_ (allowance for dress).
270 _yen_ (about £27), the balance, I have received.
I guarantee that the girl will not cause you trouble while in
your employ.
She is of the Monto sect, her temple being the Higashi Hongwanji
in Asakusa.
_Parent’s name_--Ito Nobuta.
_Witness’s name_--Kimoto Nagao.
_Landlord’s name_--Yamada Isoh.
_Proprietor’s name_--Minami Kakichi.
_Name of Kashi-zashiki_--House of the Dragon Cape.
It seemed to me that this certificate was story enough, with its
batch of red seals denoting the triple sanction of father, master,
and gods. Yet was it not better so? Hard as her fate might be,
these were regular sponsors of a legal profession. She was not
living in lonely defiance of public opinion and private remorse.
She would still be gentle, submissive, modest, until the lapse of
time should restore her liberty, unless the rascaldom that would
beset her pathway for five long years should coarsen and undo her
natural goodness. The Japanese used to boast that they were born
good; that only the Chinese, and such barbarians, require a code of
prohibitive clauses defining and forbidding sin. It is a charming
theory, and many foreigners have subscribed to it. It is certain
that if you deduct from Yoshiwara the heinousness which Western
moralists impute, a tangle of pros and cons would confuse the
Japanese conservative who knows anything of Western wickedness.
But, as I wavered to the sentimental side of Oriental legality,
seduced by the condoning circumstances of politeness and security,
I suddenly remembered that this city of pleasure was founded upon
a marsh, for all night long the frogs, like thousands of sinister
voices, sustained their croaking chorus, as if in ironic commentary
on the
“riddle that one shrinks
To challenge from the scornful Sphinx.”
III
Whenever Tōkyō crushed a hope or destroyed an illusion, I
generally sought and sometimes found balm in Kyōto. There at
least historic beauty is not marred and violated at every turn by
modern innovation. The vulgar reality of the Shin-Yoshiwara had
effectually dissipated my preconception of it, romantically based
on book and picture. But, five months after the Asakusa frogs had
mocked at my disillusion, I was urged by a Japanese artist to
accompany him to Shimabara, about five miles out of Kyōto on the
way to Lake Biwa, where, he said, some few vestiges were yet to
be seen of the _oiran’s_ fading supremacy. Accordingly, having
telephoned from the city to the village (impossible to avoid
modernity!), which is happily omitted from the discreet pages
of Murray, we drove out on a cold October evening to the once
fashionable Tsumi-ya, a tea-house which figures in more than one
notorious novel. As we sat shivering on the mats of the large
fan-room, dimly lit by a single lamp, it was hard to realise what
famous revels had contributed to its renown. Yet the relics were
many and convincing. On the ceiling were painted the eight hundred
and eighty-eight fans by Tosa, each inscribed with the autograph of
a distinguished visitor, a poet or a daimyō, generally both. Hard
by was the pine-room, whose faintly pictured canopy of serpentine
boughs was the work of Kōrin. And, when the servants entered to
lay the preliminary meal, they wore the same red aprons and red
sleeve-cords as in the days when Iyeyasu was borne in his litter to
the gardens of Shoji Jinyemon.
It would seem that the routine of ambrosial nights does not greatly
vary in the land of perpetual etiquette. Having sipped rather than
supped, the dishes being light and fluid, we summoned the usual
geisha, but among them, as the artist had forewarned me, was one of
unusual distinction. O Wakatai San (her name was equivalent to “The
Honourable Young Person”) had long been the torture and despair
of susceptible visitors. Her father was a _samurai_, strict and
proud, who had trained her in a school of arbitrary virtue. Suitors
had been one and all rejected; even Lord W., offering bribes of
incredible amount, had gone empty away. She was losing her youth,
having reached the age of twenty-three, but her regular features
and sunny smile helped one to forget the rather raucous tones of
her voice. She had seen enough of the Shimabara life to pity its
victims, and sang us some rather sad ditties on the subject, of
which I transcribe two. The first refers to the prisoner’s longing
for liberty.
A WISH.
Could I but live like
Butterflies flitting,
Settling together,
Free, on the moor!
[Illustration: The _Taiyu_ waves her _saké_-cup.]
The other is a little difficult to render, since each line has
a double meaning: the point turns on the punning elasticity
of _mi_, a word signifying seed, self, and body. The flower to
which allusion is made, a yellow rose that blooms in mountainous
districts, is always known as the wanton’s flower.
THE WANTON’S FLOWER.
The hill-girl’s body
Is sold for silver:
Poor, seedless hill-rose,
A prison-flower!
Whatever novelists and dramatists may have written in glorification
of the Scarlet Lady, the popular feeling, as voiced in vulgar
songs, is pure compassion.