THE DANCE OF THE CAPITAL
The Ginza--the "Street-of-the-Silversmiths"--is the Broadway, the
Piccadilly, the _Boulevard des Italiens_ of modern Tokyo. Here old and
new war daily in a combat in which the new is daily victor. Modern
shop-fronts of stone and brick stand cheek by jowl with graceful, flimsy
frame structures that are pure Japanese. Trolley-cars, built in the
United States, fill the street with clangor and its pavements (for it
has them) roar with trade.
In its flowing current one may see many types: Americans from the
near-by Imperial Hotel, bristling with enthusiasm; earnest tourists
with Murrays tucked in their armpits, doggedly "doing" the country;
members of foreign Legations whirling in victorias; Chinamen, queued
and decorously clad in flowered silk brocade; an occasional Korean
with queerly shaped hat of woven horse-hair; over-dandified
_O-sharé-Sama_--"high-collar" men, as the Tokyo phrase goes--in
tweeds and yellow puttees; comfortable merchants and men of affairs in
dull-colored _kimono_ and clogs; blue-clad workmen with the marks of
their trades stamped in great red or white characters on their backs;
sallow, bare-footed students with caps of _Waseda_ or the Imperial
University; stolid and placid-faced Buddhist priests in _rick'sha_, en
route to some temple funeral; soldiers in khaki with red- and
yellow-striped trousers; coolies dragging carts; country people on
excursions from thatched inland villages, clothed in common cloth and
viewing the capital for the first time with indrawn breath and
chattering exclamations; rich noblemen, beggars, idlers, guides--all are
tributary to this river.
When evening falls women and children predominate: bent old women with
brightly blackened teeth; patient-faced mothers with babies on their
backs toddling on clacking wooden _géta_; white-faced vermilion-lipped
_geisha_ glimpsing by in _rick'sha_ to some tea-house entertainment;
coolie women dressed like men, trudging in the roadway; girl-students
peering into jewelers' windows; children clad like gaudy moths and
butterflies, clattering hand in hand, or pursuing one another with
shrill cries.
Before the sun has well set lanterns begin to twinkle and glow above
doorways--yellow electric bulbs in clusters, white acetylene globes,
smoky oil lamps, and great red and white paper-lanterns lit by candles.
As the violet of the dusk deepens to purple, these multiply till the
vista is ablaze. Lines of colored lights in pink and lemon break out
like air-flowers along upper stories of tea-houses, from whose interiors
come the strumming of _biwa_ and the twang of _samisen_. On frail
balconies, pricked out with yellow lanterns, dwarf pines or jars of
growing azalea hang their masses of soft green or pink down over the
passers-by. From open _shoji_ women lean, their _kimono_ parted, their
rounded breasts bared to the cool night.
On the curb peripatetic dealers squat in little stalls formed of movable
screens with their wares spread before them; curio-merchants with a
_mélange_ of brass, crystal and bronze; dealers in _suzumushi_--musical
insects in the tiniest cages of plaited straw; sellers of Buddhist texts
and worm-eaten, painted scrolls; of ink-horns, shoe-sticks, eye-glasses
and children's toys. At intervals grills of savory _waka-fuji_ (salted
fry-cakes) sizzle over charcoal braziers which throw a red glow on an
intent row of children's faces. Here and there a shop-front emits the
blatant bark of a foreign phonograph. On the corners men with arms full
of vernacular evening newspapers call the names of the sheets in musical
cadences, with a quaint, upward inflection. The air is filled with a
heavy, rich odor, suggesting the pomade of women's head-dresses, _saké_,
and sandalwood. In the roadway every vehicle contributes its bobbing
lantern, till the traffic seems a celestial Saturnalia, staggering with
drunken stars.
So it looked to Barbara as her two _goriki_--"strong-pull men"--whirled
her rubber-tired _rick'sha_ across the interminable city in her first
bewildering view of Tokyo by night. Daunt, for her benefit, had arranged
a trip to the Cherry-Viewing-Festival on the Sumida River, and a
Japanese dinner at the Ogets'--the Cherry-Moon Tea-House--in the famous
district of Asak'sa, where the great temple of Kwan-on the Merciful
shines with its ever-burning candles. They had started from the Embassy:
Baroness Stroloff, the wife of the Bulgarian Minister and Patricia's
especial favorite, the twin sisters of the Danish Secretary, the Swiss
Minister's daughter and two young army officers studying the
language--all of whom Barbara had met at the Review--and the long
procession (since police regulations in Tokyo forbid _rick'sha_ to
travel abreast) trailed "goose-fashion," threading in and out, a
writhing, yellow-linked chain.
Daunt had traced their route with Barbara on a map of the city,
and had translated for her the names of the streets through
which they were now passing. By the Street-of-Big-Horses they
skirted the District-of-Honorable-Tea-Water, threaded the
Lane-where-Good-Luck-Dwells, and so, by Middle-Monkey-Music-Street, they
came to the Sumida, a broader, slothful Thames, gleaming with ten
thousand lanterns on _sampan_, houseboats and barges. The bridge of
Ah-My-Wife brought them to the farther side. At the entrance of a long
avenue of blooming cherry-trees a policeman halted them. _Rick'sha_ were
not permitted beyond this point and the sweating human horses were
abandoned.
The road ran high along the river on a green embankment like a wide
wall, between double rows of cherry-trees, whose branches interlocked
overhead. It was densely crowded with people, each one of whom seemed to
be carrying a colored paper-lantern or a cherry-branch drooped over the
shoulder. In the hues of the loose, warm-weather _kimono_ bloomed all
the flowers of all the springs--golds and mauves and scarlets and
magentas--and everywhere in the lantern-light fluttered radiant-winged
children, like vivid little birds in a tropical forest. From tiny
one-storied tea-houses along the way, with elevated mats covered with
red flannel blankets, _biwa_ and _koto_ and _samisen_ gurgled and fluted
and tinkled. On the right the embankment descended steeply, giving a
view of sunken roadways and tiled roofs; on the left lay the long
reaches of the dreamy river murmuring with oars and voices and vibrating
like a vast flood of gold and vermilion fireflies.
Barbara had never imagined such a welter of movement and color. The soft
flute-like voices, the slow shuffling of sandals on the dry earth, the
pensive smiling faces, the pink flowers on every hand, made this
different from any holiday crowd she had ever seen. It suggested a
carnival of Venice orientalized, painted over and set blazing with
Japanese necromancy.
Here and there jugglers and top-spinners displayed their skill to
staring spectators. A cluster of shaven-headed babies swarmed silently
about a sweetmeat seller, and beside his push-cart a man clad like a
gray-feathered hawk whistled discordantly on a bamboo reed and gyrated
with a vacant grin on his pock-marked face. Where the crowd was less
close men tricked out in girls' attire, with whitened, clown-like faces,
turned somersaults, and through the thickest of the press a dejected,
blaze-faced ox, whose nose and forehead were painted with spots of
scarlet, slowly drew a two-storied scaffold on which was perched the god
of spring--a plaster figure wreathed with flowers. The animal's ears
were tickled by long tassels of bright green and red, and his look was
one of patient boredom. The man who led him wore a short jerkin, and his
bare legs, from thigh to knee, were tattooed in big, blue, graceful
leaves.
The greatest numbers surged about a large tent, outside of which waddled
here and there mountains of men, their faces round as full moons, naked
save for gaily colored aprons. The fat hung on their breasts in great
creased folds like an overfed baby's, and in the lantern-light their
flesh looked an unhealthy, mottled pink. Each wore his hair wound in a
short queue, bent forward and tied in a stiff loop on the crown. As one
of the vast hulks lumbered by, cooling his moon-face with a tiny fan,
Daunt pointed him out to Barbara.
"That is the famous Hitachiyama," he told her, "the champion wrestler of
Japan."
"How big he is!"
"It runs in families," he said. "They diet and train, too, from
babyhood. He weighs three hundred and forty-seven pounds."
A roar came from the lighted canvas and a man emerged and wrote
something on a sign-board like a tally-sheet. Daunt stopped and perused
it. "You may be interested, ladies and gentlemen," he said, "to learn
that Mr. Terrible-Horse has knocked out Mr. Small-Willow-Tree, but that
Mr. Tiger-Elephant has been allowed a foul over Mr. Frozen-Stork. I wish
we could see a bout, but we must hurry or we'll miss the _geisha_
dancing."
They came presently where the roadway overlooked a sunken temple yard
encircled by moats of oozy slime dotted with pink and white lotos buds.
The inclosure was set with giant cryptomeria centuries old, and was
crowded with people. Stone steps led down between twisted pine-trees and
_Shinto_ lanterns, to a gate on whose either side was a great stone cow,
rampant, like the figures in coats-of-arms. There was a droll contrast
between the posture and the placid bovine countenances. In the center of
the inclosure rose a wide platform with a tasseled curtain like the
stage of a theater. Opposite was a pavilion in which sat rows of women
in dark-colored dress, moveless as images and holding musical
instruments. The whole flagged space between jostled with the
iridescent, lantern-carrying throng. A priest led the party to seats at
one side on mats reserved for foreign visitors.
"Look, Barbara," said Patricia. "There goes our friend the
expert--across there. He looks bigger and pastier than ever."
Bersonin was dressed in white flannel which accentuated his enormous
size. A younger man was with him, smoking a cigarette, and in their wake
followed a Japanese servant.
The rest of the party had turned and were looking in that direction.
"Why," said Baroness Stroloff, "that's Doctor Bersonin."
One of the young army men looked at her curiously. "Do you know him?" he
asked.
"Why, of course. One meets him everywhere. I saw him at a dinner last
week. Have you met him?"
"Oh, yes, we're supposed to know everybody," he said carelessly. His
tone, however, held something which made her say:
"Most men don't like him, I find. I wonder why."
"Why don't people like lizards?" said Patsy. "Because they're cold and
clammy and wicked-looking."
"They like them enough to eat them in Senagambia," said the young
officer smiling. "Bersonin is a great man, no doubt, but there's
something about him--I met a man once who had run across him in South
America and--he was prejudiced. Who's the young fellow with him, Daunt?"
"His name is Ware--Philip Ware," was the answer. "I knew him at
college."
Barbara felt the blood staining her cheeks. So that was "Phil," the
brother of whom Austen Ware had told her! The name called up thoughts
that had obtruded themselves in the moment she saw the white yacht lying
at anchor, and which since then she had wilfully thrust from her mind.
Her gaze studied the handsome, youthful form, noting the bold, restless
glance, the dissipated lines of the comely face, with a sudden distaste.
A twang from the orchestra recalled her, as the curtain was looped back
for the _Miyako Odori_, the "Dance of the Capital."
It was Barbara's introduction to a native orchestra and at first its
strummings and squealings, its lack of modes and of harmony, its odd
barbaric phrasing, infected her with a mad desire to laugh. But
gradually there came to her the hint of under-rhythm--as when she had
listened to Haru's _samisen_ in the garden--and with it an overpowering
sense of suggestion. It was the remote cry of occult passions, a
twittering of ghostly shadows, the wailing of an oriental Sphynx whom
Time had abandoned to the eternal desert. It had in it melancholy and
the enigma of the ages. It wiped away the ugly modern European
buildings, the western costumes, the gloze of borrowed method, and left
Barbara looking into the naked heart of the East, old, intent, and full
of mystical meaning.
The ivory plectrons chirruped, the flutes squeaked and wailed, the
little hour-glass drums thudded, and down the stage swept sixty
_geisha_, in blue, cherry-painted _kimono_. A sly, thin thread of
scarlet peeped from their woven sleeves. Their small _tabi'd_ feet,
cleft like the foot of a faun, moved in slow, hovering steps. When they
wheeled, swaying like young bamboo, they stamped softly, and the white
foot, raised from the boards, under the puffed _kimono_ edge writhed and
bent from the ankle like a pliant hand. Their faces, heavily powdered,
and held without expression, looked like white, waxen masks in which
lived sparkling black eyes. In the slow, languorous movement their _obi_
of gold and fans of silver caught the cherry-shaded lights and tossed
them back in gleams of mother-of-pearl.
Barbara fell to watching the Japanese spectators. All around her they
stood and sat at ease, drinking in the play of color and motion of which
they never tire. The dance had no passion, no sensuality, none of the
savagery and abandon of the dances of Southern Asia, with whose
reproductions the western stage is familiar. Beside a ballet of the
West, it would have seemed almost ascetic. She knew that it was
symbolic--that every posture was a sentence of a story they knew, as old
and as sacred, perhaps, as the birth of the gods.
The parted curtain swung together and Daunt seated himself at Barbara's
side. "Do you like it, ever so little?" he asked.
"Ever so _much_!"
"I wonder if you are going to like me, too," he said, so softly that no
one else heard.
She felt her color coming as she answered: "Why, of course. How could I
help it, when you plan things like this for me?"
"I have at last found my _métier_; give me more things to do."
"Very well. When will you take me to see your Japanese house?"
For a second Daunt hesitated. The little native house in the
Street-of-the-Misty-Valley was a sentimental place to him. There he had
worked out the models of his first Glider; there he had talked with his
Princess of Dreams, his "Lady of the Many-Colored Fires." The glimpse of
Phil had reminded him that it now had a tenant. When he showed it to
Barbara, it should not be with Phil in possession.
She noted the hesitation, and, somewhat puzzled, and wondering if to
oriental ethics the suggestion was a _gaucherie_, waved the matter
lightly aside. "You are just going to say 'one of these days.' Please
don't. When I was little, that always meant never. I withdraw the
motion--but what is this coming?"
A boy was ascending the platform. He bowed and laid a box of thin
unpainted wood at Daunt's feet. It contained a _kakemono_, or
wall-painting, rolled and tied with a red-and-white cord of twisted
rice-paper. Daunt read the accompanying card.
"'Miss Happy-for-a-Thousand-Years,'" he said, "'presents her compliments
to the illustrious strangers.' She is the star. The gift is a pretty
custom, isn't it, even if it is advertisement. Here comes the lady
herself to present her thanks for our distinguished patronage."
She bowed low before them, smiling, her small piquant face powdered
white as mistletoe-berries above her carmine-painted lips. Daunt
unrolled the _kakemono_, revealing a delicately-painted cluster of
butterflies. He chatted with her in the vernacular, and she replied with
much drawing-in of breath and flute-like laughter.
"She says," he translated, "that this is a picture of her honorable
ancestors." A little smile, a genuflection, a breath of perfume and the
powdered face and gorgeous _kimono_ were gone. The orchestra chirruped,
the curtain parted and another figure began.
Miss Happy-for-a-Thousand-Years! As the party walked back to the waiting
_rick'sha_, Barbara wondered what lay beneath that smiling surface. She
had heard of the strenuous training that at five years began to teach
the gauzy, fragile, child-butterfly to paint its wings, to flirt and
sing and dance its dazzling moth-flame way. For the _geisha_ nothing was
too gorgeous, too transcendent. Her lovers might be statesmen and
princes. But in return she must be always gay, always laughing, always
young--all things to all men--to the end of the butterfly chapter!
Butterfly hair, butterfly gown--and butterfly heart?
Barbara wondered.