_A Japanese Meal--Other Meals--Smoking and the Duty on
Cigars--Japanese Music--Geisha Dancing--What Is a Geisha?--Their
Refinement--Autumn Leaves--Filial Piety and Certain Horrors
Thereof_
As the luncheon at the Maple Club was my first meal in the Japanese
style I had not realized the volume of such a repast. I ate too much of
the first few courses, and as a result found myself unable to partake of
the last two thirds of the feast. The amount of food was simply
stupendous. I might have realized this in advance, and governed myself
accordingly, had I looked at the menu. But I failed to do so until
driven to it by my surprise as course after course was served. This was
the bill of fare:
FIRST TABLE
_Hors d'oeuvres--Vegetables_
_Soup--terrapin with quail eggs and onions_
_Baked fish with sea-hedgehog paste_
_Raw fish with horseradish and eutrema root_
_Fried prawns and deep-sea eels_
_Duck, fish-cake and vegetables in egg soup, steamed_
_Roast duck with relishes_
When this much had been served the nesans took up the little tables from
in front of us and went trooping out of the room. As I had already eaten
what amounted to about three normal dinners, I concluded that the meal
was over, but not so. In they came again bearing other little lacquered
tables of the same pattern as the first, but slightly smaller;
whereupon, as it seemed to me, an entire second luncheon was served. The
menu was as follows:
SECOND TABLE
_Hors d'oeuvres--Vegetables_
_Fish consommé_
_Grilled eels_
_Rice_
_Pickled vegetables_
_Fruits_
I am told that indigestion is a prevalent ailment of the Japanese, and
as regards prosperous persons who do no hard physical work I can readily
believe it. The toiling coolie is the only man in Japan who might
reasonably be expected to digest an elaborate Japanese meal, and he, of
course, never gets one, but subsists almost entirely upon a diet of rice
and fish.
Though some Japanese dishes are found palatable by Americans there are
many things we miss in the Japanese cuisine. It lacks variety.
Breakfast, luncheon, and dinner are composed of about the same dishes.
The divers well-cooked vegetables which form such an important part of
our diet are entirely absent from theirs, nor do they have stewed
fruits, salads, sweets, or the numerous meats to which we are
accustomed.
Of their best-known table delicacies it may be said that grilled eels
with rice are very good; that the pink fish, the flesh of which is eaten
raw, is pleasing to the eye and by no means unpalatable when dipped in
the accompanying _shoyu_, a brown sauce not unlike Worcestershire, made
from soy beans; that though they have no cream soups, some of their
soups are pleasant to the taste, albeit they have the peculiarity of
being either thin and watery on the one hand, or of the consistency of
custard on the other; that bamboo shoots are rather tough, lily roots
sweet and succulent, and quail eggs delicious. The Japanese, by the way,
domesticate the quail for its eggs, regard the cow not as a milch animal
but as a beast of burden, and cultivate the cherry tree not for its
fruit but for its flower.
The diet of ancient Japan was even less varied than that of to-day, for
more than a thousand years ago the Japanese became vegetarians, and for
some centuries thereafter adhered scrupulously to the Buddhistic
injunction against killing living creatures. For several hundred years
they even abjured fish, but by degrees they have fallen away from the
strict observance of the vegetarian doctrine, until to-day a Japanese
who is at all sophisticated will thoroughly enjoy a dinner in the
European style, beef and all. Indeed many of those who have travelled
abroad and acquired a taste for foreign cookery make it a point to have
at least one of their daily meals prepared in the foreign fashion.
Government officials or wealthy cosmopolitans who entertain on a large
scale usually do so in the European manner. A banquet at the Imperial
Hotel in Tokyo is much like a banquet in New York, and one at the
Bankers' Club is even more so, except that the meal itself is likely to
be better than at our banquets. To dine with a large gathering at the
Peers' Club is like dining at some great club or official residence in
Paris; while as for the cocktail hour at the Tokyo Club, I cannot
imagine anything in the world more completely and delightfully
international.
An important part of the equipment for a meal in the pure Japanese style
is a smoker's outfit, consisting of a tray on which stands a small urn
of live charcoal, and a bamboo vase with a little water in it--the
former for lighting the tobacco, the latter a receptacle for ashes. The
native smoke is a tiny pipe, called a two-and-a-half-puff pipe, with a
bowl as small as a child's thimble. Finely shredded Japanese tobacco is
smoked in this pipe, which is used by men and women alike, and the
constant refilling and relighting of it seem to figure as a part of the
pleasure of smoking. The Japanese smoke cigarettes also, and cigars, but
the tobacco industry of Japan, like that of France, is a government
monopoly, with the result that, as in France, good cigarettes and cigars
are difficult to obtain.
A visit to a government tobacco factory left me with the impression
that, from the point of view of management, mechanical equipment, and
perhaps also labour conditions, the plant would compare not unfavourably
with some large tobacco manufactories in our own Southern States; but as
to the product of this factory, the best of which I sampled, I can
pretend to no enthusiasm. Japanese tobacco goes well enough in the
little native pipes, but it does not make good cigarettes or cigars, and
even the cigarettes made of blended tobaccos, or from pure Virginia or
Egyptian leaves, would hardly satisfy a critical taste. Cigars made in
Japan are uniformly poor, like the government-made cigars of France, but
whereas in France it is possible to buy a good imported Havana, I found
none for sale in Japan. One reason for this is that the duty on cigars
is 355 per cent., so that only a millionaire can afford good Havanas.
* * * * *
Whether because the enormous luncheon at the Maple Club left me in a
stupor, or because my mind could not adjust itself quickly to
appreciation of an unfamiliar and extremely curious art, I did not find
myself enchanted by the shrill falsetto singing of the geisha musicians,
or the strange sounds they evoked from the samisen, fife and drums, as
they accompanied the dancers.
The native Japanese music, with its crude five-tone scale, is
demonstrably inferior to that of Western peoples. To the foreign ear it
is unmelodious, even barbarous, and yet I must say for it that the more
I heard it the more I felt in it a kind of weird appeal--an appeal not
to the ear but to the imagination. Even now, when I am far away from
Japan, a note or two struck on a guitar, a mandolin, or a ukulele, in
imitation of the samisen, conjures up vivid pictures in my mind. I see a
narrow geisha street, with a musician seated in an upper window, or I
get a vision of a geisha dancer arrayed in brilliant silks, posturing,
fan in hand, against a background of gold screens, in the exquisitely
chaste simplicity of a Japanese teahouse room. The sound that evokes the
picture is not harmonious, but the picture itself is harmonious beyond
expression.
One thing that sometimes makes the stranger in Japan slow to appreciate
the dancing of geisha, is the very fact that it is called dancing; for
the term suggests to us a picture of Pavlowa poised like a swiftly
flying bird, or Genée looking like a bisque doll and spinning on one
toe. Dancing, to us, means, first of all, rhythm. We look for rhythm in
a geisha dance, and failing to find it--at least in the sense in which
we understand the meaning of the word--we are baffled. It is only one
more case of preconception as a barrier to just appreciation.
Many travellers, and at least one author who has written a book on
Japan, have made the mistake of confusing geisha with prostitutes. This
is a gigantic error. The error is kept alive by ricksha coolies who,
understanding that it is a common mistake of foreigners, often use the
term "geisha house" as meaning an establishment of altogether different
character. A geisha house is in fact simply a house in which geisha live
under the charge of the master or mistress to whom they are bound by
contract or indenture. Geisha are booked through exchanges and meet
their patrons at restaurants or teahouses. When not on duty they are
private citizens, and it would be considered the height of vulgarity for
a man to call upon a geisha at the geisha house, however innocent the
purpose of his call.
A further reason for the erroneous idea of what a geisha is, lies in the
fact that Western civilization has no equivalent class. Geisha
correspond more nearly to cabaret entertainers than to any other class
we have, yet even here there is no real parallel. It is not customary in
Japan--except in foreign-style hotels--to dine in public. If a man be
alone in a hotel he dines by himself in his room, save that the little
nesans who serve him will try to make themselves agreeable and that the
proprietor may do the same. Or if a man gives a luncheon or a dinner
party at a restaurant he will have a private room. Therefore, under the
Japanese system, there is never a general assemblage of persons,
strangers to one another, who may be entertained as a body while they
are dining. Thus the geisha is a private entertainer, and in order that
the most desirable geisha may be secured it is customary to make
arrangements for a luncheon or dinner several days in advance. This is
usually done through the proprietor of the restaurant, who is told the
names of the geisha the host desires to summon, and who notifies them
through the local geisha exchange.
Men who frequently lunch and dine out naturally become acquainted with
many geisha, and have their preferences; and if a host knows that one of
his guests particularly likes a certain geisha he will generally try to
arrange to have her at his party.
There are three classes of geisha. Those of the best class frequently
have good incomes. They are often given large presents by their wealthy
patrons, and many of them are the mistresses of men of means, who
sometimes take them off on week-end outings and spend a great deal of
money on them.
However this may be, a geisha of the first class is a creature of
exquisite refinement of manner, and there is about her not the faintest
suggestion of coarseness. She will be friendly, even pleasantly
familiar, but never, in public, is she guilty of the slightest
impropriety. I have been to many gay parties in Japan, but I have never
seen a geisha or her patron behave in a way that would shock the most
fastidious American lady. Naturally the situation is somewhat different
among low-class Japanese and the geisha they patronize. There are vulgar
geisha to entertain vulgar men. But even a low-class geisha, if sent for
in an emergency to entertain a man of taste, will often be sufficiently
clever to adjust herself to the situation.
During the meal the geisha will sit before or beside the gentleman she
is designated to entertain, chatting with him, amusing him and serving
him with saké. Afterward she will join the other geisha in giving an
entertainment, the part she takes in this depending upon her special
talent, which may be for singing, playing, or dancing. Pretty young
geisha are most often dancers, while those who are older are generally
musicians. Also there are some geisha who are merely bright and pleasing
and who succeed without other accomplishments. The host, making up a
party, selects his geisha with these various requirements in mind, so
that his whole company of geisha will be well balanced.
Foreigners are generally most taken with the little dancing girls, or
maiko, who are mere children, and who with their sweet, bright, happy
little faces, and their bewitchingly brilliant flowered-silk costumes,
are altogether fascinating. Once at a party in a great house in Tokyo I
saw a score of these little creatures scampering down a broad flight of
stairs, making a picture that was like nothing so much as a mass of
autumn leaves blown by a high wind.
These children are in effect apprentices who are being schooled in the
geisha's arts. Often they are in this occupation because their parents
have sold them into it as a means of raising money. With the older
geisha it is frequently the same. The Japanese teaching of filial piety
makes it incumbent upon a daughter to become a geisha, or even a
prostitute, to relieve the financial distress of her parents. In either
case she goes under contract for a term of years--usually three.
A girl who is refined, pretty, and talented can raise a sum in the
neighbourhood of a thousand dollars by becoming a geisha, but if she is
not sufficiently talented or attractive to be a geisha, her next
resource is the "nightless city." The opening to women of professional
and commercial opportunities should tend to improve this situation.
I am told that geisha and the little dancing girls are generally kindly
treated by the geisha-masters, and the gaiety they exhibit leads me to
conclude that this is true. The little dancers, in particular, want but
slight encouragement to become as playful as kittens.