THE GEISHA
With all their practical gifts--which, as one of themselves has
remarked, will enable them to beat the world with the tips of their
fingers--and all the power of assimilating and adapting to their own
purposes the best that other nations have to offer them,--the Japanese
are essentially and beyond all a nation of artists. It is not only in
the work-shop and the studio, but also in the simplest act and detail of
daily life, that this sense of the decorative oozes unconsciously forth,
and most of all, and most unconsciously, in the Japanese woman--the
geisha.
The _raison d'etre_ of the geisha is to be decorative. She delights in
her own delightsomeness; she wants frankly to be as charming as nature
and art will allow; she wants to be beautiful; and she honestly and
assuredly wants me and you and the stranger artists to think her
beautiful. She wants to please you, and she openly sets about pleasing,
taking you into her confidence (so to speak) as to her methods. She does
it with the simple joy and sincerity of a child dressing up. There is
no mock shyness, no fan put up, no screen drawn, no pathetic struggle to
deceive you into belief in the reality of an all-too-artificial
peach-bloom; there is nothing of the British scheme--no powder-puff
hidden in a pocket-handkerchief, no little ivory box with a
looking-glass in the lid, no rouge-tablet concealed in a muff to be
supplied surreptitiously at some propitious moment. The Japanese woman
has the courage to look upon her face purely as so much surface for
decoration, a canvas upon which to paint a picture; and she decorates it
as one might decorate a bit of bare wall. The white is simple vegetable
white; the red is pure vermilion toning with her kimono. The white makes
no effort to blend with the natural tone of her neck: it announces
itself in a clear-cut, knife-edge pattern above the folds of the kimono.
[Illustration: BUTTERFLIES]
I remember a little story that I once heard (it was told me by the
designer of the waterworks in Tokio)--only a trifling incident; but it
struck me as being thoroughly typical of the naive, almost childish
simplicity of the Japanese woman. It was on the day that the waterworks
were completed, and the high officials and their wives were being
escorted over the works in trucks, in order that they might see and
admire this great engineering feat, of which my friend, the architect,
was very justly proud. There were two trucks--one for the men and one
for their wives. The truck containing the men was wheeled up under a
shaft where the light came down from above, and enabled the officials
to look up and admire this great work. The men looked up and were duly
impressed, and altogether the experiment passed off successfully. Then
the idea was that they should move aside so as to allow the women also
to enjoy the spectacle. No sooner was the truck-load of women drawn up
beneath the shaft than their faces lit up with pleased surprise, and
every woman whipped out a looking-glass and a rouge-pot and began to
decorate her face. Not one of them looked up, or even attempted to take
the slightest notice of the waterworks: all they knew was that it
afforded them just sufficient light by which to decorate themselves, and
they promptly made use of it.
The geisha is the educated woman of Japan. She is the entertainer, the
hostess; she is highly educated, and has a great appreciation of art;
she is also proficient in the art of conversation. The geisha begins her
career at a very early age. When only two or three years old she is
taught to sing and dance and talk, and above all to be able to listen
sympathetically, which is the greatest art of all. The career of this
tiny mite is carved out thus early because her mother foresees that she
has the qualities that will develop, and the little butterfly child, so
gay and so brilliant, will become a still more gorgeous butterfly woman.
Nothing can be too brilliant for the geisha; she is the life and soul of
Japan, the merry sparkling side of Japanese life; she must be always
gay, always laughing and always young, even to the end of her life. But
for the girl who is to become the ordinary domesticated wife it is
different. Starting life as a bright, light-hearted little child, she
becomes sadder and sadder in colour and in spirits with every passing
year. Directly she becomes a wife her one ambition is to become old--in
fact, it is almost a craze with her. She shows it in every possible
way--in the way she ties her obi, the fashion in which she dresses her
hair; everything that suggests the advance of the sere and yellow leaf
she will eagerly adopt. When her husband gives a party he calls in the
geisha; she herself, poor dear, sits upstairs on a mat and is not
allowed to be seen. She is called the "honoured interior," and is far
too precious and refined to figure in public life. But, mind you, this
little married lady, the "honoured interior," does not ignore her
personal appearance altogether: she too will never miss an opportunity
to whip out the rouge-pot and mirror that always form part of every
Japanese woman's attire in order to decorate her face. And although to
our eyes she appears a nonentity as compared with the geisha, her
position is in reality a very happy one and greatly to be envied. What
if the geisha entertain her husband's guests? Hers is the greater
privilege of attending upon him when he returns, tired out from the
festivities; she is as a rare jewel set in the background of her home,
and the "honoured interior" is perfectly content.
[Illustration: DAUGHTERS OF THE SUN]
But the idiotic idea so general in the West, that the geisha is a silly
giggling little girl with a fan, must really be corrected, although I
can quite understand how this opinion has been formed. The geisha in
reality is a little genius, perfectly brilliant as a talker, and
mistress of the art of dancing. But she knows that the Westerner does
not appreciate or understand her fine classical dancing and singing, and
she is so refined and so charming that she will not allow you to feel
that you are ignorant and more or less vulgar, but will instantly begin
to amuse you in some way that she thinks you will enjoy and understand.
She will perhaps unfold paper and draw rapid character-sketches of birds
and fish, or dance a sort of spirited dance that she feels will
entertain you. It is very seldom that they will show you their fine
classical dances; but if by good fortune you can over-persuade them, as
I have done, the sight is one that you will never forget--the slow,
dignified movements, the placing of the foot and the hand, the exquisite
curves and poses of the body, forming a different picture every
time,--all is a joy and a perfect intellectual treat to the artist and
to the lover of beautiful things. There is no rushing about, no
accordion skirt and high kick, nothing that in any way resembles the
Western dance.
Sometimes, if she finds that you appreciate the fine work, the geisha
will give you imitations of the dancing on our stage at home, and
although it is very funny, the coarseness of it strikes you forcibly.
One never dines out or is entertained in Japan without the geisha
forming a prominent part of the entertainment; in fact, she herself
decorates the room where you are dining, just as a flower or a picture
would decorate our dining-rooms at home, only better. And there is
nothing more typical of the decorative sense innate in the Japanese than
the little garden of geisha girls, which almost invariably forms the
background of every tea-house dinner. The dinner itself, with its pretty
doll-tables, its curious assortment of dainty viands set in red lacquer
bowls, its quaint formalities, and the magnificent ceremonial costumes
of its hosts, is an artistic scheme, elaborately thought out and
prepared. But when, at the close, the troupe of geishas and maikos
appears, forming (as it were) a pattern of gorgeous tropical flowers,
the scene becomes a bit of decoration as daring, original, and
whimsically beautiful as any to be seen in the land of natural "placing"
and artistic design and effect. The colours of kimonos, obis, fans, and
head-ornaments blend, contrast, and produce a carefully-arranged
harmony, the whole converging to a centre of attraction, a grotesque,
fascinating, exotic figure, the geisha of geishas--that
vermilion-and-gold girl who especially seizes me. She is a bewildering
symphony in vermilion, orange, and gold. Her kimono is vermilion
embroidered in great dragons; her obi is cloth of gold; her long hanging
sleeves are lined with orange. Just one little slim slip of apple-green
appears above the golden fold of the obi and accentuates the harmony; it
is the crape cord of the knapsack which bulges the loops at the back and
gives the Japanese curve of grace. The little apple-green cord keeps the
obi in its place, and is the discord which makes the melody.
[Illustration: BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERNS]
My vermilion girl's hair is brilliant black with blue lights, and
shining where it is stiffened and gummed in loops and bands till they
seem to reflect the gold lacquer and coral-tipped pins that bristle
round her head. Yes, she is like some wonderful fantastical tropical
blossom, that vermilion geisha-girl, or like some hitherto unknown and
gorgeous dragon-fly. And she is charming; so sweetly, simply, candidly
alluring. Every movement and gesture, each rippling laugh, each
fan-flutter, each wave of her rice-powdered arms from out of their
wing-like sleeves, is a joyous and naive appeal for admiration and
sympathy. How impossible to withhold either! The geisha-girl is an
artist: I am an artist: we understand each other.
My geisha-girl brings out her dainty lacquer-box, and under the gaze of
all sits down to decorate herself with a frank joy in the pleasure she
knows she is going to give. And she knows too what she is about. She
knows the value of a tone in a lip. Something suggests to her that you,
an artist, may have found the vermilion lip not quite in harmony with
the plan, and she changes it to bronze. Three times this evening does my
geisha-girl change her lip; she frankly takes it off with a little bit
of rice-paper, which she rolls up and tucks into the folds of her
kimono, to be thrown away later, and the bronze lip is substituted. By
and by it seems to occur to her that the bronze lip has become
monotonous, and she will change it again to vermilion. No doubt before
the evening is over there will be a series of little bits of rice-paper
folded away ready to be got rid of when the bill is paid, the supper
eaten, and the festival at an end.
It is through the geisha-girls that there is still a living art in Japan
at the present day in the designs of the silk dresses that they wear.
They are so modern, so up-to-date, and yet so characteristic of Japan.
The women are very extravagant in their dress, and some of the leading
geisha-girls will often go to the length of having stencils, with
elaborate designs and an immense amount of hand-work, specially cut for
them, the stencils and designs being destroyed when sufficient material
for one dress has been supplied. For such a unique and costly gown the
geisha will of course have to pay a fabulous sum, and a sum that would
astound the average English woman of fashion. But then when a geisha
orders a costume she thinks it out carefully; she does not go, as we do,
to a dressmaker, but to an artist. It may be that she has a fancy for
apple-blossom at sunset, and this idea she talks out with the artist who
is to draw the designs.
[Illustration: A STREET SCENE, KIOTO]
A Japanese woman chooses her costumes, not according to fashion but to
some sentiment or other--apple-blossom because it is spring-time,
peach-blossom for a later season,--and many beautiful ideas are thus
expressed in the gowns of the women of Japan. But although the geisha
has plenty of latitude in which to display her artistic feeling, there
are some little details of etiquette and fashion that she must adhere
to, which show themselves in a few details of the Japanese women's
attire, as, for example, in the thongs of her little wooden shoes and
the decoration of her jet-black hair. Not only is the kimono of the
geisha, its colour and design, thought out by the artist, but all the
accessories of her toilette, such as the obi, the fan, and the ornaments
for her hair. It is the artist's ambition that she should be a picture,
perfect in every detail, and the geisha is always a picture, beautiful
beyond description.
How different she is from the geisha of fiction, of operettas, and of
story-books, which is the only geisha that the stay-at-home Englishman
can know! That she is beautiful to look at all the world agrees; but
quite apart from her beauty, or the social position that she happens to
occupy in Japan, take her as a woman, a real woman, stripped of all
outward appearances and of her own particular nationality--take her as a
woman, and she will be found as dainty in mind as in appearance, highly
educated, and with a great sense of honour, while her moral code would
compare favourably with others of her sex all the world over.
CHILDREN