Pastor People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
To the religious rambler, Japan is divided into two parts—that which is
inhabited by the Geisha girls, and that “cohabited” by the Yoshiwara.
I thought more of the Geisha dancers than the dance, and that wasn’t
much. The word “Geisha” means accomplished one, and there are schools
for their education in music and the arts. People visit the girls more
for pleasure than for profit, and since they are one of the institutions
of Japan, I went one night to a tea-house to see them. Making myself as
comfortable as possible on the floor, a screen door was slipped aside,
and in came a pretty Geisha girl who touched her head to the floor three
times, sat down and looked at each one of our party. Immediately there
fluttered in three more, and they made the room look like an Oriental
bird cage. They sang for us in a tone that suggested an ungreased axle
or a nail drawn across a piece of glass, played on the samisen and
koto, which nothing but the genius of a Wagner could appreciate went
through a fancy fan drill and proved themselves good entertainers, but
felt embarrassed because we were not familiar and indecent. They acted
serious and spoke to one another, and I asked what was the trouble. It
seems they didn’t know what to make of us, as the average tourist was
usually boisterous, drunk and rough.
The Yoshiwara is the red-lantern district of Japan. One night we formed
a stag party to visit the Tokio Yoshiwara, but we couldn’t shake the
“dears” who were as anxious to go as we were and insisted on accompanying
us. Our rickshaws rolled through squares and streets and miles of mud and
misery, until we came to what was in itself a “city of dreadful night,”
but all ablaze with electric lights. Here were squares of theatre-looking
buildings in which women, dressed in bright and fancy garb, sat by
little stoves, and sullen, smiling or smoking pipes, looked out at the
spectators. The government regulates this “social” as a “necessary evil,”
and houses, supervises and guards the girls. In Japan it is regarded as
noble and filial for a daughter to sell herself to support the father and
family who may have failed financially. The same thing is done in Europe
and America for wealth and social position, but differently estimated and
under another name.
Here they squatted in butterfly regalia, with silk kimona, obi, glossy
black hair stuck full of combs and gold pins, eyes painted and faces
powdered, thrumming a little guitar, squeaking out a love-song, and
making goo-goo eyes in a way that would make one smile if he could forget
the hell-horror of the place. Some of the inmates do not leave until
death; others return to society, which welcomes and does not disown; one
may return to her home, loved and respected, but with none of the fine
clothes and jewels given by her admirers during her absence. However, the
place often becomes a matrimonial bureau, and the girl is met, courted
and selected by some Jap as his wife. In addition to segregation, there
is such a supervision that the inmates can’t leave for even an hour
without the consent of the police.
Hotel life is interesting. If you are curious, you have only to wet your
thumb and thrust it through the wall paper of your bed chamber to get as
many views as Peeping Tom had of Lady Godiva. This hole privilege is,
however, only claimed by the traveler who has no respect for the holy of
holies at inn or temple.
Japan is the land of the Rising Sun—and daughter, who with the whole
family will take their bath and leave the same water for you to swim in
unless you set your alarm clock for a very early hour, or sit up all
night to get there first. Imagine a public bath, if you can, for many
homes have no bathroom, where the water by 10:00 A.M. is like a roily
creek after a rain; by 3:00 P.M., yellow as the Missouri, and by bedtime
like the mud geysers of the Yellowstone.
The public bath was the one thing we wanted to see and kept asking
about. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and after visiting 2,738 of
the 3,000 temples in Kobe, I wanted to get “next” to a public bath. At
last I discovered one and sent the guide ahead to reconnoiter. He said,
“Come.” I passed the word along and the ladies came, but wished they
hadn’t. We entered and I became a “looker-on” at Venus in the bath, and
not one but many, who made the painted females in the Uffizi look like
chromos or Mrs. Jarley’s wax works. They eyed us with an indifference
that made us blush and look through our fingers for shame. With the ease
that only a model for the altogether possesses, they posed before the
mirrors, arranging their black hair, or poised like maids of the mist
by the steam tank. Their type of beauty is different. Jap beauty is in
angles, the American in curves. Nature made one with a ruler, the other
with a compass. As a rule, the baths for men and women are divided by a
wooden partition at the end of which sits the proprietor or his wife on
the lookout. Formerly there was no privacy and the fastidious foreigners
insisted that the sexes should be separated. This was accomplished by
placing a bamboo rod between them, but even that is discarded now in some
sections. Everybody gets into the swim, thus beautifully illustrating the
proverb, “Evil to him that evil thinks.” O tempora! O mores!
One of the strongest impressions made upon me in my journey through Japan
was at Mogi, a malodorous little fishing village, out from Nagasaki, with
so large a smell that a blind man could easily find it by following his
nose. Coleridge, the poet, whose business it was to rely on imagination
rather than on fact, counted sixty well-defined and several stinks at
Cologne. He would have been overpowered here and called for the help of
a professor of higher mathematics to enumerate the volume and variety of
odors we encountered from Nagasaki to this town.
A well made road lassoes the intervening foot-hills which are covered
with cultivated fields; the peasants were all busy, the children were
happy and more so when we threw them peanuts instead of “pansies” for
thoughts. Men, women and oxen were carrying various loads, but the common
one was a bamboo bucket affair balanced on both ends of a bamboo pole.
These buckets were not filled with milk, or cheese, or vegetables, but
with a substance which they had assiduously collected in accordance with
the Scripture, “Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost.” I can
never forget the ascent or the descent to Mogi. From rocky road, through
pretty forest, by picturesque ravine, we reached the fishermen’s huts
with their nets by the shore and beach where bathing mermaids can only be
caught and carried home in a camera.
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