Gradually life became smoothed into the old routine existence. News
seemed to occur sporadically in cycles, like the apexes and depressions
of a chart; at times the vernacular press would be filled with accounts
of disturbing events, strikes, mass meetings of workmen, of Socialists
demanding this or that, establishment of shop committees in factories,
recognition of the Soviet government; reports of arrests and police
dispersing gatherings; and this would be followed by hiatus-like
intervals when it seemed almost as if all these things had been
forgotten, as if the excitement had outworn itself. Kent found himself
going often to the dances at Tsurumi; there was little else to do. He
began to find Tokyo dull.
He was sitting with Karsten one evening in the study upstairs, talking
idly of this and that. It was late; the brilliant glitter of the
_machiai_ below was gradually fading. Some one in the entrance hall
was talking with Jun-san; they could hear the faint murmur of voices.
Suddenly Jun-san appeared.
"Kent-san," wide-open eyes showed surprise, bewildered wonder. "A young
lady has come to see you, Suzuki Kimiko-san. She says she must see you.
What shall I do?"
"Well, I'll be hanged! Just wait a moment, Jun-san." He turned to
Karsten, met only his ironic smile as he blew great smoke clouds
luxuriously against the ceiling. "Damn it, Karsten, don't sit there
like an ass. I haven't the slightest idea what that girl has come
here for. I have been with her often at Tsurumi and at hotel dances,
you know, but, by the gods, there isn't the slightest reason why she
should come here, a girl of her class, at this time of the night, a
_go-fujin_, a lady. Why it's even more serious in Japan than it would
be at home."
"Seems to me the only thing you can do is to ask her up here. You can't
in decency let her stand there in the hall. Ask Suzuki-san to come up,
Jun-san. Kent, you've got to find out what is the trouble, anyway. By
Cæsar, for a man of your continent tastes, you seem to have more than
your share of exciting episodes with women."
They could hear the exchange of the usual ritual of polite phrases
between the women as they were mounting the stairs. "Please enter."
Jun-san drew the partition aside.
Kimiko stood in the doorway, hands nervously clenched, quivering a
little, lips trembling as she spoke, words issuing haltingly in short
breaths. "Kent-san. I've come to you. I've run away."
"You've run away." He had risen to meet her; stood dumbly gazing at her
as if she had suddenly dropped from the ceiling. She had run away! It
seemed as if his brain could grapple with just that one idea, that he
could not get beyond it.
"Sit down please, Suzuki-san," Karsten came to the rescue. "Jun-san,
will you please have some tea brought. Get to your senses, Kent. We
must do what we can to assist this young lady. Here, let me take your
wraps, Suzuki-san," he took them, pressed her gently into a chair,
bustled about to give Kent time to collect himself.
But Kent was still bewildered. "So you have run away. Why?"
"Oh, it's a long story. I'll tell you presently, to-morrow; only find
some place for me here to-night." She was fighting hard for control of
her voice, hands clenched tightly to the chair arms. "Only let me stay
here to-night."
"But what about your family? You must go home, Kimiko-san, or you'll
have all kinds of trouble. I'll see you home, little girl, and then
to-morrow you can come and tell me all about your troubles. Can't you
see that that will be better," he spoke soothingly. "I'll see you home."
"I can't go home. There's no one there. They have all gone to the
country. They don't know yet that I have run away."
That, at least, was some relief. She explained that the family had
left Tokyo a few days before, while she stayed with friends, expecting
her to join them later. "But then I heard, oh, then I heard----" she
glanced at Karsten. He looked to Kent. Jun-san and the servants entered
with the tea things. The matter-of-fact mechanics of having tea brought
the situation down to a more natural level. "I wonder, Suzuki-san,
whether it would not be better to wait until to-morrow," suggested
Karsten. "Then you'll be less excited. We'll take care of you. What do
you think?" She nodded eagerly. In the reaction of the commonplace she
wished only to gain postponement. It was arranged that she should stay
the night in Jun-san's cottage.
After breakfast, Kent found himself alone with Kimiko. Karsten
and Jun-san had contrived to withdraw inconspicuously. "And now,
Kimiko-san," he drew his chair close to hers. "Tell me all about it."
She brought both hands up to her hair, smoothed it back slowly. "I
ran away," she spoke evenly, measuredly--evidently she had rehearsed
carefully what she intended to say--"I ran away because I heard that
they wanted me to marry Kikuchi-san."
During the night he had puzzled the matter over and had come to the
conclusion that it must be something like that, that the family,
after the old Japanese fashion, must have decided that now that she
had reached the age when girls must marry, arrangements must be made
for contracting a suitable alliance. He had even thought that young
Kikuchi might be the one; the families were close, and the Suzuki money
might fit in well with the noble but not over-wealthy Kikuchi house.
It seemed natural enough; Kikuchi had shown that he liked the girl. He
had wondered whether this young Japanese might not resent the evident
intimacy of a foreigner with this bright, young beauty, though he had
never given sign thereof. And now, why the deuce had she come to him?
That, too, had puzzled him. Could it be that----? No, of course, not.
Still, the thought had insisted. What if she wanted him to marry her?
The idea had had allurement. He liked her very much, could almost
contrive to believe that he might love her. But he held out against the
thought; the family would be sure to set itself against it; and even if
they should marry first and confront it with the accomplished fact, the
papers would be sure to revel in the incident, as they always did where
daughters of the aristocracy followed the unconventional. They would
make her out a decadent, wantonly abandoning the decent traditions,
would harry her into unhappiness with their hue and cry. And then he
himself; he had made up his mind that Karsten had been right, that in
spite of its allurement, marriage with a Japanese girl would not work
out in his case. He had reasoned it all out that time at Hakone. But
was that why she had come to him?
She seemed to read his thought. "I came to you, Kent-san, because I
could go to no Japanese. They would have been shocked, would have sent
me home. And I wanted to talk to some one, to get away from the family
where I was. I knew that the go-between would be coming in a few days,
and I wanted to get advice first. I didn't know what to do.
"But why don't you want to marry Kikuchi-san? Don't you like him?" he
was sparring, trying to elicit from her something that might give a
clew.
"Yes, I like him, but I would never marry a Japanese like him, to be
just like these other old-fashioned Japanese married women, always
obedient, always compelled to serve him, to have to regard whatever he
might do as right, even if he had geisha sweethearts; never to have a
right to have a personality of my own."
"But surely Kikuchi-san is modern. I know him. Sometimes I think he's
almost radical. He takes after foreign ideas in everything. It seems to
me----"
"Oh, yes, of course, he's modern. He goes to the dances, and dresses
after the _haikara_ fashions, and plays golf, and talks very advanced
politics, and all that. And in all that he is really modern, advanced,
like so many of our young men; but when it comes to marriage, to the
matter of the standing of women, he's like the rest of them, too. They
want modernism and liberalism, but only for the men. In regard to us
women their view is different; there they want to stick entirely to the
old, hidebound rules. They want the modern freedom of thought and of
action--but only for the men.
"But we women, we want the right to think too, to live our own lives
just as your women do. We are no more stupid, no more old-fashioned
than the men. But they are all against us, all the men. See how often
the _Fujin Koraon_, the Public Opinion of Women paper, is suppressed
by the police. But still we learn and we know. Women are going into
business and into politics; there are even many women Socialists, and
the police are afraid of them. And in the matter of marriage; we want
now to have a right to say whom we want to marry, to have a right to
marry--for love." She looked him straight in the eye, compelling her
glance to meet his, blushing a little, but only finger tips rubbing
restlessly against one another betraying her nervousness. "Even in
school we talked about love, yes, even free love. It is right if people
love each other, if there's no other way. _Shikataganai._ It can't
be helped then. And the principal called in Shinto priests, and had
them perform, right in the school, the 'soul-quieting ceremony,' and
eighteen of us had to assist them, all dressed in white. And we laughed
at it all. It was so silly.
"That is the reason why you hear about the Clover Leaf Club, which
receives letters from men and women who want to marry, and the officers
sort them out and bring together the couples which they think are well
matched. That's why you see sometimes in the newspapers advertisements
for husbands, occasionally even for foreign husbands," she laughed
demurely. "Oh, that's silly, I know, but still it all shows how we
feel. And that's how I feel. I don't want to marry, at least, not now;
but if I ever do, I shall want to make my own choice, and I shall
surely choose a man who believes as I do.
"That's the trouble in Japan, if a girl grows a few years older than
twenty, the family consider that it is a disgrace if she doesn't marry.
That is why they are beginning to worry about me, especially as they
have had to give it up about my sister; but then they think that in
her case it is the fault of the schooling she received abroad. So now
they are doubly anxious on my account; they don't want two old maids
well over twenty in the family. But now that I have run away, that
would be an even worse scandal. The papers would play it up as they did
the countess who tried to commit double suicide with a chauffeur, or
as they did with Akiko-san, the millionaire's wife who ran away with
a poet. You know, I have been in the papers once already. That was
when they were making such a fuss about Japanese girls dancing foreign
fashion, and some of them even published the names of girls who went to
dances. One of them mentioned my name, and my parents were so angry.
Now, if they don't leave me alone, I won't go home, and the papers
will learn about my having run away, and that will be worse than ever,
especially because I have run away to a foreigner."
She leaned back, crossed one knee over the other, looked at him
expectantly. She had gained her composure entirely, even enjoyed the
situation, now that the difficult part, the telling, was done with.
She evidently anticipated approval from him, praise of her cleverness.
But the revelation of her motive in coming to him was like a douche
of cold water. Of course, he ought to be pleased. What he had taken
to be the unfolding of a melodrama, tragedy possibly, developing
slowly, ominously, towards an inescapable woeful climax, had suddenly
grotesquely become transformed into a droll burlesque, fantastic but
harmless. But the suddenness of the metamorphosis irritated him, the
sense of finding himself taking a rôle in farce where he had, gravely,
been preparing himself for pathos. So all his vain imaginings that she
might have sought him out because of affection on her part, because
of her having greater confidence in him, was mere fancy. The little
minx was using him merely as a convenient lay figure where a moment
before he had thought himself to be cast in a principal rôle. What an
anti-climax!
"And now that you have planned it all out so well, what do you propose
to do now? What do you expect me to do?"
She caught the irony in his voice. "Now, please, Kent-san, don't be
angry. I thought you would be pleased when I got it all arranged so
nicely. I thought it all out last night. You wouldn't really want me to
run away to you, with you, would you now?"
Was she in earnest? Was the serious note that had crept into her
voice, the appeal vaguely to be sensed therein, something more than
mere anxiety to dispel his displeasure with her stratagem? How much
did she think of him, or how little? It seemed as if he might detect
the faintest undertone of earnestness under the words rippling from
her lips, a hint of dark shadow deep in her eyes. For a moment the
temptation to grasp her hands, to draw her to him, to learn just what
was passing in her mind, gripped him; but instantly came the other
thought,--what if she should be in earnest? He shook himself together;
he had been on the brink of taking a chance which might have been
replete with fateful potentialities. Steady!
"No such luck, of course." Purposely he spoke lightly, banteringly. The
moment had passed safely; still, curiosity piqued him and he knew it
would continue to do so--now that he would never know.
"You know, I think the very best thing would be to have a talk with
your sister." The only thing for him to do now was to get this tangle
straightened as soon and as neatly as possible. "She could fix it up
for you with your parents. Do you think you can get her here to-day if
you send a telegram?"
"Oh, yes; it's only a couple of hours by train." She adopted the
suggestion easily, seemed almost to have lost interest. It was arranged
that Kent should return to the house that afternoon that council might
be held between him and the sisters. The entire episode was becoming
flat and prosaic.
On his way to the office he wondered whether he had better look up
Kikuchi. They were intimate; had he been an American he should surely
have sought a frank discussion of the whole affair. He was sure that
Kikuchi would be able to give the advice which he felt he needed as
he stumbled fumblingly into this maze of Oriental convention and
custom, prescriptive usages governed by modes of thought crystallized
by centuries of observance, at which he might but conjecture vaguely.
But as he thought of how he might venture to approach the subject,
it seemed too amazingly difficult, too delicate a matter to attack
hampered by uncertainty as to the reactions which might be caused in
the Oriental mind.
So he gave it up, decided to give the whole affair no more thought
until the afternoon, and flung open the door to the office determined
to devote himself entirely to whatever routine the day might bring.
There was Kikuchi, sitting lazily, feet against a table. It was almost
uncanny, as if by mere thought, summoned by a wish, he had materialized
like a genii of some kind.
"Well, I'll be hanged. You know, I had just been thinking of you,
Kikuchi-san. By Jove, you're just the man I wanted to see." Now, that
was just what he should not have said; in his surprise the words had
slipped from him. Well, anyway, now he would wait and see what the
other might have to say.
"I thought so; so you see, I'm here." He advanced, hand outstretched,
smiling. "No use beating about the bush, is there? It's about your
charming little visitor, Kimiko-san, is it not?"
Confound him, how did he know? Of course, it was generally accepted
that the authorities kept themselves fairly well informed as to the
doings of foreigners, especially correspondents and such, but this was
just a little too surprising, too damnably efficient.
"Never mind," Kikuchi had caught his thought. "I found out about it
quite accidentally. It's all right. There will be no scandal; it won't
get out. But I had an idea that I might be concerned in this, you know,
so I just came to see you to find out; that is, if you will tell me?"
Well, why not? He had hesitated about seeing Kikuchi, but here fate
had solved the question for him. He filled his pipe deliberately,
spoke slowly, felt his way, gave but a bare outline. Kimiko had run
away because she feared a marriage was being arranged for her. She did
not want to marry at all. He emphasized the unimportance of his own
appearance in the drama, as a mere incidental figure, convenient as a
basis for the threat of potential scandal which formed the kernel of
Kimiko's scheme.
"You don't flatter yourself, do you," Kikuchi laughed. "Well, neither
do I, for, of course, you needn't have been so studiously delicate in
leaving out the fact that I am the unwelcome bridegroom--for I take
it that she told you. But it all suits me splendidly. I don't want to
marry her any more than she wants to marry me, and her scheme should
work out fine for both of us. But we'll have to move quickly lest
there be a scandal in earnest. That sort of thing won't remain secret
forever."
He leaned back, fingers drumming a rat-tat-tat on the chair arm,
evidently entirely content. "Why so serious, Kent-san. What are you
thinking? Here, out with it."
"Well, since you yourself invite it, I don't mind telling you that you
puzzle me, you two, you and Kimiko-san." He was glad that the other had
given him the opportunity. "You seem to me made for each other, both
young, having the same tastes, liberal thoughts, modern mode of living;
and you seem to like each other, quite evidently so; and yet, when it
comes to marriage, you both fight shy. You know, to me, to the foreign
point of view, the whole thing is, to tell the truth, mighty puzzling."
"Of course it is," Kikuchi laughed. "You've missed the main point
entirely; but she didn't, Kimiko-san. She knew well enough. Kent-san,
old man, you're quite right about my liking Kimiko-san. In fact, it's
more than probable that I like her far more than I shall care for
whatever girl I eventually marry. But the point is that I don't want
a modern wife, after modern style, with love, woman's rights, modern
female thoughts and all that. Will you let me be entirely frank,
Kent-san. All right; then I'll tell you just how I and many others
look at it. The point is that Japan has attained great gains from
Western civilization, electricity, steamships, railroads, and thousands
of other things that make life more pleasant and convenient; but,
honestly now, can you show me where we have gained much culturally,
or spiritually, or morally? Of course, some foreigners point to
Christianity, but you know as well as I do that much of that is
entirely on the surface. The better classes become Christians because
it is modern, just as they might learn fox-trotting or playing the
piano; and the poorer ones take it up because it is a cheap way to
learn English or any other of the matters of instruction that the
missionaries hold out as bait. What else have we gotten morally or
culturally from you that was better than our own? We are losing
our art, manners, morals, and getting instead your freak futurism,
your jazz and your cocktail-drinking, leg-displaying flapper. Now,
I'm willing to admit that all that amuses me. I enjoy the dancing,
the freedom with these girls. I have a better time with them than I
possibly shall have with the girl of the type whom I shall marry;
but, heavens, I don't marry a wife for entertainment, because she's
a good fellow. I marry a girl whom I can respect as a mother to my
children. Mind you, I don't want to seem to criticize your system.
It may suit you entirely, be just the thing for you; but it is
entirely inapplicable to us. Your country is run on the theory of the
development and the rights of the individual. In Japan the basis of our
entire social system and body politic is the family. In America, where
each individual must look after the expression of his own personality,
it is plain that marriage must be by personal selection, though I admit
it astounded me,--what I saw in America. A young man and a girl meet,
dance. 'Here, your step just fits in with mine. Let's get married.'
You know, it's almost as bad as that; and then, when you have let
themselves tie themselves up thus unthinkingly, you make it almost
impossible for them to remedy it if it's a mistake. Divorce must be due
to some disgraceful reason,--adultery, desertion, failure to provide;
one must either continue to drag out life in a marriage which is a
curse to the parties thereto and which does no good to the community,
or prove oneself some kind of a beast. In Japan we make marriage a
serious matter, try to give it the best possible chance for permanency
for the sake of the community and of the State; but incidentally the
parties themselves benefit. When you read the papers of America and
those of Japan--and ours are, if anything, more sensational than
yours--you'll find that on the whole we have far fewer marriage messes
than you have.
"That's why I shall marry a girl who will place her duty to her
family above everything else, who will be content with her home,
flower arrangement, ceremonial tea, looking after her children and
her husband. There won't be much excitement in it, or fun, but then,
if I want that, I can find it elsewhere. I don't marry for fun or for
excitement. I marry to form a family.
"So there is one thing where you may call me reactionary, if you like,
and that's in respect to women. When I saw in America your eternally
jazzing, slangy, impertinent flapper, the girl who bobs her hair and
'rolls them below the knee,' I was told is the phrase, and when I
saw the inroads which this phenomenon, this freakish caricature of
womanhood, was beginning to make in Japan, with some of our girls who
want to be modern, by talking woman's rights, and personal expression,
and free love and all that, then I said to myself, yes, Japan owes much
to Western civilization, and we may yet gain much from it; but when it
comes to the women, the family relations, let us keep out the Western
system as we would a plague."
"Thanks, I understand," Kent spoke drily. "I see your point; still it
seems to me a bit rough on the women, especially those like the Suzuki
girls. You've surprised me, Kikuchi-san. I thought you were among the
foremost of the moderns."
"And why am I not?" He snapped out the retort. "Simply because I
don't want to see Japan adopt a system which has resulted in a riot
of divorce scandals, married women running loose, the family system a
mockery? And yet, Kent-san you know that we young men in Japan cannot
justly be accused of being reactionary, and you know that we are likely
to have on our hands problems so pressing that we won't have time to
dabble with drawing-room sex questions. Can you find it illustrated
any better than it is in the case of us younger men in the Foreign
Office? We know jolly well that the General Staff is still running
the country; we see our diplomats humiliated continually when, after
they have bound Japan to some international agreement, the militarists
cynically walk right through it and leave us to wipe up the mess as
best we can, leaving us a laughing stock and placing Japan in the
position of a nation whose word is worth nothing.
"Do you know that all we are waiting for is a chance to get rid of the
older men, these pussyfoot, over-careful old men who now run affairs,
and to fight it out with the militarists. We shall have the people
with us. We must have a government for the people and not for the army
and navy. It's bound to come. The government is rotten as it is, with
the General Staff doing as it pleases without being responsible to the
Cabinet; with the officials nothing but politicians, many of them in
the pay of this or that of the big interests. That's why they call them
geisha politicians, because, like geisha, they are being kept by rich
men. What can you expect where the Premier gets six thousand dollars
and the Cabinet Ministers four thousand dollars a year and their
underlings in proportion? That's what we have got to do away with, that
and favoritism because of money or title. You know, I'm not going to
accept the title when my father dies. Peerages should last only one
generation; should go only to the men who earn them. And I'm not the
only one of my class who feels like this. There are many of us. Evil
days have come on Japan; the country is being run for the benefit of
the few, a rotten, corrupt bureaucracy in the service of plutocracy;
or by the militarists, who may be patriotic enough, according to their
lights, but who have become anachronistic--so they must go, too.
Remember, Kent-san, no matter how badly things may look on the surface
that you see, the great bulk of the Japanese people remains as it
was, patriotic, frugal, hard-working, eager to learn. They will give
Japan its great future, these masses, and that task is what interests
me, not chattering over sex sentimentalities with flappers. Girls like
Kimiko-san, dancing, jazz and the rest, are all very well as a pastime
in one's leisure, just as are geisha, but when it comes to the serious
affairs of life, pah!" he waved his hand, snapping the fingers. "You
get me, Kent-san?"
Kimiko's sister brought the news, that afternoon, that the parents
were ready to surrender. They had already called off the go-between.
Kimiko-san would never again be exposed to marriage without being
consulted first. They all had tea. It should have been a gay occasion;
Karsten tried desperately to bring about an atmosphere of high spirits;
but the feeling of uneasiness, high-strung quiver of excitement,
would not away. The women were ever together, the girls and Jun-san,
whispering, fluttery. For some reason it was a failure. It was almost
with a sense of relief that they saw the girls to the gate.
"Poor little things." Kent was looking down at them as they tripped
down the stone stairway, hand in hand, a pretty, entrancing picture,
one in the fashion of the West, chic turban, high-heeled shoes, narrow
waist; the other dainty, richly colored, brilliant, with her gorgeous
obi, widely drooping kimono sleeves. At the foot of the stairs they
stopped, waved; then they climbed into the waiting automobile.
"Yes, I'm sorry for them," said Karsten. "They are so eager to adopt
our civilization, our modernism; they try so hard; and the better they
succeed the worse it will probably be for them. They're ahead of their
day, victims of the transition period, poor little butterflies broken
on the wheel."