Japanese Plays and Playfellows/Chapter 9
THE SCARLET LADY
I
"La dame en noir des carrefours
Qu'attendre après de si longs jours?
****
—Je suis la mordeuse, entre mes bras,
- De toute force exaspérée
Vers les toujours mêmes hélas;
- Ou dévorante—ou dévorée.
Mes dents, comme des pierres d'or,
- Mettent en moi leur étincelle:
Je suis belle comme la mort
- Et suis publique aussi comme elle.
Aux douloureux traceurs d'éclairs
- Et de désirs sur mes murailles,
J'offre le catafalque de mes chairs
- Et les cierges des funérailles.
Je leur donne tout mon remords
- Pour les soûler au seuil du porche
Et le blasphème de mon corps
- Brandi vers Dieu comme une torche.
****
—La dame en noir des carrefours
Qu'attendre après de si longs jours Qu'attendre?
—J'attends cet homme au couteau rouge."
Émile Verhaeren.
How different is her fortune in Japan! There she wears scarlet, garish and bright as the five years' revelry to which, as they might sell a platter or a cup, her parents have sold her; but she is not doomed to the black degradation which robs her Western sister of self-respect. Though the loss of freedom be irksome and submission to buyers disagreeable, yet she is a member of "the oldest profession in the world," in a country where it is not without honour. She is surrounded by companions, well fed and well housed, protected from robbery or murder by the Government and the goddess Inari; above all, she does not live ashamed and boycotted, but plays her part in an active round of duties and ceremonies. If remembered precepts of religious teaching ever visit her, they come, not to threaten, but to console. So far from slipping hell-wards, she is earning the approbation which Heaven accords to filial self-sacrifice. Happy she is not, though she may one day become so, for, when her contract shall have expired, marriage will be no impossibility. But she is much less unhappy than if she wore black.
It might be thought that the operation of natural laws, regulating supply and demand, would sufficiently account for her existence. But those who prefer fancy to fact are given the choice between two legends. According to one, the Emperor Komatsu Tenno sent forth his eight daughters to be women of pleasure and set the fashion in seven provinces; from them the courtesans of Settsu, Hiogo, and Eguchi were said to be descended. Though one may doubt the authenticity of this imperial origin, the incongruity between rank and the exercise of the scarlet profession did not affect the Eastern mind, as it does our minds, with a sense of repulsion. On the contrary, it is no uncommon thing in the old romances to find a heroine of noble birth resorting, reluctantly indeed, but without any feeling of irremediable guilt, to the sale of her charms, until she should find a chance of regaining liberty and her lover. In fact, one of the classes into which courtesans were divided, that of tsubone-jōro, was so called from the word tsubone, signifying the ladies' apartments in a Daimyo's house, because the daughter of Ichinomiya, a Daimyo, being driven by stress of weather to Hiroshima and by want of money to sell her favours, became prototype and founder of aristocratic demireps. The country-folk, respecting her station, would not reckon her among common joro, but prefixed the substantive tsubone rather than blur their nice appreciation of class distinction. The second legend sounds less apocryphal. After the great sea-fight of Dan-no-ura in 1185, the widows and daughters of the defeated Taira clan "were forced for daily bread to sell their bodies in the streets of Shimonoseki." But at least four centuries before that date the Hetaira had begun to set her mark on history and literature.
The poetry of the Nara period, which reflects the elegant court-culture of the eighth century and is represented by Manyoshiu ("The Collection of One Thousand Leaves"), was largely written by women, and contains at least one song by a "jūgyōjōfu," or "woman who goes about for pleasure." The kugutsu, who were summoned by innkeepers for the convenience of guests and were of much lower status, composed many famous little songs, whose memory has survived that of their authors. But the first light-o'-love whose orb burns brightly on the stormy darkness of the twelfth century, when Taira and Minamoto deluged the rice-fields with blood, was Tora Gozen. The most beautiful courtesan in Oiso, she became the mistress of the elder Soga, who slew his father's murderer in the hunting camp of the Shōgun Yoritomo at the foot of Fuji. Their tale is told in an historical novel, "Soga Monogatari," and the tourist who descends from the sulphur-springs of Ashinoyu to Lake Hakone will still pass on his way three monuments of stone, the smallest being commemorative of Tora. More striking still is the tribute paid to Takao, another type of immortal frailty, who refused with scorn the Lord of Sendai's offer to become his property. Endowed with every accomplishment, she enjoyed a higher social position than the geisha of those days, and regaining her freedom, was faithful (so far as professional exigencies would allow) to a lover of humble rank. Not only has her native hamlet of Shiogama erected a memorial-stone to honour her dishonour, but the priests of the little Myō-onji temple jealously guard a faded fragment of her wardrobe. There was never great hostility in Japan between the goddess of love and more ascetic deities. In more than one locality you will find a row of temples fronted by a row of pleasure-houses, that the pilgrims may impartially indulge body and soul.
When the Ashikaga Shōguns made Kyōto a centre of nobler art and more delicate refinement, the Scarlet Lady lost ground. The curse of Confucius, stigmatising her sex, had crossed the Yellow Sea. Painters preferred the beauty of snow and tree and bird to her fatal beauty ; poets, imbued with Buddhism, wrote passion-plays on other passions than hers. Neither in the serious Nō nor comical Kiōgen does she cut any figure at all. It would almost seem that for two centuries men found ceremonial tea-drinking and the excitements of civil war more congenial than her society.
At last the queen came by her own. When the feudal nobles went down before Iyeyasu and took his iron yoke upon their necks, the military despot was seen to be a popular liberator. Art and literature ceased to be the precious playthings of an aesthetic aristocracy. Novelists, playwrights, painters rose from the masses and worked for the masses. Rejecting in scorn the moony fetters of Chinese convention, they painted in broad colours and aimed at broad effects. Yedo, the new capital, without culture and without traditions, became their home and their hunting-ground. Of these turbulent subjects Venus Pandemos was naturally queen, and since her accession in the seventeenth century to the present day many measures of restraint, more or less fruitless, have been adopted by scandalised authority to curb her sovereignty.
As for the novelists, three great names in Japanese fiction may be cited at once. Saikaku, who died at Ōsaka in 1693, wrote an enormous number of amusing stories and sketches of contemporary life. The rollicking life of the gay lupanars was his favourite theme. Mr. Aston assures us that "the very titles are too gross for quotation." Even his contemporaries were shocked, and a virulent criticism, entitled "Saikaku in Hell," brought about the suppression of his works by the Government. A new edition has lately been permitted to appear. In the next century his example was followed and bettered by Jishō, whose name signifies "Spontaneous Laughter." He was a Kyōto publisher, and his place of business, the Hachimoniji-ya, or Figure Eight House, was as popular in its day with lovers of sex-novels as the Bodley Head itself. He had a collaborator, called Kesiki; and whether he supplied the humour and Kesiki the psychology I cannot say, but their joint productions aimed at something higher than Rabelaisian mirth. They aspired to the laurels of Theophrastus, delineating "Types of Elderly Men," "Types of Merchants' Assistants," "Types of Girlhood," and the like. But whatever the type selected, the reader was sure to pass most of his time with it in fast society. Well, Spontaneous Laughter died, but his firm continued to publish sharebon, or witty books, until the end of the eighteenth century, when once more the authorities swooped down and made an end. The fame of both these novelists is eclipsed by that of Kiōden (1761-1861), the father of the romantic novel. His predecessors had made men titter, but he bade them shudder or weep, at the harlot's fate. He proved the sincerity of his sympathy with women of that class by marrying two of them in succession. They are said to have been excellent wives. At the age of thirty he was "condemned to fifty days' handcuffs (in his own house)," for circulating what he called an "Edifying Story-book." His subsequent stories were mostly founded on less dangerous themes.
If any should suppose that the writers of stories and plays on this subject had no other purpose than to supply unwholesome food for unclean appetites, he would be egregiously mistaken. The author of a witty book might indeed be liable to this imputation, though the naïf attitude of his fellow-countrymen to physical facts which it is our habit to ignore robs the pat epithet "pornographic" of much opprobrium. Still there were limits of propriety, which, in his zeal to amuse, he frequently left behind. But the dramatist had every justification for dramatising the Unfortunate Lady, who appealed most strongly to his imagination and his heart. To begin with, his audience loved a spectacle, and what spectacular setting could dazzle them more than the spacious Kuruwa with its balconied palaces, divided by cherry-trees and hung with showy lanterns? What other section of society could provide such a feast of colour for beauty-loving eyes as these priestesses of pleasure, when they moved in procession through thronging suitors in their gorgeous sweeping robes, or sat superbly immobile, like painted idols, their high coiffures haloed with radiating pins of pearl and silver and tortoise-shell? And beneath all that picturesque elegance throbbed a tragic, adventurous existence. Other women passed silently from father to husband, from mother to mother-in-law, their lives arranged for them on lines of tranquil duty. But the Unfortunate Lady, transferred in girlhood, a chattel or a heroine, from village poverty to urban splendour, becoming half a queen and half a slave, was both free and not free to follow the voice of passion, which her secluded sisters had often never heard. They slept peacefully, with nothing to greatly hope or fear from the hand of destiny, but to her at any moment might come a Perseus, cleaving the dragon's mail with golden sword and delivering Andromeda from deadly servitude. Out of the hundreds of plays devoted to Andromeda, I will recall one, which has sunk most deeply into popular favour, and which I saw enacted before a weeping audience at the Kabuki-za theatre.
His name was not Perseus, but Gompachi, and he is supposed to have lived no more than two hundred and fifty years ago—the hero of this typical romance. He had the misfortune at the age of sixteen to kill one of his relations in a quarrel about a dog, and was obliged to flee for refuge to the capital. On his way to Yedo he was roused at midnight from his bed at a wayside inn by a beautiful girl, who warned him that a band of robbers, having stolen her from her parents, intended to slay him and steal his sword before daybreak. This was not Andromeda, but Komurasaki. As in duty bound, the gallant samurai cut down the whole band and restored their captive to her father, a wealthy merchant, who, for his part, asked nothing better than to marry his daughter to so dashing a youth. But this would have been against all precedent. For Andromeda to rescue Perseus and bestow on him the hand of a prospective heiress would have been to reverse the rôles in a most unbecoming manner. Gompachi, therefore, setting ambition before love, pursued his way to Yedo. There he fell into dissolute habits, and, some years after, hearing much talk of a new beauty in Yoshiwara, discovered her to be no other than Komurasaki. Her family had fallen into dire poverty, and, to alleviate their sufferings, she had become an inmate of the huge metropolitan pleasure-house. This time Andromeda was in her proper place, the helpless victim of a ruthless monster, but to strike off her manacles a golden sword was needed, and this Perseus found it difficult to obtain. He took to robbery, which again involved murder, for his own fortune was far too meagre to allow of frequent meetings, far less of redeeming his sweetheart. At last he was caught and beheaded as a common malefactor, before he could compass his mission, and Komurasaki, accomplishing her own salvation, stabbed herself to death upon his tomb. If you should visit Meguro, about four miles west of Tōkyō, when the peonies are in bloom, you will have no trouble in ascertaining the position of their grave. It is called Hiyoku-zuka after the Hiyoku, "a fabulous double bird, which is an emblem of constancy in love."
Tragedies of this romantic character were very frequent in the Yedo period, though they generally ended in shinju, the simultaneous suicide of girl and guest, who thus hoped to enter on new life together. In fact, so frequent were they in the Genroku and Shōtoku eras (1688-1715), that the authorities tried to rob this death of attraction by cruel indignities to the dead. The bodies were exposed to view for three days on Nihon-bashi, hands and feet being tied together. Then the Eta, social pariahs, wrapped them in straw matting and cast them into a pit. It was thought that after such a dog's burial their ghosts would not return to haunt the living, but it was customary to make their story into a song, which would become a nine days' pathos in Asakusa.
Not pathos but majesty is the dominating note of the Ukiyoye painters' homage to their Madonna. Easy to recognise by her distinctive garb—the tall coiffure transfixed with branching pins, the reversed sash with satchel-like bow in front, the high clogs of black lacquer—she is by far the most familiar figure to Western eyes through the medium of plebeian art. Cheap colour-prints disseminated her image from Boston to Paris; enthusiasts gave eager eye to her hieratic grace. Utamaro, who openly lived in Yoshiwara, which he served with purse and brush, was the first to win French homage through De Goncourt's advocacy for his stately mistresses of preternatural height. Daintier and more human, but not less divine, the monochromatic ladies of Moronobu, the green-and-rose ladies of Kiyonobu, the sirens beloved of Kiyonaga, of Toyokuni, of Kunisada, followed one another round the world, encircling it with a Circean spell. Banish their portraits from the collector's gallery, and you leave it bare of three or four of the greatest names on the roll of Tōkyō artists. On the other hand, you will more easily defend the Japanolater's thesis, that part of the superiority of Japanese over Occidental art lies in its contempt for the " eternal feminine."
It was Iyeyasu, the great organiser, who made it part of the State's business to centralise and control sporadic vice in the capital. Before his time the "social evil," as it is called, was free to spread its virus where it might, to the hurt of private and public weal. But one day, as the conqueror was returning from the battle of Sekigahara and taking his ease in the teahouse of Shoji Jinyemon, at Shinagawa, the proprietor, whose efforts to please were seconded by eight red-aproned waitresses of unusual beauty, so impressed the Shōgun with his talent for that kind of management, that he was appointed nanushi, or director-in-chief, of the Moto-Yoshiwara, founded in response to many petitions in 1618. Into this quarter, which either took its name from Yoshiwara, a town on the Tokaido famed for the prettiness of its daughters, or from its literal import, the "place of reeds," being situated in a marsh on the outskirts of Yedo, all the courtesans who had infested various portions of the city were gathered, licensed, and supervised. It at once became a little city in itself, wisely and usefully administered, and, being burnt down fifty years later, was replaced by the new or Shin-Yoshiwara, which remains in most essentials to this day a copy of its predecessor. It was divided into eight wards, each of which had responsible recorders, whose duty was to keep order, to guard against fires, and report suspicious characters to the police. Policemen stood at the gates, and every guest was required to enter his name in a register, though he might disguise it by changing the characters, if it were phonetically correct. At one time Christians and gamblers were forbidden to enter, while the samurai, or military retainer, whose Roman discipline excluded visits to Capua, was provided by the Amigasa tea-houses with a large braid hat to conceal his features. Espionage, as always under the Tokugawa régime, was a pronounced feature of this autonomous system, which was, and still is, of immense service in the detection of crime, since ill-gotten gains were generally disbursed in that locality, affording clues to the identity of their possessor.
The organisation of each house, or kashi-zaskiki, was elaborate and peculiar. The master, or teishu, though compelled to live on the premises, was seldom visible. His was the unseen hand which directed and received. He engaged at least three wakaimono (young fellows), supplied to him by a detective agency, of whom the banto, or clerk, made purchases and kept accounts; the mise-ban, or lady's attendant, walked behind her with open umbrella to avert sun or rain, when she passed in procession through the main street, Naka-no-cho; the nikai-ma-washi, or upper-storey man, looked to the lamps, the bedding, and other details of domestic comfort. Beside these were messengers, gardeners, bath-men, cooks, and night-watchman, who hailed the advent of each nocturnal hour with noisy wooden clappers. The staff of female assistants varied with the status of the house. If the girls belonged to the highest class, called taiyu or oiran, to each was allotted two child attendants, kamuro, whose dress must be of white bleached linen, decorated with a pine-tree pattern and crossed on the left shoulder by a black cape bearing in gold letters their mistress's name. When these little girls reached the age of fourteen, if their parents so wished it, they became furisode skinzo, or shinzo with flowing sleeves, and, without altogether ceasing to be attendants, began to learn the arts of singing, and arranging flowers and making tea. Yet a third class of servants bore the name of banshin. These were generally discharged jōro, who wore striped crape with a sash of black satin, and had the right to refuse admission to any whose respectability appeared doubtful. But the most powerful and most unpopular person in the whole establishment was named Yarité, or Spear-Hand. She was responsible for the behaviour of all under her charge, and might administer corporal punishment. If a girl were summoned before the local justice, it was she who escorted her and answered the questions of the judge. Her room faced the top of the staircase, and none could pass to the inner chambers without propitiating the dragon on the threshold.
But to pass from the inner chambers to the world without the Yoshiwara was rarely permitted to such closely guarded prisoners. The prison might be known as the "House of the Myriad Flowers," or the "House of the Eight Banners," or the "House of the Ten Thousand Plums," but it was none the less a prison. Not one of its inmates, neither "Evening Mist," nor "Filmy Cloud," nor the "Face of Evening," could glide imperceptibly from its vigilant constraint. If her parents were dangerously ill and lived not too far away, a girl was sometimes allowed to visit them, being given a label, which she must return at sunset. If she were ill herself, she might consult a doctor outside the quarter; and all had the privilege of going in a party to Mukōjima in the season of cherry-blossom. But no other exeat was accorded. A runaway was invariably caught, and the expenses of capture were deducted from her subsequent earnings. At the age of twenty-five she was sure of regaining her liberty.
It must not be supposed that the five years' durance were years of unrelieved servitude. As month followed month, the monotony was broken by a round of kindly festivals. On New Year's Day the whole household was assembled by Spear-Hand to pay conventional compliments to the master and mistress, who requited this courtesy with handsome presents. Every jōro received two dresses of silk crape; every shinzo two of pongee; every child attendant a dress of white linen with pine-tree pattern. Branches of pine and bamboo were suspended from the entrance, and above the lintels of the door-posts flamed a scarlet lobster. On each associated tea-house were bestowed saké cups of kiri wood, stamped with the donor's crest. At least three grand processions were held to celebrate the planting of the flowers. In April, when cherry-blossom was set before the tea-houses and along the main-street of Naka-no-cho, the balconies were crowded with spectators, the doorways hung with cherry-coloured curtains, as the stately line of magnificently-attired beauties with their attendant children and umbrella-bearers moved slowly on its way to the temple of Inari. In June, when iris was planted, the heavily-wadded dresses were laid aside, and lightly robed, like winged zephyrs, as though to personify their names, "White Cloud," and "A Thousand Springs," and "The Smell of the Plum Blossom" would pass with all their fanciful cortège through the sun-lit Place of Reeds.
"It ver et Venus, et veris prænuntius ante
Pennatus graditur Zephyrus, vestigia propter
Flora quibus mater præspargens ante viaï
Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet."
October brought chrysanthemum and signalised the close of summer. The imperial blossom soaked in saké was eaten on the ninth day; the big hibachi were lit; the human butterflies took a last flutter through the streets, their frail wings sheathed in velvet and brocade against the winter.
Other festivals, more intimate than these, assuaged the rigour of imprisonment. Though Inari had four temples in which to welcome her votaries, other divinities, too, offered distraction and consolation. When the evil spirits had been exorcised on the fourteenth day of the first month, the field was clear to garner divine favour. Ebisu, the jovial, pot-bellied god of good luck, claimed his meed of fish and saké; the sacred monkey-dance preceded the fête of Inari; Tanabata, the star of happy marriage, was warmly greeted with poems and fans and paper stars, which budded on bamboo branches fastened to the door; the feast of lanterns lasted a month, flooding the dark with radiance, but on the evening sacred to the memory of ancestors no guests were admitted, and the girls were free to hold communion with those parental dead whose exigence pressed so hardly on their flower-sweet heyday of life. Then O Tsuki San, the Lady Moon, must be "looked at" on three successive nights, while persimmon, rice dumplings, boiled beans, and chestnuts were set outside the house on tiny tripods, to catch her auspicious rays. On the occasion of the annual fire-incantation oranges were scattered about the garden and scrambled for by children, and three weeks before the year ended came the great cleaning, the preparation of rice-cakes and countless emblems for New Year's Day.
The observance of oyaku, when one of the little girls in waiting became a Shinzo with flowing sleeves, involved much expense for the anejōro to whose service she had been attached. First ohaguro, to blacken her teeth, was collected from seven friends; presents were made of buckwheat and red beans and rice to the tea-houses which they had visited together; a row of cooking vessels, filled with steaming food, was covered with lengths of silk crape and damask outside the house, while indoors a table was set out with fans, tobacco-pouches, and embroidered towels for the geisha and servants. For three days the newly promoted damsel would promenade the Naka-no-cho, wearing on the first day a long red cloak, on the second a purple cloak, on the third one of pale blue. The coiffure also varied from day to day, and the total expense of this ceremonious coming of age varied from twenty to forty pounds.
Occasionally it would happen that a guest fell in love with a girl and wished to marry her. Such a consummation was the object of many vows to Inari and the subject of many poems addressed to the Star of the Weaver at the festival of Tanabata. If he could raise the sum of 600 ryo (about £60), the rest was easy. Debts had to be paid, innumerable gifts conferred on patrons, companions, and attendants, of whom farewell was taken at a great feast on the day of departure. It requires much suffering and evil influence to uproot from the heart of any Japanese woman the flowers of gratitude and affection. If tradition may be credited, more than one suitor who anticipated Aubrey Tanqueray's experiment was rewarded for his courage with a happier fate. When the heavy black gate clanged behind her, happy indeed was the Scarlet Lady to put off her state-robes and become the obscure angel of a long-prayed-for benefactor. Sometimes she turned out badly. In that case the husband had the right to send her back, wearing a gown of penitential grey, to finish out her term in Yoshiwara. II
How much colour had been washed out of the fore-going picture by Western disapproval, filtering through merchants and missionaries, I was curious to learn. To their credit or discredit be it said, none of my Tōkyō friends cared to visit the Shin-Yoshiwara in the company of an alien. They were not exactly hindered by moral scruples, but rather by a disinclination to disclose the seamy side of their fellow countrymen to censorious eyes. They professed ignorance and changed the subject to railways or ironclads. However, one evening I met by chance the secretary of a famous lawyer-politician, who was taking a country cousin to see the sights of the capital; and, as he obligingly invited me to join the party, we made our way together through the maze of variety-shows and toy-shops which surround the Temple of Kwannon at Asakusa, until we reached the high embankment of Nihon-tsutsumi.
As we stood on the great dyke in a whirr of hurrying rickshaws, the country on the outer side stretched away into darkness, like the waste tracks which border the northern exterior boulevards of Paris. But at our feet, brilliant with light and clamorous with samisens, lay a clustering mass of lofty buildings, their roofs adorned with wooden seven-pronged rakes, which I had seen so often in old prints and knew to be emblems of good luck, purchased in November by pious traders from the priests of the Temple of the Eagle.
We walked down the slope of Emonzaka (the hill of the collar), which perhaps took its name from the habit of the Tōkyō blood to adjust the kimono collar in careful folds at the moment of entry, and traversed Gojikken-machi, the street of fifty tea-houses leading to the ponderous gate, where two dapper policemen, neatly gloved and sworded, kept watch and ward. Now we are between handsome edifices, four storeys high, adorned with balconies and electric light, in the broad central Naka-no-cho, which three narrow turnings intersect on either side, containing shops of less imposing dimensions. The upper storeys tell no tales, though their paper-panelled shutters give twinkling and tinkling signs of revelry. On the ground-floor is an unbroken series of shop-windows, not fronted with plate-glass as in Piccadilly nor open to the street as in the Ginza, but palisaded with wooden bars from three to seven inches wide. And behind the bars, on silk or velvet cushions against a gaudy background of draped mirrors and ornamental woodwork, sit the wares—a row of powdered, painted, exquisitely upholstered victims. Most of them look happy enough, as they chatter or smoke or run laughing to the barrier to greet a passing acquaintance, but I know what heroic endurance is masked by a Japanese smile, and the sight of caged women turns me sick. Then I reflect that Western sentiment, however justified by inherited ethics, is scarcely the best auxiliary of fair judgment, so, striving to convert my conscience to a camera, I follow my companions through the strange avenue of animated dolls. If they were really dolls of cunning fabrication, how much more readily could one inspect and appraise them! It seems that the most costly are reserved for their own compatriots. An English painter was, indeed, permitted to begin the portrait of one of these, but, when he came back to finish his work, admittance was refused. It was easy to believe that the inmates of the best houses were socially superior to the rest, for those whom I saw had gentle, refined faces, and did not raise their eyes from book or embroidery.
The least expensive dolls'-houses—they were of four grades—were decorated in execrable taste, and the Circes who cried or beckoned from their red-and-gilt dens had harsh voices and were of ungainly build. But between these extremes were some groups of prettily dressed exhibits, whose rich yet sober colouring harmonised admirably with the vision of whatever artist had been invited to decorate their show-room. There was the House of the Well of the Long Blooming Flowers, which should have been isolated for sheer loveliness from its flaunting neighbours. Behind the motionless houri, whose bright black tresses and mauve kimono were starred with white flowers, ran a riot of branch and blossom on wall and screen. Had Mohammed been Japanese, here was a tableau to win believers with the lure of a sensual paradise, but for the fact that, having realised so material a heaven on earth, the most inquisitive nation in the world would have demanded less familiar felicity. Beautiful, too, was the House of the Three Sea-shores, whose triple tide of waveless blue seemed silently advancing to reclaim the mermaid-daughters of Benten, who waited in such pathetic patience on the beach for a new Urashima. My fancy was most taken by the House of the Dragon Cape, for the ancient ferocity of the saurian symbol, wrought in dusky bronze, not only fascinated with its boldness of coil and curve, but hovered with appropriate cruelty over the meek prisoners, coquettishly disguised. By the time we arrived at the lair of the Dragon I was thoroughly tired. We had been tramping and gazing for more than an hour at nearly two thousand replicas of the same figure, watching its movements and conjecturing its feelings. The cages were beginning to empty, as the more attractive centre-pieces found purchasers. I detected a certain impatience in my companions' bearing, and I was on the point of taking leave of them when the secretary suggested that, if I would like to enter the Dragon-house and take notes of the interior, he would explain my mission to the proprietor.
It was needful to release three damsels from the public gaze if we would enter, and this we cheerfully did, bidding Young Bamboo, Golden Harp, and River of Song escape to their chambers. Then, leaving our shoes in charge of bowing attendants, we climbed to the first floor and began the evening with a mild tea-party. The Shinzo, in black dresses, brought in lacquer trays, on which were scarlet bowls containing eggs, fish, soup, and other delicacies. Saké flowed more copiously than tea. I was sorry to hear that the old-time processions were falling into disuse, and, though not yet abandoned entirely, were losing their antique splendour. The taiyu, too, was a thing of the past. The aureole of combs, the manifold robe over robe, the child attendants, had all gone. Varying now only in costume and accomplishment, all the women alike were cage-dwellers, whereas in former days the superior classes of them were spared that indignity. So far from evading questions, the presiding representative of Spear-hand, an elderly woman with a not unkindly face, seemed amused by my interest and answered readily. I began to think we had made a mistake. This decorous tea-party, removed from the glare and hustle of the street, bore small resemblance to an orgy. But now and then wild incidents surged up in the low ripple of current gossip. Six months before a fire had broken out in Ageyamachi, consuming half an alley of too contiguous wooden dwellings and costing twenty lives. Recently a brawl between Russian sailors and Tōkyō students had fluttered all the dovecots of Sami Cho, but had been speedily quenched by the fearless dapper police.
A sound of thrumming from the floor above hinted that the next item on the programme would be musical. We mounted and found ourselves in presence of two geisha, Miss Wistaria and Miss Dolly, who had been summoned by my cicerone while I was interrogating the Shinzo. The status and performance of these geisha differ considerably from those of their more respectable sisters, and Europeans, by confusing the two, have no doubt helped to affix a stigma to the whole class. Miss Dolly was no more than a child, and Miss Wistaria looked about sixteen. Both songs and dances, without being vulgar, were decidedly lax ; and, as the songs were topical, I followed them less easily than the dance, which might have been named after a primitive Japanese goddess, "The Female who Invites." Yet I must confess that the indelicacy was not blatant, but redeemed by a coy conscientiousness as of one who, half laughing, half shrinking, complies with an inevitable command. After some forty minutes of minstrelsy (my companions joining in the songs), the entertainment concluded with a polite request to the "honourable stranger" to return, and, handing us their cards—dainty cardlets, one inch square, inscribed with tiny hieroglyphics—the performers returned to the teahouse whence they had been hired.
At this moment Young Bamboo, Golden Harp, and River of Song, whom I had completely forgotten, reappeared on the scene. They had changed their scarlet robes for looser ones of white satin, and awaited our pleasure. I explained to River of Song, whose intelligent expression had influenced my choice, that if she would tell me her story and describe her impressions of Yoshiwara life, her duties would be at an end and her fee doubled. Entering readily into the rôle of Scheherazadé, she began by declaring that, though eagerly awaiting the day of liberation, which was yet two years off, she was not so unhappy as many of her companions. At first, when the bell rang before the shrine at evening for a signal to enter the cage (mise, "the shop," she called it), the ordeal was both long and painful. But time had assuaged this feeling, and she had made many friends. Moreover, the Spearhand of Dragon Cape had taken a fancy to her and made her life easier. Then she recalled her childhood. Her real name was Miss Mushroom (Matsutaké), and her father had been a fisherman of Shinagawa. Ever since she could remember, it had been her habit to patter bare-footed along the beach and gather shell-fish at low tide. But bad times drove her parents into Tōkyō, where an uncle had a small shop in the main street of Asakusa. On him they built their hopes, but his business failed, her mother died, and at last the father, hoping to make a fresh start by capitalising his daughter, sold her to the house of the Dragon Cape. At this point I asked if I could see the nenki-shomon, or certificate of sale, which would probably be in the possession of Spear-hand. The River of Song hesitated, not liking to ask, but I volunteered to accompany her, and we finished the story in the actual sanctum of Spear-hand, whom I had propitiated with coins and cigarettes.
The document (except in the matter of names) was thus worded:
Name of Girl—Ito Matsutaké.
Age—Eighteen years.
Dwelling-place—Asakusa, Daimachi 18.
Father's name—Ito Nobuta.
You, Minami Kakichi, proprietor of the House of the Dragon Cape, agree to take into your employ for five years the above named at a price of:—
300 yen (about £30).
30 yen (about £3) you retain as mizukin (allowance for dress).
270 yen (about £27), the balance, I have received.
I guarantee that the girl will not cause you trouble while in your employ.
She is of the Monto sect, her temple being the Higashi Hongwanji in Asakusa.
Parent's name—Ito Nobuta.
Witness's name—Kimoto Nagao.
Landlord's name—Yamada Isoh.
Proprietor's name—Minami Kakichi.
Name of Kashi-zashiki—House of the Dragon Cape.
It seemed to me that this certificate was story enough, with its batch of red seals denoting the triple sanction of father, master, and gods. Yet was it not better so? Hard as her fate might be, these were regular sponsors of a legal profession. She was not living in lonely defiance of public opinion and private remorse. She would still be gentle, submissive, modest, until the lapse of time should restore her liberty, unless the rascaldom that would beset her pathway for five long years should coarsen and undo her natural goodness. The Japanese used to boast that they were born good; that only the Chinese, and such barbarians, require a code of prohibitive clauses defining and forbidding sin. It is a charming theory, and many foreigners have subscribed to it. It is certain that if you deduct from Yoshiwara the heinousness which Western moralists impute, a tangle of pros and cons would confuse the Japanese conservative who knows anything of Western wickedness. But, as I wavered to the sentimental side of Oriental legality, seduced by the condoning circumstances of politeness and security, I suddenly remembered that this city of pleasure was founded upon a marsh, for all night long the frogs, like thousands of sinister voices, sustained their croaking chorus, as if in ironic commentary on the
"riddle that one shrinks
To challenge from the scornful sphinx."
III
Whenever Tōkyō crushed a hope or destroyed an illusion, I generally sought and sometimes found balm in Kyōto. There at least historic beauty is not marred and violated at every turn by modern innovation. The vulgar reality of the Shin-Yoshiwara had effectually dissipated my preconception of it, romantically based on book and picture. But, five months after the Asakusa frogs had mocked at my disillusion, I was urged by a Japanese artist to accompany him to Shimabara, about five miles out of Kyōto on the way to Lake Biwa, where, he said, some few vestiges were yet to be seen of the oiran's fading supremacy. Accordingly, having telephoned from the city to the village (impossible to avoid modernity!), which is happily omitted from the discreet pages of Murray, we drove out on a cold October evening to the once fashionable Tsumi-ya, a tea-house which figures in more than one notorious novel. As we sat shivering on the mats of the large fan-room, dimly lit by a single lamp, it was hard to realise what famous revels had contributed to its renown. Yet the relics were many and convincing. On the ceiling were painted the eight hundred and eighty-eight fans by Tosa, each inscribed with the autograph of a distinguished visitor, a poet or a daimyō, generally both. Hard by was the pine-room, whose faintly pictured canopy of serpentine boughs was the work of Kōrin. And, when the servants entered to lay the preliminary meal, they wore the same red aprons and red sleeve-cords as in the days when lyeyasu was borne in his litter to the gardens of Shoji Jinyemon.
It would seem that the routine of ambrosial nights does not greatly vary in the land of perpetual etiquette. Having sipped rather than supped, the dishes being light and fluid, we summoned the usual geisha, but among them, as the artist had forewarned me, was one of unusual distinction. O Wakatai San (her name was equivalent to "The Honourable Young Person") had long been the torture and despair of susceptible visitors. Her father was a samurai, strict and proud, who had trained her in a school of arbitrary virtue. Suitors had been one and all rejected ; even Lord W., offering bribes of incredible amount, had gone empty away. She was losing her youth, having reached the age of twenty-three, but her regular features and sunny smile helped one to forget the rather raucous tones of her voice. She had seen enough of the Shimabara life to pity its victims, and sang us some rather sad ditties on the subject, of which I transcribe two. The first refers to the prisoner's longing for liberty.
A Wish.
Could I but live like
Butterflies flitting,
Settling together,
Free, on the moor!
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The Taiyu waves her saké-cup.
punning elasticity of mi, a word signifying seed, self, and body. The flower to which allusion is made, a yellow rose that blooms in mountainous districts, is always known as the wanton's flower.
The Wanton's Flower.
The hill-girl's body
Is sold for silver:
Poor, seedless hill-rose,
A prison-flower!
Whatever novelists and dramatists may have written in glorification of the Scarlet Lady, the popular feeling, as voiced in vulgar songs, is pure compassion.
It was signified that on payment of a small sum we might now behold a resurrected taiyu, wearing the robes and insignia of her order. Assent being given, three blows were struck on a huge gong at the gate to summon the siren, who had never been subjected to the ignominious exposure of a cage, but came in state to meet her suitors at the Tsumi-ya. Alas! the state had been sadly curtailed! We saw no attendant henchmen, no ministering children, but three rosy-cheeked peasant-girls rather suddenly irradiated the gloom of that historic chamber, bearing without dignity the weight of a bygone royalty. The costumes were, in truth, splendid enough, and the crowns of heavy hairpins quite impressive. On the trailing robe of the first was represented a cloud cleft by lightning above a golden dragon; on that of the second, a rock with peonies; on that of the third, a tiger chasing a butterfly. All three designs were lavishly embroidered with gold. Sweeping her cumbrous skirt aside with one hand, the taiyu held in the other a wide saké-cup, which she slowly waved in air, repeating an old Japanese formula, which neither the artist nor the red-aproned nakauri could interpret. For nearly five hundred years the room of fans had seen the taiyu wave her saké-cup, had heard her use those words, but we could not evoke from its shadowy depths the ghost of an explanation. We must take the spectacle for what it was, the pale survival and ineffectual remnant of dying custom. Somehow, the awkward mummery of the girls and the bleak discomfort of the old tea-house seemed strangely appropriate. It was as though we were fitly rewarded for copying Dr. Faustus' impious trick of calling up fair phantoms from the past, not realising that communion is impossible between living and dead. . . .
The Scarlet Lady has not yet lost her hold on new Japan. The "unruly wills and affections of sinful men" are too strong for that. But she has lost her glamour. Poets do not sing of her, painters withhold their homage, though she is represented by a barrister in the Lower House of the Diet. For now she has become a thing more sacrosanct than any vestal virgin—a vested interest. She is exploited by numerous joint-stock companies, in which shares are held by quite important people. Their aggregate capital is enormous, their ability to block all reform, which might tend to reduce profits, correspondingly great. The law is at once her protector and her gaoler. If invoked to check cruelty, it must also enforce the observance of contracts. All one can hope is that, so long as custom shall recognise and government control her, at least her outlook may not darken from red to black.