Kimiko, and Other Japanese Sketches

The Evergreen Series
By LAFCADIO HEARN
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1923
COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
The name is on a paper-lantern at the entrance of a house in the Street of the Geisha.
Seen at night the street is one of the queerest in the world. It is narrow as a gangway; and the dark shining wood-work of the house-fronts, all tightly closed,—each having a tiny sliding door with paper-panes that look just like frosted glass,—makes you think of first-class passenger-cabins. Really the buildings are several stories high; but you do not observe this at once—especially if there be no moon—because only the lower stories are illuminated up to their awnings, above which all is darkness. The illumination is made by lamps behind the narrow paper-paned doors, and by the paper-lanterns hanging outside—one at every door. You look down the street between two lines of these lanterns—lines converging far-off into one motionless bar of yellow light. Some of the lanterns are egg-shaped, some cylindrical; others four-sided or six-sided; and Japanese characters are beautifully written upon them. The street is very quiet—silent as a display of cabinet-work in some great exhibition after closing-time. This is because the inmates are mostly away—attending banquets and other festivities. Their life is of the night.
The legend upon the first lantern to the left as you go south is Kinoya: uchi O-Kata ; and that means The House of Gold wherein O-Kata dwells. The lantern to the right tells of the House of Nishimura, and of a girl Miyotsuru—which name signifies The Stork Magnificently Existing. Next upon the left comes the House of Kajita;—and in that house are Kohana, the Flower-Bud, and Hinako, whose face is pretty as the face of a doll. Opposite is the House Nagaye, wherein live Kimika and Kimiko…. And this luminous double litany of names is half-a-mile long.