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 Iyeyasu 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!
The Taiyu waves her saké-cup.
The other is a little difficult to render, since each line has a double meaning: the point turns on the 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.
[INDEX]
I
PLAYS
Aoi No Uye, [46], [50], [57]
Bataille de Dames, [82]
L’Enfant Prodigue, [65]
The Fisher-boy of Urashima, [75]
Fukuro Yamabusshi, [46], [56]
Funa Benkei, [46], [54]
The Geisha, [61]
The Geisha and the Knight, [70]
Gompachi and Komurasaki, [282]
The Green-eyed Monster, [266]
Hamlet, [85]
Ichi-no-tani Futaba-gunki, [76]
Jiraiya, [264]
Kagamiyama-Kokyo-no-nishiki, [81]
Kajima Takanori (The Loyalist), [68]
Kajincho, [265]
Kasuga no Tsubone, [86]
Kitsune-Tsuki, [46], [48]
Koi no Omoni, [46], [49]
Madame Butterfly, [64]
Maki no Kata, [85]
The Merry Wives of Windsor, [188]
The Mikado, [61]
Miracle Plays, [57]
Le Monde où l’on s’ennuie, [84]
Monte Cristo, [84]
The Moonlight Blossom, [63]
The Nabeshima Cat, [81]
Nakamitsu, [76]
Niobe, [68]
Othello, [85]
Our Boys, [80]
Pistorigoto, [117]
La Poupée, [68]
Roku Jizō, [46], [52]
Round the World in Eighty Days, [67], [84]
Shimazomasa, [116]
Shunkwan, [46]
Sweet Lavender, [80]
The Tongue-cut Sparrow, [75]
Les Trois Mousquetaires, [84]
Tsuchigumo, [46], [55]
Zaza, [64]
Zingoro, an Earnest Statue Carver, [68]
II
PERSONS
Adams (Will), [18]
Alcock (Sir Rutherford), [18]
Archer (William), [206]
Asada (Lieutenant), [79]
Aston (W. G.), [14], [85], [144]
Belasco (David), [64]
Benkei, [54], [265]
Bernhardt (Madame Sara), [93]
Binzura, [226]
Browning (Robert), [127], [140]
Bruant (Aristide), [123]
Buddha and Buddhism, [23], [25], [35], [42], [52], [57], [71], [78], [82], [112], [114], [116], [139], [155], [160], [175], [184], [190], [195], [225]
Campbell (Mrs. Patrick), [93]
Chamberlain (B. H.), [8], [12], [25], [121], [127]
Chevalier (Albert), [123]
Chikamatsu, [58], [72]
Confucius, [80], [154], [240], [279]
Danjuro (Ichikawa), [66], [73], [82], [93]
Diosy (Arthur), [62]
Fenollosa (Ernest), [237]
Fernald (A.), [64]
France (Anatole), [228]
Fukai (T.), [4]
Fukuchi (Mr.), [85], [97], [263]
Fukuzawa (Y.), [13]
Gautier (Théophile), [122], [237]
Gilbert (W. S.), [61]
Godaijo (Emperor), [69]
Greene (Robert), [72]
Guilbert (Mademoiselle Yvette), [123]
Hall (Owen), [61]
Hayashi (Mr.), [27]
Hearn (Lafcadio), [7], [18], [189]
Hidari Jingoro, [68], [111]
Hideyoshi (Taikō), [43], [72], [86], [109], [243]
Hiroshigi, [105], [228]
Hokusai, [140], [143], [198], [228], [255]
Ibsen (Henrik), [46], [88]
Ikkiu, [42]
Inari (goddess), [48], [52], [71], [162], [276], [288]
Inonyé (Count), [270]
Ito (Marquis), [12], [29]
Iyeyasu, [43], [75], [86], [110], [279], [284], [300]
Jishō, [280]
Jizō, [52], [162], [167]
Kawakami (Otojiro), [65], [84]
Keiki (Tokugawa), [44]
Keion, [220]
Kent (Horace Robert), [33]
Kesiki, [280]
Kintaro, [56]
Kidōen, [280]
Kitsune, [46], [48], [249]
Kiyomori, [46]
Kiyotsugu, [41]
Kogyo (Mr.), [43]
Komatsu Tenno (Emperor), [277]
Konosuke Koyama, M.P., [34]
Kōrin, [210], [300]
Kuroda (Marquis), [66]
Kwannon (goddess), [52], [185], [257]
Loti (Pierre), [3], [48], [64], [211]
Marlowe (Christopher), [72]
Millard (Miss Evelyn), [65]
Mitford (A. B.), ii, [81]
Matsumoto Keichi, [43]
Mori (Viscount), [79]
Motokiyo, [41], [49]
Motoöri, [105], [126]
Nagoya Sanza, [72]
Okuma (Count), [27], [29], [79]
Okuni, [72]
Osada (Mr.), [84], [266]
Ota Nobunaga, [42]
Ransome (Stafford), [9]
Saikaku, [280]
Schroeder (F.), [32]
Scott (Clement), [88], [269]
Shakespeare, [4], [58], [73], [74], [88]
Shaw (George Bernard), [206]
Shiuran, [42]
Shizuka, [54]
Shoji Jinzemon, [285]
Shotoku Taishi, [190]
Soga, [278]
Swinburne (A. C.), [122], [129]
Takao, [278]
Takeda Izumo, [73]
Tanabata (The Weaver), [173], [290]
Tennyson (Lord), [122], [129], [139]
Tora Gozen, [278]
Tosa, [299]
Toyomatsu (Umeseko), [33]
Tsuboüchi (Yūzō), [85]
Ukiyoye (Painters), [140], [284]
Umewaka (Mr.), [44]
Utamaro, [143], [284]
Verhaeren (Emile), [210], [275]
Watazumi-no-Mikoto, [223]
Yacco (Madame Sada), [65], [267]
Yano (Fumiō), [156]
Yoritomo, [54], [278]
Yoshitsune, [54], [154]
Yuko Hatakeyama, [79]
III
PLACES
Akakura, [180]
Asama-yama, [179], [222]
Ashikaga, [238]
Blackfriars, [72]
Chester, [57]
Dango-zaka, [258]
Dan-no-ura, [55], [277]
Dōgō, [200]
Dōshisha, [15]
Fuji-yama, [3], [70], [141]
Gōjō Bridge (Kyōto), [54], [265]
Haruna, [165]
Hiei-zan, [42]
Hiroshima, [195], [245], [277]
Hommonji, [164]
Ikao, [149]
In and Sea, [191]
Ishinomaki, [213]
Izumo, [72], [242]
Kamakura, [54]
Karuizawa, [179]
Kikai-gashima, [46]
Kinkwa-zan, [215]
Kintaikyō (Bridge), [200]
Kiyomizu, [257]
Kōbe, [5], [12], [77], [206]
Kose, [222]
Kure, [194]
Kyōtō, [35], [47], [50], [72], [93], [104], [106], [237], [279]
Liaotung (Peninsula), [80]
Matsuë, [243]
Matsushima, [212]
Matsuyama, [204]
Meguro, [283]
Mi Hashi (Nikkō), [188]
Miyajima, [195]
Moscow, [110], [115], [237]
Mukōjima, [104], [287]
Naoetsu, [185]
Nara, [40], [168], [278]
Nogiri (Lake), [183]
Notting Hill, [66]
Omuro Gosho, [114]
Onomichi, [193]
Ōsaka, [26], [73], [109], [189], [245], [268]
Sendai, [211], [278]
Sengakuji, [78]
Sen-yūji, [188]
Shiba, [104], [147]
Shimabara, [299]
Shimonoseki, [44], [278]
Shinagawa, [285]
Shiogama, [278]
Sugamo, [13], [35]
Suruga-dai, [13]
Takata, [183]
Tōkyō, [67], [76], [83], [93], [168]
Tsuruga, [116]
Uji Bridge, [113]
Yokohama, [8], [12], [32], [35]
Yoshino, [105]
Yoshiwara, [70], [283], [291]
Yume no Uki-hashi, [188]
Zenkōi (Nagano), [224]
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained. For example, lay preacher, lay-preacher; lifelong, life-long; plaistered; lotos; anecdotic; engraven; whirr; lakelet; lupinar; choregraphic.
[Pg 18:] ‘not a all sure’ replaced by ‘not at all sure’.
[Pg 23:] ‘seem to English’ replaced by ‘seems to English’.
[Pg 48:] ‘like the weir-wolf’ replaced by ‘like the werewolf’.
[Pg 51:] ‘Princess Rokijo, who’ replaced by ‘Princess Rokujo, who’.
[Pg 225:] ‘upto the main’ replaced by ‘up to the main’.
[Pg 265:] ‘patriotism. Perhap’ replaced by ‘patriotism. Perhaps’.
Index:
[Hiroshige] replaced by Hiroshigi.
[Inouye] replaced by Inonyé.
[Kagamigama-] replaced by Kagamiyama-.
[Kiyomidzu] replaced by Kiyomizu.
[O Kuni] replaced by Okuni.
[Schröder] replaced by Schroeder.
[Shotuku] replaced by Shotoku.
[Takaba] replaced by Takata.
[Wazumi-] replaced by Watazumi-.