Kotmasu, an habitué, knocks upon the lacquer panel of the big door, which is speedily drawn back in its grooved-way. The wife of Takeakira the proprietor appears at the opening, a queer little old woman, silhouetted, with all the ugliness which so often comes with age, against a background of light; behind her a pretty attendant mousmé, just as if she was a figure taken from a vase. Both bow so low on recognising visitors that their faces touch the floor, and then they take off our shoes.
The mousmé conducts us upstairs, along a narrow passage, over the floor of which is stretched, stainless and wrinkleless, a matting of bamboo fibre, into a room which is bare and clean-looking almost to desperation and chilliness.
“Shibaraku,” says the mousmé, addressing us both with a smile of welcome, as she leads the way, which speech Kotmasu tells me is meant for him, as well as the smile and show of white teeth between pretty red lips. Perhaps it is, “What a long time since you have been here!” being obviously inapplicable to me on a first visit.
The paper walls of the room—spotlessly clean—into which we are eventually ushered with a great amount of ceremonious bowing, are just like those in my own little doll’s-house of a villa down in the outskirts of Nagasaki—mere sliding panels, each one in its own ingenious groove. And these by some wonderful process all fit into one another and mysteriously disappear. It is here we have to wait; in this bare room, with its long verandah running in front of it, from which “The Garden of a Thousand Lights,” as its proprietor loved to call it, can be seen; and in the daytime the harbour, an irregular segment of the ocean beyond, calm, green, but animated by the presence of sampans—gondola-like, graceful, with indigo beaks and queer odd-shaped cabins—junks with sails of matting, traders of all nations, hulking colliers, and here and there a man-of-war belonging to a friendly or unfriendly Power.
We are given squares of matting on which to squat, in lieu of chairs, by the ever-smiling mousmé, who then stands mute, awaiting our orders.
“Are there no other guests?” asks Kotmasu, with a quick glance at the little standing figure.
“Yes, several,” replies the mousmé, smiling. And, as though to verify her words, and dispel Kotmasu’s enigmatic and somewhat incredulous smile, we hear unmistakable sounds of hilarity arising from the room beneath our feet, and from a distant chamber on our right.
“But,” continued our mousmé, glancing curiously at me, and adjusting her obi of some flower-sprinkled material with minute care, “the English sirs mostly like to feast alone.” Such was, at all events, Kotmasu’s translation of the remark.
Kotmasu orders our repast; it is to be ultra-Japanese.