An uproarious twang of the samisens marked the end of the dance. The guests clapped. The dancers sank to the floor, bowed in deep salutation, ran down among the guests. The men rose from their places, new groups formed. Kent was glad to escape. He went up to Kubota, expressed his pleasure. He felt as if he must make some atonement for Jones, wondered whether the Japanese had noticed him. He sensed a soft pressure on his arm. It was the geisha who had first waited on him at table. She had plucked from her hair an ornament, a cluster of artificial flowers, curiously and intricately wrought, with little polished metal bits faintly tinkling and glittering among the red and purple petals. She offered it to him. "You are a nice stranger," she smiled up to him. "I want you to have this. It is a katami, a souvenir." He glanced to Kubota, a little at a loss. The diplomat laughed. "It is all right. Take it. It is an omen that Japan likes you. I hope that you may like Japan."
It was getting late. The foreigners began to leave. The Japanese remained behind. "They always do," commented Kittrick. "I have an idea that now the real fun begins. But we never see it. Almost always only the surface, here in Japan."
"He came near spoiling the evening, that man Jones," he remarked, as they walked from the tea house. "Of course, he has a right to his point of view, but why drag in the missionary question on such an occasion. It made me angry. In fact, he made me say more about the missionaries than I really meant."
Kent laughed. "It seems an odd thing how it crops up in all sorts of incongruous places, isn't it; in steamer smoking rooms, in hotel bars. Do you people really dislike them so?"
"It is a big jump from geisha to missionaries," said Kittrick. "Still, since you ask, I should say that on the whole I don't. In some ways the missionaries do a lot of good for the standing of the white man in the Orient, men like Doctor Wheelwright, for instance, men of broad education and culture, who in a way serve as demonstrations to the Japanese that the West, our race, has culture and high ideals, something beyond mere lust for gain and pleasure. You know otherwise the rest of us—most of us, at least—might easily give the Orientals the idea that we are entirely materialists, that we stand a poor comparison with their own scholars and men of culture. But then there is the other class of missionaries, the fellows with little minds, who can't see beyond the narrow vision they gained at their seminaries, who are forever deploring what they call the evil example set by the worldly white man, you and me, finding fault with our conduct, ever criticizing us, and, for business reasons, taking the side of the Japanese if we happen to criticize Japan. I feel as if the good done by the one class is about evened up by the nuisance caused by the other. I am thankful that I have friends among the first class; the others I carefully avoid. As for the good they do among the Japanese, I don't know. They undoubtedly do some good, but, on the other hand, personally I can't help being a bit suspicious of the native Christian. So many of them go in for Christianity on account of material advantages. It is an easy way to learn English, for one thing, and then, undoubtedly, many of them, the class of Japanese who want to be modern, who grasp at any modern movement, be it French art, opera music, Communism, or jazz, take up Christianity with sort of an idea that it is up-to-date, haikara they call it. It is only fair to say, though, that all the smoking-room talk you hear about the missionaries living at ease on the fat of the land is largely rot. Most of them have to live modestly enough, on mighty small salaries. I am willing to give them credit, most of them, of being sincere enough. I am neutral. I am willing to let them alone, if they will leave me alone. There is the missionary question in the Orient in a nutshell. Well, here I take my car. Give my regards to Karsten—and to Jun-san. Good night."
CHAPTER V
Kent drifted into his daily routine quickly and easily. His Japanese clerk watched the papers for him, read over the headlines, and translated into queer, but fairly understandable English the articles which Kent called for. He had made friends with several Japanese newspapermen, keen, elderly men, always pleasantly ready to comment on and to amplify the news of the day, popular tendencies and drift of thought, and who often took pains to keep him informed of the spot news. Then he visited the departments, Foreign Office, Home Office, War and Navy departments, a rather tedious and not very remunerative procedure, interviewing second-rank officials, laboriously extracting formal information, always meeting the unfailing courtesy and polite blankness which makes the Japanese the hardest men to interview in the world. The highest officials, Ministers, for instance, might as a rule be interviewed only by submission of written questions. It seemed as if the human element, the touch of man to man, was constantly deliberately shrouded in an impenetrable veil of bureaucratic formalism. Was it instinctive passion for secrecy, suspicion of the foreigner in general, or merely the deadening influence of worship of official form? He could not make up his mind, but he wished it were possible to talk frankly and openly, with return in openness and frankness, and not always under the peculiar feeling of restraint, of necessity of being constantly en guard, as if one were fencing with an adversary in the dark. They were always talking about frankness, about their desire for it, and yet he felt that it was always one-sided, that all the frankness came from the foreigner, but that for him there could be no penetrating through an impalpable wall of instinctive reserve, into the real, innermost thought of the Japanese.
Still, it was after all a pleasant life and, generally, an easy one. He concluded that Japanese reserve was racial, rather than consciously, deliberatively individual. And still there were times when they would be surprisingly frank, almost incredibly outspoken. Even about such a subject as the Imperial House they would sometimes, even officials, like young Kikuchi, speak in terms entirely democratic, as would an American, expressing carelessly ideas which he knew were well within the "dangerous thought" category of the police. It amazed Kent, left him a little at a loss as to how to reply, careful as he felt that he must be in such matters. At first he thought that the opinions were merely thrown out as bait, to draw him out, sound his views, but he soon concluded that this was not the case, that the spread of liberalism had extended far beyond the masses and was finding converts among the young aristocracy, even among some of its older men. Some of it was pose, he felt, the constant desire to show the foreigner that Japanese were as advanced in modern thought as was he, but at the same time he became convinced that substantially, generally, these men spoke truthfully, just what they thought.