Did they really wish to convey the idea that Japanese women looked like that? Did they wish, barbarously, to slaughter the conception of the musume, delicate, graceful, beautiful, and to substitute therefor as the ideal mere worship of flesh of the flesh? Damn them, it seemed such stupid, wanton brutality, brutishness even; a grossly sensuous libel on the womanhood of Japan. He glanced at Adachi-san, slender, dainty, flower-like. How was such a grotesque misconception possible?
He felt that she should have resented all this; but she was interested, far more absorbed in the moderns than she had been in the exhibits after the ancient mode. This was the section which young Japan enjoyed. Here the art students thronged, proud of their achievements or those of their fellows, young men with velvet jackets and baggy trousers, flowing ties and broad-brimmed, flapping hats. Their coarse, black hair flowed loosely down to their shoulders; those who could manage it had painstakingly cultivated little Van Dyke beards. Nearly all wore enormous, horn-rimmed spectacles. Here they were in their element, prideful, self-certain in their assurance that they had advanced far beyond the hoi polloi, that they were the leaders. Conspicuously they would form groups, point out, discuss, criticize or go into raptures.
Evidently Adachi-san was quite well known here. Young fellows would bow to her, some would even address a few short remarks. She was plainly enjoying it all; she tried to communicate some of her enthusiasm to Kent, called his attention to work which she thought was well done. She even used some of the technical patter of the students. He wished he had been better informed in art, that he might have placed in convincing form the criticism which craved for expression. He was relieved when they left the exposition and began their return through Uyeno Park.
They found a seat at the edge of an abrupt slope where they had a wide view of the city. "You didn't care for it, Kent-san?" Her voice conveyed her disappointment.
"But I did. I like the truly Japanese things immensely; but that's just it, even though much of the modern stuff is very good—I won't deny it—it seems to me such a pity that Japan should sacrifice the wondrous values of her own art merely to trade them for imitations of that of the West which the other countries can do better than she can; just as Japan in all other things is throwing away her own which suit her,—her dress, her architecture, her manners, only to replace them with shoddy foreign clothes that don't suit Japanese figures; ramshackle hodgepodge buildings after no style at all; and all the rest. And then these student fellows. Can't you see that with most of them it is all pose?"
A couple of the artists passed, bowed courteously. He raised his hat to them.
"But it isn't pose, at least with only a few of them. If you only knew how some of them slave and toil for the ideals they have, you wouldn't talk like that. They may seem absurd to you, or funny even, but I tell you, you would have a different idea of them, if you only knew them."
"Yes, I daresay they must be interesting to know." Throughout the afternoon he had sensed an indefinite resentment that she seemed to be so familiar with them. How did she come to know them so well? It was not jealousy, still, honestly, it might be something fairly close to that. But the whole thing irritated him. He wanted to get away from it, to some other subject. "It is getting quite late, Adachi-san. Let us have dinner somewhere."
But she would not get away from it. "Thank you very much, Kent-san. You're too good to me. But if you really think they may be interesting, why shouldn't we go to one of the places where they eat, right near here. Kent-san, you are the only foreigner whom I know, and you seem to be such, such a reactionary, and I want you to see our side of it. You foreigners ought to be the ones to help us, you know. I want you to, please." The slim, white hand was on his sleeve. She was looking at him earnestly, appealingly almost.
Hang it, the power which these eyes had over him; they could make him do anything, he felt. Of course, in a way, that was what he wanted, to allow himself complete abandon, inertly drifting, dreaming under the spell of that glorious, pervasive beauty, to let himself go under the hypnotism of her charm. But this was something entirely different; the injection of the element of intellect spoiled the whole thing. It was her beauty, not her brain he wished to enjoy, as one might be dreamily soothed by the spell of a picture, unheeding the mechanics to which it owed being. That was her function, beauty. Why should she disrupt the harmony by bringing in thought, this crass, clamorous new thought that seemed like a plague of fever obsessing the new generation? "Our" side of it, she said. He wanted her to be Japan of droning temple bell, slender pagoda, rich, flaunting silks, not the Japan of steam, electricity and new thought. But her earnestness softened him. He would make the best of it. To-day, they had fallen into the wrong setting. He would contrive, next time, one more congruous with the idea which he had in mind.