"Sure I'll go. The Yoshiwara isn't what it used to be, is it, Nishimura-san?" The great man shook his head sadly. "Still we shall enjoy the excellent hospitality of the coming Premier of Japan."
"Who knows?" he smiled deprecatingly. "All right, gentlemen, I shall be here at seven with a car."
The car he brought must have been one of the largest in Tokyo, an enormous thing with an interior resplendent with mirrors, cut-glass flower holders and manifold glittering nickel trimmings. "Not a hired car, this," explained Nishimura. "It belongs to the Watanabe interests, my backers, who are now assisting me. Step in."
They swept through Tokyo, through a dimly lighted section of narrow streets, emerging presently into a quarter where great buildings, brilliantly lighted, presented a vivid contrast to the surrounding squalor. "Here we are," announced Nishimura. "The nightless city of wine, and song, and beautiful women. You have nothing like that in America."
"I'd like to take a look around before we go to your place," said Kent. "Do you mind?"
"I shall show you the place, and then you two can walk about a bit. I shall wait for you. I cannot well be seen in these streets, you know."
Their destination was an enormous house, three-storied, gorgeous with elaborate carvings and gilt ornamentation. Kittrick and Kent set out down the wide street, bright in the blaze thrown out from the scintillating glare from the great buildings, all spotless, prosperous looking, glittering with light and tinsel. Along the front of each house ran a great hall-like space. One entered and faced a show-window-like arrangement, where rows of large portraits of women, each bearing a name, appeared, set in variously arranged backgrounds of gilt screens, vases with flowers, heavy hangings of brocade, excellently executed silk scroll pictures. At each end of this was a small box, ludicrously like a pulpit, in which sat men, the doorkeepers, who drove the bargains with the guests. Some sat silently, impassively suffering the crowds to flow by, stirred to action only when inquiries were made of them. Others were busy, after the fashion of barkers at a fair, praising their wares, calling attention to the beauties displayed, to the cheap prices. In some houses huge open gateways allowed glimpses of gardens, meticulously arranged with stone lanterns, miniature shrines, grotesquely gnarled pine trees throwing their shadows in the soft light flooding the space from the windows above, each a delicately contrived, entrancing little fairyland, inviting, alluring.
They passed down narrower streets, mere alleys, where the lights were dim, the houses smaller, some displaying but three or four portraits, and where the barkers were more insistent. But throughout it all was noticeable the almost entire absence of women. Here and there, especially in the smaller places, a painted face might be glimpsed for an instant between parted curtains, titters might be heard behind drawn shoji, and from above would come the strident whimper of samisen and high-pitched female voices; but that was all.
As they progressed, the sameness grew tiring; one became irritated at the monotony of these rows and rows of stiffly smiling portraits staring at one, all so curiously alike that soon they gave the impression of a vast composite picture.
"I don't see much in it," commented Kent. "It seems to me drab, tedious. Many of the settings are fine, beautiful even, but so much of it is sordid, these barkers and the pictures, the gross commercial hawking of women with as little feeling as if they were meat in a butcher shop. I can't see the temptation."