"That's why I shall marry a girl who will place her duty to her family above everything else, who will be content with her home, flower arrangement, ceremonial tea, looking after her children and her husband. There won't be much excitement in it, or fun, but then, if I want that, I can find it elsewhere. I don't marry for fun or for excitement. I marry to form a family.
"So there is one thing where you may call me reactionary, if you like, and that's in respect to women. When I saw in America your eternally jazzing, slangy, impertinent flapper, the girl who bobs her hair and 'rolls them below the knee,' I was told is the phrase, and when I saw the inroads which this phenomenon, this freakish caricature of womanhood, was beginning to make in Japan, with some of our girls who want to be modern, by talking woman's rights, and personal expression, and free love and all that, then I said to myself, yes, Japan owes much to Western civilization, and we may yet gain much from it; but when it comes to the women, the family relations, let us keep out the Western system as we would a plague."
"Thanks, I understand," Kent spoke drily. "I see your point; still it seems to me a bit rough on the women, especially those like the Suzuki girls. You've surprised me, Kikuchi-san. I thought you were among the foremost of the moderns."
"And why am I not?" He snapped out the retort. "Simply because I don't want to see Japan adopt a system which has resulted in a riot of divorce scandals, married women running loose, the family system a mockery? And yet, Kent-san you know that we young men in Japan cannot justly be accused of being reactionary, and you know that we are likely to have on our hands problems so pressing that we won't have time to dabble with drawing-room sex questions. Can you find it illustrated any better than it is in the case of us younger men in the Foreign Office? We know jolly well that the General Staff is still running the country; we see our diplomats humiliated continually when, after they have bound Japan to some international agreement, the militarists cynically walk right through it and leave us to wipe up the mess as best we can, leaving us a laughing stock and placing Japan in the position of a nation whose word is worth nothing.
"Do you know that all we are waiting for is a chance to get rid of the older men, these pussyfoot, over-careful old men who now run affairs, and to fight it out with the militarists. We shall have the people with us. We must have a government for the people and not for the army and navy. It's bound to come. The government is rotten as it is, with the General Staff doing as it pleases without being responsible to the Cabinet; with the officials nothing but politicians, many of them in the pay of this or that of the big interests. That's why they call them geisha politicians, because, like geisha, they are being kept by rich men. What can you expect where the Premier gets six thousand dollars and the Cabinet Ministers four thousand dollars a year and their underlings in proportion? That's what we have got to do away with, that and favoritism because of money or title. You know, I'm not going to accept the title when my father dies. Peerages should last only one generation; should go only to the men who earn them. And I'm not the only one of my class who feels like this. There are many of us. Evil days have come on Japan; the country is being run for the benefit of the few, a rotten, corrupt bureaucracy in the service of plutocracy; or by the militarists, who may be patriotic enough, according to their lights, but who have become anachronistic—so they must go, too. Remember, Kent-san, no matter how badly things may look on the surface that you see, the great bulk of the Japanese people remains as it was, patriotic, frugal, hard-working, eager to learn. They will give Japan its great future, these masses, and that task is what interests me, not chattering over sex sentimentalities with flappers. Girls like Kimiko-san, dancing, jazz and the rest, are all very well as a pastime in one's leisure, just as are geisha, but when it comes to the serious affairs of life, pah!" he waved his hand, snapping the fingers. "You get me, Kent-san?"
Kimiko's sister brought the news, that afternoon, that the parents were ready to surrender. They had already called off the go-between. Kimiko-san would never again be exposed to marriage without being consulted first. They all had tea. It should have been a gay occasion; Karsten tried desperately to bring about an atmosphere of high spirits; but the feeling of uneasiness, high-strung quiver of excitement, would not away. The women were ever together, the girls and Jun-san, whispering, fluttery. For some reason it was a failure. It was almost with a sense of relief that they saw the girls to the gate.
"Poor little things." Kent was looking down at them as they tripped down the stone stairway, hand in hand, a pretty, entrancing picture, one in the fashion of the West, chic turban, high-heeled shoes, narrow waist; the other dainty, richly colored, brilliant, with her gorgeous obi, widely drooping kimono sleeves. At the foot of the stairs they stopped, waved; then they climbed into the waiting automobile.
"Yes, I'm sorry for them," said Karsten. "They are so eager to adopt our civilization, our modernism; they try so hard; and the better they succeed the worse it will probably be for them. They're ahead of their day, victims of the transition period, poor little butterflies broken on the wheel."