"I wish to learn about—kissing."
"What is the Japanese for 'kiss'?" laughed Asako.
"Oh! There is no such word," expostulated Sadako, shocked at her cousin's levity, "we Japanese do not speak of such things."
"Then Japanese people don't kiss?"
"Oh, no," said the girl.
"Not ever?" asked Asako, incredulous.
"Only when they are—quite alone."
"Then when you see foreign people kissing in public, you think it is very funny?"
"We think it is disgusting," answered her cousin.
It is quite true. Foreigners kiss so recklessly. They kiss on meeting: they kiss on parting. They kiss in London: they kiss in Tokyo. They kiss indiscriminately their fathers, mothers, wives, mistresses, cousins and aunts. Every kiss sends a shiver down the spine of a Japanese observer of either sex, as we should be shocked by the crude exhibition of an obscene gesture. For this blossoming of our buds of affection suggests to him, with immediate and detailed clearness, that other embrace of which in his mind it is the inseparable concomitant.