"Just this one," she pleaded.
He considered his boots again for a moment, and then, raising his face to hers with that humorous challenging look which he assumes when on the verge of some indiscretion, he replied,—
"The Yoshiwara."
"Yes," said her Ladyship, "I have heard of such a place. It is a kind of Vanity Fair, isn't it, for all the cocottes Of Tokyo?"
"It's more than that," Laking answered; "it is a market of human flesh, with nothing to disguise the crude fact except the picturesqueness of the place. It is a square enclosure as large as a small town. In this enclosure are shops, and in the shop windows women are displayed just like goods, or like animals in cages; for the windows have wooden bars. Some of the girls sit there stolidly like stuffed images, some of them come to the bars and try to catch hold of the passers-by, just like monkeys, and joke with them and shout after them. But I could not understand what they said—fortunately, perhaps. The girls,—there must be several thousands—are all dressed up in bright kimonos. It really is a very pretty sight, until one begins to think. They have their price tickets hung up in the shop windows, one shilling up to one pound. That is the greatest shock which Japan has in store for the ordinary tourist."
Lady Everington was silent for a moment; her flippant companion had become quite serious.
"After all," she said, "is it any worse than Piccadilly Circus at night?"
"It is not a question of better or worse," argued Laking. "Such a purely mercenary system is a terrible offence to our most cherished belief. We may be hypocrites, but our hypocrisy itself is an admission of guilt and an act of worship. To us, even to the readiest sinners among us, woman is always something divine. The lowest assignation of the streets has at least a disguise of romance. It symbolises the words and the ways of Love, even if it parodies them. But to the Japanese, woman must be merely animal. You buy a girl as you buy a cow."
Lady Everington shivered, but she tried to live up to her reputation of being shocked by nothing.
"Well, that is true, after all, whether in Piccadilly or in the
Yoshiwara. All prostitution is just a commercial transaction."