"But what do you mean by the second stage?"
"The stage of Discovery! Have you ever walked about a Japanese city in the twilight when the evening bell sounds from a hidden temple? Have you turned into the by-streets and watched the men returning to their wise little houses and the family groups assembled to meet them and help them change into their kimonos? Have you heard the splashing and the chatter of the bath-houses which are the evening clubs of the common people and the great clearing-houses of gossip? Have you heard the broken samisen music tracking you down a street of geisha houses? Have you seen the geisha herself in her blue cloak sitting rigid and expressionless in the rickshaw which is carrying her off to meet her lover? Have you heard the drums of Priapus beating from the gay quarters? Have you watched the crowds which gather round a temple festival, buying queer little plants for their homes and farthing toys for their children, crowding to the fortune-teller's booth for news of good luck and bad luck, throwing their penny to the god and clapping their hands to attract his attention? Have you seen anything of this without a feeling of deep pleasure and a wonder as to how these people live and think, what we have got in common with them, and what we have got to learn from them?"
"I think I know what you mean," said Geoffrey. "It's all very picturesque, but they always seem to be hiding something."
"Exactly," said his friend, "and every man of intelligence who has to live in this country thinks that he need only learn their language and use their customs, and then he will find out what is hidden. That is what Lafcadio Hearn did; and that is why I wear a kimono. But what did he find out? A lot of pretty stories, echoes of old civilization and folk-lore; but of the mind and heart of the Japanese people—the only coloured people, after all, who have held their heads up against the white races—little or nothing until he reached the third stage, Disillusionment. Then he wrote Japan, an Interpretation, which is his best book."
"I haven't read it."
"You ought to. His other things are mere melodies, the kind of stuff I can play to you by the hour. This is a serious book of history and political science."
"Sounds a bit dry for me." laughed Geoffrey.
"It is a disillusioned man's explanation of the country into which he had tried to sink, but which had rejected him. He explains the present by the past. That is reasonable. The dead are the real rulers of Japan, he says. Underneath the surface changing, the nation is deeply conservative, suspicious of all interference and unconventionally, sullenly self-satisfied; and above all, still as much locked in its primitive family system as it was a thousand years ago. You cannot be friends with a Japanese unless you are friends with his family; and you cannot be friends with his family unless you belong to it. This is the deadlock; and this is why we never get any forwarder."
"Then I've got a chance since I've got a Japanese family."
"I don't know of course," said Reggie; "but I shouldn't think they would have much use for you. They will receive you most politely; but they will look upon you as an interloper and they will try to steer you out of the country."