People who follow the arts, or have a feeling for them, seldom fail to appreciate geisha dancing after they have seen enough of it to get an understanding of what it is. This, I think, is because they generally have a sense of form, and as geisha dancing is a sort of animated tableau vivant, a sense of form is the one thing most essential to an appreciation of it.
Indeed I will go further and proclaim my belief that, to a visitor who would really understand Japan, a sense of form is a vital necessity.
Japan is all form. In Japanese art even colour takes second place. Nor does the Japanese feeling for form by any means stop where art ends. It permeates the entire fabric of Japanese life. The formal courtesy of old French society was as nothing to the formal courtesy of the Japanese. The whole life of the average Japanese is so regulated by form that his existence seems to progress according to a sort of geometrical pattern. The very nation itself is organized in such a way as to suggest a compact artistic composition. Not only every class, but every family and individual has an exact place in the structure. A friend of mine who knows Japan as but few foreigners do, goes so far as to say that the shades of difference between individuals are so finely drawn that no two persons in Japan are of exactly the same social rank, and that the precise position of every man in the country can be established according to the codes of Japanese formalism. Though this may be an exaggeration it expresses what I believe to be essentially a truth. I visualize the social and political structure of Japan as a great pyramid in which the blocks are families. At the bottom are the submerged classes—among them, down in the mud of the foundation, the eta or pariah class. Then come layers of families representing the voteless masses, among which the merchant class was in feudal times considered the lowest. Next come the little taxpayers who vote, and these pile up and up to the place where the more exalted classes are superimposed upon them—for in Japan it may be said that there is practically no middle class. I am told that there are now about a million families who are descended from samurai. This is where the aristocracy begins. So the pyramid ascends. Layers of lower officials; layers of higher officials, layers of ex-officials, high and low; layers of those having decorations from the Government; layers of army and navy families, and so on to where, very near the summit, are placed the Genro, or elder statesmen. Above them is a massive block representing the Imperial Family, and at the very peak, is the Emperor, Head of all Heads of Families.
My party in Nara having given me confidence, I gave a luncheon at the delightful Kanetanaka teahouse which overlooks a canal in the Kyobashi district of Tokyo.
I cannot claim much credit for the fact that this party was a success, since Jitsuko, the English speaking geisha I met at my first Japanese luncheon, was there to help me. Jitsuko's English, I must own, was not perfect. Nor would I have had it so, for I enjoyed teaching her, and learning from her.
"Naughty boy!" was one expression that I taught her, and I showed her how to accompany the phrase with an admonitory shake of the finger, with results which altogether charmed the American gentlemen at my luncheon.
One of these gentlemen, a new arrival in Japan and consequently entirely unfamiliar with Japanese fare, asked Jitsuko about a certain dish that was set before him.
"What is this?" he demanded, looking at it doubtfully.
"That fried ears," said Jitsuko.
"Fried ears!" he cried. "Not really?"