Of late years it became a fashion among certain classes of geisha in the capital to assume real names with the genteel suffix Ko, and even aristocratic yobina. In 1889 some of the Tōkyō newspapers demanded legislative measures to check the practice. This incident would seem to afford proof of public feeling upon the subject.
Old Japanese Songs
Old Japanese Songs
THIS New Year's morning I find upon my table two most welcome gifts from a young poet of my literary class. One is a roll of cloth for a new kimono,—cloth such as my Western reader never saw. The brown warp is cotton thread; but the woof is soft white paper string, irregularly speckled with black. When closely examined, the black specklings prove to be Chinese and Japanese characters;—for the paper woof is made out of manuscript,—manuscript of poems,—which has been deftly twisted into fine cord, with the written surface outwards. The general effect of the white, black, and brown in the texture is a warm mouse-grey. In many Izumo homes a similar kind of cloth is manufactured for family use; but this piece was woven especially for me by the mother of my pupil. It will make a most comfortable winter-robe; and when wearing it, I shall be literally clothed with poetry,—even as a divinity might be clothed with the sun.
The other gift is poetry also, but poetry in the original state: a wonderful manuscript collection of Japanese songs gathered from unfamiliar sources, and particularly interesting from the fact that nearly all of them are furnished with refrains. There are hundreds of compositions, old and new,—including several extraordinary ballads, many dancing-songs, and a surprising variety of love-songs. Neither in sentiment nor in construction do any of these resemble the Japanese poetry of which I have already, in previous books, offered specimens in translation. The forms are, in most cases, curiously irregular; but their irregularity is not without a strange charm of its own.