“WHO is author of the play that Sada Yacco is playing?” a writer friend asked me one day.
“Kawakami, her husband.”
“Really. Well, then he ought to belong to the Society of Authors.”
And we proposed his name.
On the appointed day I took him to the Society of Authors. I was quite surprised to note that the gentlemen of the committee had turned out to a man to receive him.
We were ushered into the committee room, where these gentlemen awaited us, seated round a large table.
Sardou, who presided, received us with a very appropriate address. He greeted Kawakami as the man who first forged a literary bond between France and Japan. He warmly congratulated Kawakami on having been the first manager who had the courage to bring a company from his distant native land to a city where no one understood a word of Japanese. He complimented Kawakami and complimented him again, and ended by calling him his “dear comrade.”
After which he sat down.
There was silence, and I knew that they were expecting some response from Kawakami. But he seemed in no wise to suspect that he had furnished the theme for the discourse just ended. He remained calmly in his seat and surveyed the gentlemen one by one.
I realised the necessity for immediate action. Some one must sacrifice himself. In the present crisis, cost what it may, it devolved on me to intervene. Turning toward Kawakami, I asked, in pantomime: “Do you understand?”