When We Were Strolling Players in the East

by Louise Jordan Miln

We went through the quarter of the frail. I noticed that the women were moving slowly, and that they were clad in soft and dainty raiment. Then I saw that their eyes were deeply ringed with khol, saw that the lips that parted about their gleaming teeth were thickly painted. I passed one woman whose lips, parting about her blackened teeth, were gilded! Then I recalled some half-forgotten page of Mitford, and knew that I was in the famous Yoshiwara quarter. I afterwards found that I had not been in the old walled Yoshiwara, but in one of the many new Yoshiwaras, or, to speak more correctly, one of the flower districts.

Sexual morality is on so un-Western a basis in Japan that only a long and careful essay could possibly give untravelled Europeans any glimmering of its real character. In one brief passing sentence, the women of whom I am writing have in Japan an acknowledged and assured position. It is not the highest or the most respected, but it is tangible and unimpugned. The courtesans of the world are unmistakable in their resemblance to each other. They may crouch in tattered tinsels on the steps of a crumbling temple in old Ferozepore; they wear furs in St. Petersburg; they drink champagne in Paris; they may huddle together from the sudden rain in a corner of Regent Street; but there is, the world over, an unmistakable sign upon the faces of the women who have taken into their own hands the highest law of life and broken it—the women who have made the great mistake! But this sign is faintest in Japan. The women in the quarter of Tokio through which we were passing looked at me quietly. They neither shrank from my eyes nor peered into them. The jewels flashed on their hands and in their hair. But the wearers did not flaunt. They walked with a deliberate indolence—these tawny lilies of the town—an indolence which said, “They toil not, neither do they spin.”

My coolies ran into the Shiba Park. I was in a hurry, but I made them rest. Not that they were tired! No self-respecting ’rickshaw coolie ever owns to being tired until the journey’s end. But I halted them that I might look. It was the trees! The “big trees” of California are more huge, the “Black Forest” is denser, but for majestic beauty there are no trees like to those in the Shiba Park.

Next we passed into the country. In the distance the farm coolies stood ankle deep in the wet of the yellow “paddy” fields. Here and there, where some peasant farmer had planted the young rice plants earlier, the yellow had turned to the softest, brightest green. Now and again I saw a peasant’s house, with its cool, clean verandah, its quaint paper windows, and its sliding paper-door. At least I knew it was there. It was daytime, and every door was open. We passed a funny little company of Japanese soldiers. The Japanese play at war far less gravely than your boys and mine do. Frankly, they are very droll in their martial aspect; and their exquisite good taste makes them conscious of this. The land of the Hara-kiri is not the land of men who lack fortitude in death. The Japanese know how to die, but they do not know how to fight; at least, not against Occidental forces. And, if they did, the odds are so preposterously against them that they must be beaten in any conflict with a Western power. They know this; and they avoid war, and will avoid it in every way consistent with their national self-respect, of which they have plenty. The present moment seems to give me the lie. But, elated as the Japanese are over the outcome (so far) of the Chino-Japanese war, I doubt if they would be mad enough to throw down the gauntlet to a Western power.

Then we came to pretty, home-like places where liveried servants—or their Japanese analogies—were working in the ample grounds. We had reached the suburb where the Sannomiyas lived. Their house, which was a peculiarly dark red, sat far back amid graceful shady trees and profuse fragrant flowers. I sent up my card with a pencilled message; for the servant who answered the door could not understand the most rudimentary English.

The drawing-room in which I waited was furnished very handsomely. The necessary articles of furniture had been made either in Europe or after European models. The bric-à-brac and the ornamental pieces of furniture (except the piano) were principally Japanese. It was a delightful collection. The pictures, which were very fine, were both Japanese and European.

A door opened noiselessly, and I thought of some lines of Scott’s—lines I had so often had the pleasure of parsing:⁠—

The mistress of the mansion came,

Mature of age, a graceful dame;

Whose easy step and stately port