Into this shop, then, O-Owre-san walked without having to undo his bootlaces. There was also an aristocratic glass counter and under the glass, in show trays, were gold watches. Behind this counter sat a young man in a kimono of black silk. His face was pale, ascetic, and contemplative. He smiled and bowed in formal hospitality. The grace of such a bow comes from centuries of saying yes instead of no. A cultured Japanese, almost any Japanese, never flatly contradicts unless to deny another’s self-derogatory statement. The [iiye] (used as “no”) is rarely heard and the carrying over of the omnibus hei, hei, or the more polite [sayo], into the English yes often brings consternation to the Westerner seeking accurate information.
O-Owre-san said, “Please, good inn” (directly translated). As if the pale and ascetic seller of gold watches was accustomed daily to having perspiring foreigners with packs on their backs inquire for this information, he bowed again and smiled and said, “Hei, hei!” This time the hei, hei did mean yes. He drew his kimono tighter about his hips and adjusted his silken [obi], and walked out of the shop with us. Apologizing for the necessity of going before, he piloted us through turns of the street to the gateway of an inn. Calling for the mistress he made a dignified oration of introduction, and backed away from our sight with innumerable appreciations for the honour of being asked to be of service.
IV
THE MILES OF THE RICE PLAINS
The experiences of the second of our Japanese Nights’ Entertainments were as impersonal, as far as the inn’s paying special attention to us was concerned, as the first evening’s had not been. The police record was brought to us with an English translation of the questions and we wrote the answers without complication. The incidents which may develop in one inn quite naturally have a wide variation from the happenings which may arise in another, but the general machinery of hospitality differs but little. There is, in fact, far less contrast in the essentials of comfort between the ordinary provincial inn and the native hotels of the first order in Tokyo or Kyoto than there is to be found in a like comparison of hotels in our civilization; even it might be said that the simple and fundamental artistry of the shelter which houses the peasant in Japan has in its possession the root forms of the taste which charms in the homes of the cultured.
Immediately after we had applied ourselves to the police record and had had our steaming hot bath, a ne-san brought the small dinner tables. If ever this particular maid had enjoyed the frivolity of laughter for laughter’s sake, she had long since banished any such promotion of irresponsible dimples from the corners of her mouth, although it should be stated that she was far from having arrived at an age to provoke a solemn and serious outlook upon life. Her eyes wandered up to the ceiling and around the edges. She was bored. Furthermore she appeared distressed at having to witness the table errors of ignorant foreigners. We insulted the honourable rice by heaping sugar upon it and we drank cold water when we should have sipped tea. We asked for a few extras to the menu. She repeated over our words, caught in amazement that we could change the barking sounds through which we found communication with each other into the music of Nihon speech. We asked if she were not afraid of barbarous foreigners, but she rather contemptuously rejoined that she could see no reason for being afraid in the shelter of her own inn. I then concocted from the dictionary an elaborate sentence which asked whether her expectation of how fearsome a foreigner might be was excelled by the examples in flesh and blood before her. The truth of her obvious conviction and the sense of required politeness of hospitality struggled each for utterance with such disconcerting effect that she used her turned-in toes to patter away down the flight of stairs and we saw our disapprover not again until she came to spread the beds.
We had planned to explore the shops of Siki by lantern light after dinner but the two beds so aggressively allured us that we never stepped over them. The coverings were the usual heavy quilts buttoned into sheets. Such a combination coverlet is generally long enough for the foreign sleeper as the Japanese habit on cold nights is to disappear completely under the layer, but at the inn in Siki for some reason the length was decidedly curtailed and the mattresses were correspondingly short. However, at the end of such a day of fire as we had had I was contemptuous of such limitations. I expected to sleep on the quilt and not under it.
For an hour, covered only by my cotton kimono, I knew the comfort of airy rest. Then I awoke to a sensation I had almost forgotten. I was chilled through. I entered upon a campaign of trying to get back to sleep by wrapping the abbreviated quilt about my shoulders. The far from satisfactory result was that my legs were left dangling in the chill drafts while the protected upper surfaces melted. Next I essayed a system of sliding the quilt up and down, executing retreats from too copious perspiration. This procedure met with some success but the required watchfulness was hardly a soporific. I called myself a tenderfoot. Some slight appreciation of how ridiculous it all was destroyed any high tragedy of self-sympathy but it could not keep me from loathing O-Owre-san for breathing so tranquilly. Finally I got up, determined to force my ingenuity to find some balance between such excesses. Then I saw that O-Owre-san’s eyes were wide open.
I know not what the temperature of that room was in actual Fahrenheit degrees, but too many truth-tellers have secretly confided to me that they have found just such uncanny nights in Japan to disbelieve that the midnight “Hour of the Rat” has not at times a malignancy independent of mere thermometer readings. That night was neither cold nor hot; it was both and it was both at the same instant. My skin had been flushed to a mild fever from its long bath in the sun’s rays, but the flesh beneath now grew iced when not swaddled beneath the furnace of the quilt. My inspiration, after sitting for a time and studying all the possible materials in the room, was to build a tent. I was so successful that I hurled a defiance at the “Hour of the Rat,” and for another half-hour—perhaps it was—I again knew the positiveness of sleep.