It perhaps may be a debatable question for the other nations of the world, that question of Socrates whether virtue can be taught, but the headmaster of the high school in Kama-Suwa declared that in Japan a teacher is not a teacher unless he can teach loyalty. The boys must be taught loyalty; the daughters of the Empire must be taught grace. (And by grace I think he meant also charm.) To exemplify, we were led to the “flower-arranging room.” The Japanese arranging of flowers is a ceremony and there is commingled in it both the suggestion of the actual in life and the ideal of the perfect. The room which we were shown was an attempt to achieve the supreme inheritance of Japanese art in architecture and decoration—rhythm, harmony, and simplicity. Something of the spirit of didacticism must ever hang over a room so built but, in the room that we were shown, charm and beauty had surprisingly survived the inevitable refrigeration of being labelled “classic.”
THE BOYS MUST BE TAUGHT LOYALTY; THE DAUGHTERS OF THE EMPIRE MUST BE TAUGHT GRACE.
XII
TSURO-MATSU AND HISU-MATSU
In the same town of Kama-Suwa where the barracks-like high school for girls spreads its wings there also rises the tiled roof of a geisha house. Under its protection other daughters of the Empire are also being rigorously trained to duties—the life of amusing and entertaining. The position of the geisha cannot be illuminated by comparisons. There are the “sing-song girls” of Peking and the nautch dancers of India, and there were in the days of the fruition of Greek civilization the sisters of Aspasia; the life of the geisha might be considered to be somewhat parallel to their lives in so far as it is a response to the demand of highly civilized man for the romance of idealized anarchy; the inhibitions of custom, or dogma, having precluded the expression of inborn romantic desire in his conventional life. Men whose minds have realized some measure of freedom through imagination and culture instinctively seek idealistic companionship with women. When realization is compressed by such custom as marriage by family arrangement this desire finds expression in some direction where there is at least the illusion of freedom. Human nature is like the human body, if pressure is applied in one spot, unless there is some equitable, compensating bulge elsewhere, the compression is likely to be vitally destructive. If the highest ideality has as its cornerstone responsibility, then when marriage is an institution by arrangement and the sense of responsibility is not created through the freedom of choice, feminine companionship and charm will inevitably be sought in the romance of some more voluntary arrangement. Who will absolutely deny that when the endeavour to save poetical yearning from defeat is such companionship as the almost classical ceremony of watching the white fingers of a geisha pour tea into a shell of porcelain, a sort of mutual sense of responsibility to save the fineness of life may enter into the relationship as a redeeming grace against the professionalism of the geisha’s life?
We turned from the street into the gate of the principal tea-house. There was a clapping of hands by the first servant who heard our steps on the gravel path and in a moment the mistress and all the men-servants and maid-servants were at the door to greet us. It was at an hour in the afternoon when the tea-house did not expect guests. We took off our shoes and were led to the floor above. There were four or five rooms but they soon became one, the maids removing the sliding screen panels, and we were given the luxury of unpartitioned possession. One side, entirely without wall, overhung the garden.
The maids brought cold water and tea and sherbets and iced beer and fruits and cakes, and there were dishes on the table of which we did not even lift the covers. Then they knelt and awaited our orders whether they should send for geishas. They explained that at that hour there might be the rude annoyance to our honourable patience of having to endure an unavoidable delay. It would not be likely that the geishas could come immediately. We told them that our honourable patience would suffer the delay.
When the French builders and decorators tried to attain the ultimate for the housing of royalty in the age of the Grand Monarch, their success approached close to the realization of what the imagination of the period asked. Versailles was built with the idea of reaching theoretical perfection through the completion of detail. The imagination of the beholder was supposed to find complete satisfaction in what he saw and not to feel the urge of the possibility of still higher flights. If the beholder was not content with this “perfection,” he was indeed in a plight, for there was no next step except to begin all over again. The rhythm of the art of the Japanese tea-house is not dependent upon regularity nor balance. Its perfection can never be completed. The last word cannot be spoken. It is like life.