Other festivals, more intimate than these, assuaged the rigour of imprisonment. Though Inari had four temples in which to welcome her votaries, other divinities, too, offered distraction and consolation. When the evil spirits had been exorcised on the fourteenth day of the first month, the field was clear to garner divine favour. Ebisu, the jovial, pot-bellied god of good luck, claimed his meed of fish and saké; the sacred monkey-dance preceded the fête of Inari; Tanabata, the star of happy marriage, was warmly greeted with poems and fans and paper stars, which budded on bamboo branches fastened to the door; the feast of lanterns lasted a month, flooding the dark with radiance, but on the evening sacred to the memory of ancestors no guests were admitted, and the girls were free to hold communion with those parental dead whose exigence pressed so hardly on their flower-sweet heyday of life. Then O Tsuki San, the Lady Moon, must be “looked at” on three successive nights, while persimmon, rice dumplings, boiled beans, and chestnuts were set outside the house on tiny tripods, to catch her auspicious rays. On the occasion of the annual fire-incantation oranges were scattered about the garden and scrambled for by children, and three weeks before the year ended came the great cleaning, the preparation of rice-cakes and countless emblems for New Year’s Day.
The observance of oyaku, when one of the little girls in waiting became a Shinzo with flowing sleeves, involved much expense for the anejōro to whose service she had been attached. First ohaguro, to blacken her teeth, was collected from seven friends; presents were made of buckwheat and red beans and rice to the tea-houses which they had visited together; a row of cooking vessels, filled with steaming food, was covered with lengths of silk crape and damask outside the house, while indoors a table was set out with fans, tobacco-pouches, and embroidered towels for the geisha and servants. For three days the newly promoted damsel would promenade the Naka-no-cho, wearing on the first day a long red cloak, on the second a purple cloak, on the third one of pale blue. The coiffure also varied from day to day, and the total expense of this ceremonious coming of age varied from twenty to forty pounds.
Occasionally it would happen that a guest fell in love with a girl and wished to marry her. Such a consummation was the object of many vows to Inari and the subject of many poems addressed to the Star of the Weaver at the festival of Tanabata. If he could raise the sum of 600 ryo (about £60), the rest was easy. Debts had to be paid, innumerable gifts conferred on patrons, companions, and attendants, of whom farewell was taken at a great feast on the day of departure. It requires much suffering and evil influence to uproot from the heart of any Japanese woman the flowers of gratitude and affection. If tradition may be credited, more than one suitor who anticipated Aubrey Tanqueray’s experiment was rewarded for his courage with a happier fate. When the heavy black gate clanged behind her, happy indeed was the Scarlet Lady to put off her state-robes and become the obscure angel of a long-prayed-for benefactor. Sometimes she turned out badly. In that case the husband had the right to send her back, wearing a gown of penitential grey, to finish out her term in Yoshiwara.
II
How much colour had been washed out of the foregoing picture by Western disapproval, filtering through merchants and missionaries, I was curious to learn. To their credit or discredit be it said, none of my Tōkyō friends cared to visit the Shin-Yoshiwara in the company of an alien. They were not exactly hindered by moral scruples, but rather by a disinclination to disclose the seamy side of their fellow-countrymen to censorious eyes. They professed ignorance and changed the subject to railways or ironclads. However, one evening I met by chance the secretary of a famous lawyer-politician, who was taking a country cousin to see the sights of the capital; and, as he obligingly invited me to join the party, we made our way together through the maze of variety-shows and toy-shops which surround the Temple of Kwannon at Asakusa, until we reached the high embankment of Nihon-tsutsumi.
As we stood on the great dyke in a whirr of hurrying rickshaws, the country on the outer side stretched away into darkness, like the waste tracks which border the northern exterior boulevards of Paris. But at our feet, brilliant with light and clamorous with samisens, lay a clustering mass of lofty buildings, their roofs adorned with wooden seven-pronged rakes, which I had seen so often in old prints and knew to be emblems of good luck, purchased in November by pious traders from the priests of the Temple of the Eagle.
We walked down the slope of Emonzaka (the hill of the collar), which perhaps took its name from the habit of the Tōkyō blood to adjust the kimono collar in careful folds at the moment of entry, and traversed Gojikken-machi, the street of fifty tea-houses leading to the ponderous gate, where two dapper policemen, neatly gloved and sworded, kept watch and ward. Now we are between handsome edifices, four storeys high, adorned with balconies and electric light, in the broad central Naka-no-cho, which three narrow turnings intersect on either side, containing shops of less imposing dimensions. The upper storeys tell no tales, though their paper-panelled shutters give twinkling and tinkling signs of revelry. On the ground-floor is an unbroken series of shop-windows, not fronted with plate-glass as in Piccadilly nor open to the street as in the Ginza, but palisaded with wooden bars from three to seven inches wide. And behind the bars, on silk or velvet cushions against a gaudy background of draped mirrors and ornamental woodwork, sit the wares—a row of powdered, painted, exquisitely upholstered victims. Most of them look happy enough, as they chatter or smoke or run laughing to the barrier to greet a passing acquaintance, but I know what heroic endurance is masked by a Japanese smile, and the sight of caged women turns me sick. Then I reflect that Western sentiment, however justified by inherited ethics, is scarcely the best auxiliary of fair judgment, so, striving to convert my conscience to a camera, I follow my companions through the strange avenue of animated dolls. If they were really dolls of cunning fabrication, how much more readily could one inspect and appraise them! It seems that the most costly are reserved for their own compatriots. An English painter was, indeed, permitted to begin the portrait of one of these, but, when he came back to finish his work, admittance was refused. It was easy to believe that the inmates of the best houses were socially superior to the rest, for those whom I saw had gentle, refined faces, and did not raise their eyes from book or embroidery.
The least expensive dolls’ houses—they were of four grades—were decorated in execrable taste, and the Circes who cried or beckoned from their red-and-gilt dens had harsh voices and were of ungainly build. But between these extremes were some groups of prettily dressed exhibits, whose rich yet sober colouring harmonised admirably with the vision of whatever artist had been invited to decorate their show-room. There was the House of the Well of the Long Blooming Flowers, which should have been isolated for sheer loveliness from its flaunting neighbours. Behind the motionless houri, whose bright black tresses and mauve kimono were starred with white flowers, ran a riot of branch and blossom on wall and screen. Had Mohammed been Japanese, here was a tableau to win believers with the lure of a sensual paradise, but for the fact that, having realised so material a heaven on earth, the most inquisitive nation in the world would have demanded less familiar felicity. Beautiful, too, was the House of the Three Sea-shores, whose triple tide of waveless blue seemed silently advancing to reclaim the mermaid-daughters of Benten, who waited in such pathetic patience on the beach for a new Urashima. My fancy was most taken by the House of the Dragon Cape, for the ancient ferocity of the saurian symbol, wrought in dusky bronze, not only fascinated with its boldness of coil and curve, but hovered with appropriate cruelty over the meek prisoners, coquettishly disguised. By the time we arrived at the lair of the Dragon I was thoroughly tired. We had been tramping and gazing for more than an hour at nearly two thousand replicas of the same figure, watching its movements and conjecturing its feelings. The cages were beginning to empty, as the more attractive centre-pieces found purchasers. I detected a certain impatience in my companions’ bearing, and I was on the point of taking leave of them when the secretary suggested that, if I would like to enter the Dragon-house and take notes of the interior, he would explain my mission to the proprietor.
It was needful to release three damsels from the public gaze if we would enter, and this we cheerfully did, bidding Young Bamboo, Golden Harp, and River of Song escape to their chambers. Then, leaving our shoes in charge of bowing attendants, we climbed to the first floor and began the evening with a mild tea-party. The Shinzo, in black dresses, brought in lacquer trays, on which were scarlet bowls containing eggs, fish, soup, and other delicacies. Saké flowed more copiously than tea. I was sorry to hear that the old-time processions were falling into disuse, and, though not yet abandoned entirely, were losing their antique splendour. The taiyu, too, was a thing of the past. The aureole of combs, the manifold robe over robe, the child attendants, had all gone. Varying now only in costume and accomplishment, all the women alike were cage-dwellers, whereas in former days the superior classes of them were spared that indignity. So far from evading questions, the presiding representative of Spear-hand, an elderly woman with a not unkindly face, seemed amused by my interest and answered readily. I began to think we had made a mistake. This decorous tea-party, removed from the glare and hustle of the street, bore small resemblance to an orgy. But now and then wild incidents surged up in the low ripple of current gossip. Six months before a fire had broken out in Ageyamachi, consuming half an alley of too contiguous wooden dwellings and costing twenty lives. Recently a brawl between Russian sailors and Tōkyō students had fluttered all the dovecots of Sami Cho, but had been speedily quenched by the fearless dapper police.