Poor, seedless hill-rose,
A prison-flower!
Whatever novelists and dramatists may have written in glorification of the Scarlet Lady, the popular feeling, as voiced in vulgar songs, is pure compassion.
It was signified that on payment of a small sum we might now behold a resurrected taiyu, wearing the robes and insignia of her order. Assent being given, three blows were struck on a huge gong at the gate to summon the siren, who had never been subjected to the ignominious exposure of a cage, but came in state to meet her suitors at the Tsumi-ya. Alas! the state had been sadly curtailed! We saw no attendant henchmen, no ministering children, but three rosy-cheeked peasant-girls rather suddenly irradiated the gloom of that historic chamber, bearing without dignity the weight of a bygone royalty. The costumes were, in truth, splendid enough, and the crowns of heavy hairpins quite impressive. On the trailing robe of the first was represented a cloud cleft by lightning above a golden dragon; on that of the second, a rock with peonies; on that of the third, a tiger chasing a butterfly. All three designs were lavishly embroidered with gold. Sweeping her cumbrous skirt aside with one hand, the taiyu held in the other a wide saké-cup, which she slowly waved in air, repeating an old Japanese formula, which neither the artist nor the red-aproned nakauri could interpret. For nearly five hundred years the room of fans had seen the taiyu wave her saké-cup, had heard her use those words, but we could not evoke from its shadowy depths the ghost of an explanation. We must take the spectacle for what it was, the pale survival and ineffectual remnant of dying custom. Somehow, the awkward mummery of the girls and the bleak discomfort of the old tea-house seemed strangely appropriate. It was as though we were fitly rewarded for copying Dr. Faustus’ impious trick of calling up fair phantoms from the past, not realising that communion is impossible between living and dead....
The Scarlet Lady has not yet lost her hold on new Japan. The “unruly wills and affections of sinful men” are too strong for that. But she has lost her glamour. Poets do not sing of her, painters withhold their homage, though she is represented by a barrister in the Lower House of the Diet. For now she has become a thing more sacrosanct than any vestal virgin—a vested interest. She is exploited by numerous joint-stock companies, in which shares are held by quite important people. Their aggregate capital is enormous, their ability to block all reform, which might tend to reduce profits, correspondingly great. The law is at once her protector and her gaoler. If invoked to check cruelty, it must also enforce the observance of contracts. All one can hope is that, so long as custom shall recognise and government control her, at least her outlook may not darken from red to black.
[INDEX]
I
PLAYS
Aoi No Uye, [46], [50], [57]
Bataille de Dames, [82]
L’Enfant Prodigue, [65]
The Fisher-boy of Urashima, [75]
Fukuro Yamabusshi, [46], [56]
Funa Benkei, [46], [54]
The Geisha, [61]
The Geisha and the Knight, [70]
Gompachi and Komurasaki, [282]
The Green-eyed Monster, [266]
Hamlet, [85]
Ichi-no-tani Futaba-gunki, [76]
Jiraiya, [264]
Kagamiyama-Kokyo-no-nishiki, [81]
Kajima Takanori (The Loyalist), [68]
Kajincho, [265]
Kasuga no Tsubone, [86]
Kitsune-Tsuki, [46], [48]
Koi no Omoni, [46], [49]
Madame Butterfly, [64]
Maki no Kata, [85]
The Merry Wives of Windsor, [188]
The Mikado, [61]
Miracle Plays, [57]
Le Monde où l’on s’ennuie, [84]
Monte Cristo, [84]
The Moonlight Blossom, [63]
The Nabeshima Cat, [81]
Nakamitsu, [76]
Niobe, [68]
Othello, [85]
Our Boys, [80]
Pistorigoto, [117]
La Poupée, [68]
Roku Jizō, [46], [52]
Round the World in Eighty Days, [67], [84]
Shimazomasa, [116]
Shunkwan, [46]
Sweet Lavender, [80]
The Tongue-cut Sparrow, [75]
Les Trois Mousquetaires, [84]
Tsuchigumo, [46], [55]
Zaza, [64]
Zingoro, an Earnest Statue Carver, [68]