Well, I will just say it is one of your friends, that's all!"
There are, in Japan, photographers in the style of our own, with this one difference, that they are Japanese, and inhabit Japanese houses. The one we design to honor to-day carries on his profession in the suburbs, in that ancient quarter of big trees and gloomy pagodas where, the other day, I met the pretty little mousmé. His signboard, written in several languages, is stuck up against a wall on the edge of the little torrent which, rushing down from the green mountain above, is crossed by many a curved bridge of old granite and lined on either side by light bamboos or oleanders in full bloom.
It is astonishing and puzzling to find a photographer perched there, in the very heart of old Japan.
We have come at the wrong moment; there is a file of people at the door. Long rows of djins' cars are stationed there, awaiting the customers they have brought, who will all have their turn before us. The runners, naked and tatooed, carefully combed in sleek bands and shiny chignons, are chatting together, smoking little pipes, or bathing their muscular legs in the fresh water of the torrent.
The courtyard is irreproachably Japanese, with its lanterns and dwarf trees. But the
studio where one sits might be in Paris or Pontoise; the self-same chair in "old oak," the same faded "poufs," plaster columns and pasteboard rocks.
The people who are being taken at this moment are two ladies of quality, evidently mother and daughter, who are sitting together for a cabinet-sized portrait, with accessories of Louis XV. time. A strange group this, the first great ladies of this country I have seen so near, with their long aristocratic faces, dull, lifeless, almost gray by dint of rice-powder, and their mouths painted heart-shape in vivid carmine. Withal an undeniable look of good breeding that strongly impresses us, notwithstanding the intrinsic differences of races and acquired notions.
They scanned Chrysanthème with an obvious look of scorn, although her costume was as ladylike as their own. For my part, I could not take my eyes off these two creatures; they captivated me like incomprehensible things that one had never seen before. Their fragile bodies, outlandishly graceful in posture, are lost in stiff materials and redundant sashes, of which the ends droop like tired wings. They make me think, I know not why, of great rare insects; the extraordinary patterns on their garments have something of the dark motley of
night-moths. Above all, the mystery of their tiny slits of eyes, drawn back and up so far that the tight-drawn lids can scarcely open; the mystery of their expression, which seems to denote inner thoughts of a silly, vague, complacent absurdity, a world of ideas absolutely closed to ourselves. And I think as I gaze at them: "How far we are from this Japanese people! how utterly dissimilar are our races!"
Then we have to let several English sailors pass before us, decked out in their white drill clothes, fresh, fat and pink like little sugar figures, who attitudinize in a sheepish manner round the shafts of the columns.