After a thimbleful of hot sake, a curious bittersweet wine made of fermented rice, we fell to on the dinner, which Kohana served with utmost deftness and grace, ever alert to refill our porcelain sake cups between dishes. The meal was odder than any I had eaten even in China,—soup, omelet, fishballs, and sponge cake; soup, boiled crawfish, lotus-root salad, and salted plums; thin soup, sweetmeats, pickled bamboo shoots, and stewed cuttlefish; thick soup, sliced duck, and stewed vegetables; sea slugs with soy sauce, loquats stewed with sugar, soup, more soup, and last of all plain boiled rice, without sugar—which is scarce in Japan,—and without milk—which is unknown.
Throughout the eating of this odd medley of exotic dishes, Kohana was either pattering out to her kitchen, or back with trays held level with her forehead, or replenishing our sake cups from her heated flask of the amber wine. The time came when we could eat no more. The last dish was removed, and Kohana set before us a tray with smoking materials and an embossed copper-lined brazier, or hibachi, in which a few twigs of charcoal glowed upon a bed of ashes. I had smoked too often in Japanese fashion with Yoritomo’s outfit not to know how to roll a pellet of tobacco and fill the tiny silver bowl of the pipe now offered me.
As we settled back on our cushions and drew slowly at the silver mouthpieces, our hostess rose and began to dance for our entertainment. Well was she named the best dancer in Yedo! Unlike our Western artistes, she did not glide about, but stood in one place, seldom shifting her feet, yet swaying body and arms and head in movements of enravishing grace and beauty. For one of the dances she withdrew, to reappear in a haori whose gorgeously embroidered sleeves, fluttering from her extended arms, suggested to me the movements of a butterfly even before Yoritomo explained that the performance was called the Butterfly Dance.
My friend had, however, graver matters in mind than amusement. In consideration of my pleasure, he had waited this long. Now he made a slight gesture, and the girl sank down, flushed and smiling. He spoke with austere abruptness: “Enough of play. When I went upon my travels, Kohana said she would be my eye and ear in Yedo.”
“My lord knows that few things fail to reach the ear of the free geisha.”
“Begin. Dai Nippon has been a sealed book to me since I sailed from Kagoshima in the black ship with Woroto Sama.”
She kowtowed and whispered: “There has been no change at Kyoto.”
He bowed low at the veiled reference to the mysterious Mikado. “And Yedo?” he demanded.
Again she kowtowed, though not so low. “His Highness, Minamoto Iyeyoshi, is still Sei-i-tai Shogun. Iyesada Sama, his august son, is no stronger either in head or body.”