“No.”
“Well, I do,” replied the young man.
Japanese Bathing Beauties
BY REV. GOLIGHTLY MORRILL
Pastor People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
To the religious rambler, Japan is divided into two parts—that which is inhabited by the Geisha girls, and that “cohabited” by the Yoshiwara.
I thought more of the Geisha dancers than the dance, and that wasn’t much. The word “Geisha” means accomplished one, and there are schools for their education in music and the arts. People visit the girls more for pleasure than for profit, and since they are one of the institutions of Japan, I went one night to a tea-house to see them. Making myself as comfortable as possible on the floor, a screen door was slipped aside, and in came a pretty Geisha girl who touched her head to the floor three times, sat down and looked at each one of our party. Immediately there fluttered in three more, and they made the room look like an Oriental bird cage. They sang for us in a tone that suggested an ungreased axle or a nail drawn across a piece of glass, played on the samisen and koto, which nothing but the genius of a Wagner could appreciate went through a fancy fan drill and proved themselves good entertainers, but felt embarrassed because we were not familiar and indecent. They acted serious and spoke to one another, and I asked what was the trouble. It seems they didn’t know what to make of us, as the average tourist was usually boisterous, drunk and rough.
The Yoshiwara is the red-lantern district of Japan. One night we formed a stag party to visit the Tokio Yoshiwara, but we couldn’t shake the “dears” who were as anxious to go as we were and insisted on accompanying us. Our rickshaws rolled through squares and streets and miles of mud and misery, until we came to what was in itself a “city of dreadful night,” but all ablaze with electric lights. Here were squares of theatre-looking buildings in which women, dressed in bright and fancy garb, sat by little stoves, and sullen, smiling or smoking pipes, looked out at the spectators. The government regulates this “social” as a “necessary evil,” and houses, supervises and guards the girls. In Japan it is regarded as noble and filial for a daughter to sell herself to support the father and family who may have failed financially. The same thing is done in Europe and America for wealth and social position, but differently estimated and under another name.