while there is only smiling and flitting, as in dreams. You are not
likely to hear any voices from without, as a banqueting-house is usually
secluded from the street by spacious gardens. At last the master of
ceremonies, host or provider, breaks the hush with the consecrated
formula: 'O-somatsu degozarimasu gal - dozo o-hashi!' whereat all present
bow silently, take up their hashi (chopsticks), and fall to. But hashi,
deftly used, cannot be heard at all. The maidens pour warm sake into the
cup of each guest without making the least sound; and it is not until
several dishes have been emptied, and several cups of sake absorbed,
that tongues are loosened.
Then, all at once, with a little burst of laughter, a number of young
girls enter, make the customary prostration of greeting, glide into the
open space between the ranks of the guests, and begin to serve the wine
with a grace and dexterity of which no common maid is capable. They are
pretty; they are clad in very costly robes of silk; they are girdled
like queens; and the beautifully dressed hair of each is decked with
mock flowers, with wonderful combs and pins, and with curious ornaments
of gold. They greet the stranger as if they had always known him; they
jest, laugh, and utter funny little cries. These are the geisha, [1] or
dancing-girls, hired for the banquet.
Samisen [2] tinkle. The dancers withdraw to a clear space at the farther
end of the banqueting-hall, always vast enough to admit of many more
guests than ever assemble upon common occasions. Some form the
orchestra, under the direction of a woman of uncertain age; there are
several samisen, and a tiny drum played by a child. Others, singly or in
pairs, perform the dance. It may be swift and merry, consisting wholly
of graceful posturing - two girls dancing together with such coincidence
of step and gesture as only years of training could render possible. But
more frequently it is rather like acting than like what we Occidentals
call dancing - acting accompanied with extraordinary waving of sleeves
and fans, and with a play of eyes and features, sweet, subtle, subdued,
wholly Oriental. There are more voluptuous dances known to geisha, but
upon ordinary occasions and before refined audiences they portray
beautiful old Japanese traditions, like the legend of the fisher
Urashima, beloved by the Sea God's daughter; and at intervals they sing
ancient Chinese poems, expressing a natural emotion with delicious
vividness by a few exquisite words. And always they pour the wine - that
warm, pale yellow, drowsy wine which fills the veins with soft
contentment, making a faint sense of ecstasy, through which, as through
some poppied sleep, the commonplace becomes wondrous and blissful, and
the geisha Maids of Paradise, and the world much sweeter than, in the
natural order of things, it could ever possibly be.
The banquet, at first so silent, slowly changes to a merry tumult. The
company break ranks, form groups; and from group to group the girls
pass, laughing, prattling - still pouring sake into the cups which are
being exchanged and emptied with low bows [3] Men begin to sing old
samurai songs, old Chinese poems. One or two even dance. A geisha tucks
her robe well up to her knees; and the samisen strike up the quick
melody, 'Kompira fund-fund.' As the music plays, she begins to run
lightly and swiftly in a figure of 8, and a young man, carrying a sake
bottle and cup, also runs in the same figure of 8. If the two meet on a
line, the one through whose error the meeting happens must drink a cup
of sake. The music becomes quicker and quicker and the runners run
faster and faster, for they must keep time to the melody; and the geisha
wins. In another part of the room, guests and geisha are playing ken.
They sing as they play, facing each other, and clap their hands, and
fling out their fingers at intervals with little cries and the samisen
keep time.
Choito - don-don!
Otagaidane;
Choito - don-don!
Oidemashitane;
Choito - don-don!
Shimaimashitane.
Now, to play ken with a geisha requires a perfectly cool head, a quick
eye, and much practice. Having been trained from childhood to play all
kinds of ken - and there are many - she generally loses only for
politeness, when she loses at all. The signs of the most common ken are
a Man, a Fox, and a Gun. If the geisha make the sign of the Gun, you
must instantly, and in exact time to the music, make the sign of the
Fox, who cannot use the Gun. For if you make the sign of the Man, then
she will answer with the sign of the Fox, who can deceive the Man, and
you lose. And if she make the sign of the Fox first, then you should
make the sign of the Gun, by which the Fox can be killed. But all the
while you must watch her bright eyes and supple hands. These are pretty;
and if you suffer yourself, just for one fraction of a second, to think
how pretty they are, you are bewitched and vanquished. Notwithstanding
all this apparent comradeship, a certain rigid decorum between guest and
geisha is invariably preserved at a Japanese banquet. However flushed
with wine a guest may have become, you will never see him attempt to
caress a girl; he never forgets that she appears at the festivities only
as a human flower, to be looked at, not to be touched. The familiarity
which foreign tourists in Japan frequently permit themselves with geisha
or with waiter-girls, though endured with smiling patience, is really
much disliked, and considered by native observers an evidence of extreme
vulgarity.
For a time the merriment grows; but as midnight draws near, the guests
begin to slip away, one by one, unnoticed. Then the din gradually dies
down, the music stops; and at last the geisha, having escorted the
latest of the feasters to the door, with laughing cries of Sayonara, can
sit down alone to break their long fast in the deserted hall.
Such is the geisha's rle But what is the mystery of her? What are her
thoughts, her emotions, her secret self? What is her veritable existence
beyond the night circle of the banquet lights, far from the illusion
formed around her by the mist of wine? Is she always as mischievous as
she seems while her voice ripples out with mocking sweetness the words
of the ancient song?
Kimi to neyaru ka, go sengoku toruka? Nanno gosengoku kimi to neyo? [4]
Or might we think her capable of keeping that passionate promise she
utters so deliciously?
Omae shindara tera ewa yaranu! Yaete konishite sake de nomu, [5]
'Why, as for that,' a friend tells me, 'there was O'-Kama of Osaka who
realised the song only last year. For she, having collected from the
funeral pile the ashes of her lover, mingled them with sake, and at a
banquet drank them, in the presence of many guests.' In the presence of
many guests! Alas for romance!
Always in the dwelling which a band of geisha occupy there is a strange
image placed in the alcove. Sometimes it is of clay, rarely of gold,
most commonly of porcelain. It is reverenced: offerings are made to it,
sweetmeats and rice bread and wine; incense smoulders in front of it,
and a lamp is burned before it. It is the image of a kitten erect, one
paw outstretched as if inviting - whence its name, 'the Beckoning
Kitten.' [6] It is the genius loci: it brings good-fortune, the
patronage of the rich, the favour of banquet-givers Now, they who know
the soul of the geisha aver that the semblance of the image is the
semblance of herself - playful and pretty, soft and young, lithe and
caressing, and cruel as a devouring fire.
Worse, also, than this they have said of her: that in her shadow treads
the God of Poverty, and that the Fox-women are her sisters; that she is
the ruin of youth, the waster of fortunes, the destroyer of families;
that she knows love only as the source of the follies which are her
gain, and grows rich upon the substance of men whose graves she has
made; that she is the most consummate of pretty hypocrites, the most
dangerous of schemers, the most insatiable of mercenaries, the most
pitiless of mistresses. This cannot all be true. Yet thus much is true -
that, like the kitten, the geisha is by profession a creature of prey.
There are many really lovable kittens. Even so there must be really
delightful dancing-girls.
The geisha is only what she has been made in answer to foolish human
desire for the illusion of love mixed with youth and grace, but without
regrets or responsibilities: wherefore she has been taught, besides ken,
to play at hearts. Now, the eternal law is that people may play with
impunity at any game in this unhappy world except three, which are
called Life, Love, and Death. Those the gods have reserved to
themselves, because nobody else can learn to play them without doing
mischief. Therefore, to play with a geisha any game much more serious
than ken, or at least go, is displeasing to the gods.
The girl begins her career as a slave, a pretty child bought from
miserably poor parents under a contract, according to which her services
may be claimed by the purchasers for eighteen, twenty, or even twenty-
five years. She is fed, clothed, and trained in a house occupied only by
geisha; and she passes the rest of her childhood under severe
discipline. She is taught etiquette, grace, polite speech; she has daily
lessons in dancing; and she is obliged to learn by heart a multitude of
songs with their airs. Also she must learn games, the service of
banquets and weddings, the art of dressing and looking beautiful.
Whatever physical gifts she may have are; carefully cultivated.
Afterwards she is taught to handle musical instruments: first, the
little drum (tsudzumi), which cannot be sounded at all without
considerable practice; then she learns to play the samisen a little,
with a plectrum of tortoise-shell or ivory. At eight or nine years of
age she attends banquets, chiefly as a drum-player. She is then the
most charming little creature imaginable, and already knows how to fill
your wine-cup exactly full, with a single toss of the bottle and without
spilling a drop, between two taps of her drum.
Thereafter her discipline becomes more cruel. Her voice may be flexible
enough, but lacks the requisite strength. In the iciest hours of winter
nights, she must ascend to the roof of her dwelling-house, and there
sing and play till the blood oozes from her fingers and the voice dies
in her throat. The desired result is an atrocious cold. After a period
of hoarse whispering, her voice changes its tone and strengthens. She is
ready to become a public singer and dancer.
In this capacity she usually makes her first appearance at the age of
twelve or thirteen. If pretty and skilful, her services will be much in
demand, and her time paid for at the rate of twenty to twenty-five sen
per hour. Then only do her purchasers begin to reimburse themselves for
the time, expense, and trouble of her training; and they are not apt to
be generous. For many years more all that she earns must pass into their
hands. She can own nothing, not even her clothes.
At seventeen or eighteen she has made her artistic reputation. She has
been at many hundreds of entertainments, and knows by sight all the
important personages of her city, the character of each, the history of
all. Her life has been chiefly a night life; rarely has she seen the sun
rise since she became a dancer. She has learned to drink wine without
ever losing her head, and to fast for seven or eight hours without ever
feeling the worse. She has had many lovers. To a certain extent she is
free to smile upon whom she pleases; but she has been well taught, above
all else to use her power of charm for her own advantage. She hopes to
find Somebody able and willing to buy her freedom - which Somebody would
almost certainly thereafter discover many new and excellent meanings in
those Buddhist texts that tell about the foolishness of love and the
impermanency of all human relationships.
At this point of her career we may leave the geisha: there-. after her
story is apt to prove unpleasant, unless she die young. Should that
happen, she will have the obsequies of her class, and her memory will be
preserved by divers curious rites.
Some time, perhaps, while wandering through Japanese streets at night,
you hear sounds of music, a tinkling of samisen floating through the
great gateway of a Buddhist temple together with shrill voices of
singing-girls; which may seem to you a strange happening. And the deep
court is thronged with people looking and listening. Then, making your
way through the press to the temple steps, you see two geisha seated
upon the matting within, playing and singing, and a third dancing before
a little table. Upon the table is an ihai, or mortuary tablet; in front
of the tablet burns a little lamp, and incense in a cup of bronze; a
small repast has been placed there, fruits and dainties - such a repast
as, upon festival occasions, it is the custom to offer to the dead. You
learn that the kaimyo upon the tablet is that of a geisha; and that the
comrades of the dead girl assemble in the temple on certain days to
gladden her spirit with songs and dances. Then whosoever pleases may
attend the ceremony free of charge.
But the dancing-girls of ancient times were not as the geisha of to-day.
Some of them were called shirabyoshi; and their hearts were not
extremely hard. They were beautiful; they wore queerly shaped caps
bedecked with gold; they were clad in splendid attire, and danced with
swords in the dwellings of princes. And there is an old story about one
of them which I think it worth while to tell.
1
It was formerly, and indeed still is, a custom with young Japanese
artists to travel on foot through various parts of the empire, in order
to see and sketch the most celebrated scenery as well as to study famous
art objects preserved in Buddhist temples, many of which occupy sites of
extraordinary picturesqueness. It is to such wanderings, chiefly, that
we owe the existence of those beautiful books of landscape views and
life studies which are now so curious and rare, and which teach better
than aught else that only the Japanese can paint Japanese scenery. After
you have become acquainted with their methods of interpreting their own
nature, foreign attempts in the same line will seem to you strangely
flat and soulless. The foreign artist will give you realistic
reflections of what he sees; but he will give you nothing more. The
Japanese artist gives you that which he feels - the mood of a season, the
precise sensation of an hour and place; his work is qualified by a power
of suggestiveness rarely found in the art of the West. The Occidental
painter renders minute detail; he satisfies the imagination he evokes.
But his Oriental brother either suppresses or idealises detail - steeps
his distances in mist, bands his landscapes with cloud, makes of his
experience a memory in which only the strange and the beautiful survive,
with their sensations. He surpasses imagination, excites it, leaves it
hungry with the hunger of charm perceived in glimpses only.
Nevertheless, in such glimpses he is able to convey the feeling of a
time, the character of a place, after a fashion that seems magical. He
is a painter of recollections and of sensations rather than of clear-cut
realities; and in this lies the secret of his amazing power - a power not
to be appreciated by those who have never witnessed the scenes of his
inspiration. He is above all things impersonal. His human figures are
devoid of all individuality; yet they have inimitable merit as types
embodying the characteristics of a class: the childish curiosity of the
peasant, the shyness of the maiden, the fascination of the joro the
self-consciousness of the samurai, the funny, placid prettiness of the
child, the resigned gentleness of age. Travel and observation were the
influences which developed this art; it was never a growth of studios.
A great many years ago, a young art student was travelling on foot from
Kyoto to Yedo, over the mountains The roads then were few and bad, and
travel was so difficult compared to what it is now that a proverb was
current, Kawai ko wa tabi wo sase (A pet child should be made to
travel). But the land was what it is to-day. There were the same forests
of cedar and of pine, the same groves of bamboo, the same peaked
villages with roofs of thatch, the same terraced rice-fields dotted with
the great yellow straw hats of peasants bending in the slime. From the
wayside, the same statues of Jizo smiled upon the same pilgrim figures
passing to the same temples; and then, as now, of summer days, one might
see naked brown children laughing in all the shallow rivers, and all the
rivers laughing to the sun.
The young art student, however, was no kawai ko: he had already
travelled a great deal, was inured to hard fare and rough lodging, and
accustomed to make the best of every situation. But upon this journey he
found himself, one evening after sunset, in a region where it seemed
possible to obtain neither fare nor lodging of any sort - out of sight of
cultivated land. While attempting a short cut over a range to reach some
village, he had lost his way.
There was no moon, and pine shadows made blackness all around him. The
district into which he had wandered seemed utterly wild; there were no
sounds but the humming of the wind in the pine-needles, and an infinite
tinkling of bell-insects. He stumbled on, hoping to gain some river
bank, which he could follow to a settlement. At last a stream abruptly
crossed his way; but it proved to be a swift torrent pouring into a
gorge between precipices. Obliged to retrace his steps, he resolved to
climb to the nearest summit, whence he might be able to discern some
sign of human life; but on reaching it he could see about him only a
heaping of hills.
He had almost resigned himself to passing the night under the stars,
when he perceived, at some distance down the farther slope of the hill
he had ascended, a single thin yellow ray of light, evidently issuing
from some dwelling. He made his way towards it, and soon discerned a
small cottage, apparently a peasant's home. The light he had seen still
streamed from it, through a chink in the closed storm-doors. He hastened
forward, and knocked at the entrance.
Not until he had knocked and called several times did he hear any stir
within; then a woman 's voice asked what was wanted. The voice was
remarkably sweet, and the speech of the unseen questioner surprised him,
for she spoke in the cultivated idiom of the capital. He responded that
he was a student, who had lost his way in the mountains; that he wished,
if possible, to obtain food and lodging for the night; and that if this
could not be given, he would feel very grateful for information how to
reach the nearest village - adding that he had means enough to pay for
the services of a guide. The voice, in return, asked several other
questions, indicating extreme surprise that anyone could have reached
the dwelling from the direction he had taken. But his answers evidently
allayed suspicion, for the inmate exclaimed: 'I will come in a moment.
It would be difficult for you to reach any village to-night; and the
path is dangerous.'
After a brief delay the storm-doors were pushed open, and a woman
appeared with a paper lantern, which she so held as to illuminate the
stranger's face, while her own remained in shadow. She scrutinised him
in silence, then said briefly, 'Wait; I will bring water.' She fetched a
wash-basin, set it upon the doorstep, and offered the guest a towel. He
removed his sandals, washed from his feet the dust of travel, and was
shown into a neat room which appeared to occupy the whole interior,
except a small boarded space at the rear, used as a kitchen. A cotton
zabuton was laid for him to kneel upon, and a brazier set before him.
It was only then that he had a good opportunity of observing his
hostess, and he was startled by the delicacy and beauty of her features.
She might have been three or four years older than he, but was still in
the bloom of youth. Certainly she was not a peasant girl. In the same
singularly sweet voice she said to him: 'I am now alone, and I never
receive guests here. But I am sure it would be dangerous for you to
travel farther tonight. There are some peasants in the neighbourhood,
but you cannot find your way to them in the dark without a guide. So I
can let you stay here until morning. You will not be comfortable, but I
can give you a bed. And I suppose you are hungry. There is only some
shojin-ryori, [7] - not at all good, but you are welcome to it.'
The traveller was quite hungry, and only too glad of the offer. The
young woman kindled a little fire, prepared a few dishes in silence -
stewed leaves of na, some aburage, some kampyo, and a bowl of coarse
rice - and quickly set the meal before him, apologising for its quality.
But during his repast she spoke scarcely at all, and her reserved manner
embarrassed him. As she answered the few questions he ventured upon
merely by a bow or by a solitary word, he soon refrained from attempting
to press the conversation.
Meanwhile he had observed that the small house was spotlessly clean, and
the utensils in which his food was served were immaculate. The few cheap
objects in the apartment were pretty. The fusuma of the oshiire and
zendana [8] were of white paper only, but had been decorated with large
Chinese characters exquisitely written, characters suggesting, according
to the law of such decoration, the favourite themes of the poet and
artist: Spring Flowers, Mountain and Sea, Summer Rain, Sky and Stars,
Autumn Moon, River Water, Autumn Breeze. At one side of the apartment
stood a kind of low altar, supporting a butsudan, whose tiny lacquered
doors, left open, showed a mortuary tablet within, before which a lamp
was burning between offerings of wild flowers. And above this household
shrine hung a picture of more than common merit, representing the
Goddess of Mercy, wearing the moon for her aureole.
As the student ended his little meal the young woman observed: I cannot
offer you a good bed, and there is only a paper mosquito-curtain The bed
and the curtain are mine, but to-night I have many things to do, and
shall have no time to sleep; therefore I beg you will try to rest,
though I am not able to make you comfortable.'
He then understood that she was, for some strange reason, entirely
alone, and was voluntarily giving up her only bed to him upon a kindly
pretext. He protested honestly against such an excess of hospitality,
and assured her that he could sleep quite soundly anywhere on the floor,
and did not care about the mosquitoes. But she replied, in the tone of
an elder sister, that he must obey her wishes. She really had something
to do, and she desired to be left by herself as soon as possible;
therefore, understanding him to be a gentleman, she expected he would
suffer her to arrange matters in her own way. To this he could offer no
objection, as there was but one room. She spread the mattress on the
floor, fetched a wooden pillow, suspended her paper mosquito-curtain,
unfolded a large screen on the side of the bed toward the butsudan, and
then bade him good-night in a manner that assured him she wished him to
retire at once; which he did, not without some reluctance at the thought
of all the trouble he had unintentionally caused her.
3
Unwilling as the young traveller felt to accept a kindness involving the
sacrifice of another's repose, he found the bed more than comfortable.
He was very tired, and had scarcely laid his head upon the wooden pillow
before he forgot everything in sleep.
Yet only a little while seemed to have passed when he was awakened by a
singular sound. It was certainly the sound of feet, but not of feet
walking softly. It seemed rather the sound of feet in rapid motion, as
of excitement. Then it occurred to him that robbers might have entered
the house. As for himself, he had little to fear because he had little
to lose. His anxiety was chiefly for the kind person who had granted him
hospitality. Into each side of the paper mosquito-curtain a small square
of brown netting had been fitted, like a little window, and through one
of these he tried to look; but the high screen stood between him and
whatever was going on. He thought of calling, but this impulse was
checked by the reflection that in case of real danger it would be both
useless and imprudent to announce his presence before understanding the
situation. The sounds which had made him uneasy continued, and were more
and more mysterious. He resolved to prepare for the worst, and to risk