Kimono Part 18

"Really?" said Asako; "but my husband is the kindest and best man in the world!"

"Quite right, quite right. Love your husband like a good little girl.

But don't forget your old lawyer, Ito. I was your father's friend. We were at school together here in Tokyo."

This interested Asako immensely. She tried to make the lawyer talk further, but he said that it was a very long story, and he must tell her some other time. Then she asked him about her cousin, Mr. Fujinami Gentaro.

"He is away from town just now. When he returns, I think he will invite you to splendid feast."

With that he took his leave.

"What do you think of him?" Asako asked Tanaka, who had been watching the interview with an attendant chorus of _boy sans_.

"He is _haikara_ gentleman," was the reply.

Now, _haikara_, is a native corruption of the words "high collar," and denoted at first a variety of j.a.panese "nut," who aped the European and the American in his habits, manners and dress--of which pose the high collar was the most visible symbol. The word was presumably contemptuous in its origin. It has since, however, changed its character as so to mean anything smart and fashionable. You can live in a _haikara_ house, you can read _haikara_ books, you can wear a _haikara_ hat. It has become indeed practically a j.a.panese equivalent for that untranslatable expression "_chic_."

Asako Harrington, like all simple people, had little familiarity save with the superficial stratum of her intelligence. She lived in the gladness of her eyes like a happy young animal. Nothing, not even her marriage, had touched her very profoundly. Even the sudden shock of de Brie's love-making had not shaken anything deeper than her natural pride and her ignorance of mankind.

But in this strange, still land, whose expression looks inwards and whose face is a mask, a change was operating. Ito left her, as he had intended, with a growing sense of her own importance as distinct from her husband. "I was your father's friend: we were at school together here in Tokyo." Why, Geoffrey did not even know her father's name.

Asako did not think as closely as this. She could not. But she must have looked very thoughtful; for when Geoffrey came in, he saw her still sitting in the lounge, and exclaimed,--

"Why, my little Yum Yum, how serious we are! We look as if we were at our own funeral. Couldn't you get the things you wanted?"

"Oh yes," said Asako, trying to brighten up, "and I've had a visitor.

Guess!"

"Relations?"

"No and yes. It was Mr. Ito, the lawyer."

"Oh, that little blighter. That reminds me. I must go and see him to-morrow, and find out what he is doing with our money."

"_My_ money," laughed Asako, "Tanaka never lets me forget that."

"Of course, little one," said Geoffrey, "I'd be in the workhouse if it wasn't for you."

"Geoffrey darling," said his wife hesitating, "will you give me something?"

"Yes, of course, my sweetheart, what do you want?"

"I want a motor-car, yes please; and I'd like to have a cheque-book of my own. Sometimes when I am out by myself I would like--"

"Why, of course," said Geoffrey, "you ought to have had one long ago.

But it was your own idea; you didn't want to be bothered with money."

"Oh Geoffrey, you angel, you are so good to me."

She clung to his neck; and he, seeing the hotel deserted and n.o.body about, raised her in his arms and carried her bodily upstairs to the interest and amus.e.m.e.nt of the chorus of _boy sans_, who had just been discussing why _danna san_ had left _okusan_ for so many hours that afternoon, and who and what was the j.a.panese gentleman who had been talking to _okusan_ in the hall.

CHAPTER X

THE YOSHIWARA WOMEN

_Kyushu dai-ichi no ume Kon-ya kimi ga tame ni hiraku.

Hana no shingi wo shiran to hosseba, San-ko tsuki wo funde kitare_.

The finest plum-blossom of Kyushu This night is opening for thee.

If thou wishes to know the true character of this flower, Come at the third hour singing in the moonlight.

_Yoshiwara Popular Song_.

As the result of an affecting scene with his wife, Geoffrey's opposition to the Yoshiwara project collapsed. If everybody went to see the place, then it could not be such very Bad Form to do so.

Asako rang up Reggie; and on the next afternoon the young diplomat called for the Barringtons in a motor-car, where Miss Yae Smith was already installed. They drove through Tokyo. It was like crossing London for the s.p.a.ce of distance covered; an immense city--yet is it a city, or merely a village preposterously overgrown?

There is no dignity in the j.a.panese capital, nothing secular or permanent, except that mysterious forest-land in the midst of the moats and the grey walls, where dwell the Emperor and the Spirit of the Race. It is a mongrel city, a vast congeries of native wooden huts, hastily equipped with a few modern conveniences. Drunken poles stagger down the streets, waving their cobwebs of electric wires.

Rickety trams jolt past, crowded to overflowing, so crowded that humanity clings to the steps and platforms in clots, like flies clinging to some sweet surface. Thousands of little shops glitter, wink or frown at the pa.s.ser-by. Many of them have western plate-gla.s.s windows and stucco fronts, hiding their savagery, like a native woman tricked out in ridiculous pomp. Some, still grimly conservative, receive the customer in their cavernous interior, and cheat his eyes in their perpetual twilight. Many of these little shops are so small that their stock-in-trade flows over on to the pavement. The toy shops, the china shops, the cake shops, the shops for women's ribbons and hairpins seem to be trying to turn themselves inside out. Others are so reticent that nothing appears save a stretch of clean straw mats, where sulky clerks sit smoking round the _hibachi_ (fireboxes).

Then, when the eye gets accustomed to the darkness, one can see behind them the ranks of the tea-jars of Uji, or layers of dark kimono stuff.

The character of the shops changed as the Barringtons and their party approached their destination. The native element predominated more and more. The wares became more and more inexplicable. There were shops in which gold Buddhas shone and bra.s.s lamps for temple use, shops displaying queer utensils and mysterious little bits of things, whose secret was hidden in the cabalistic signs of Chinese script. There were stalls of curios, and second-hand goods spread out on the pavement, under the custody of wizened, inattentive old men, who squatted and smoked.

Red-faced maids stared at the foreigners from the balconies of lofty inns and eating-houses near Uyeno station. Further on, they pa.s.sed the silence of old temple walls, the s.p.a.ciousness of pigeon-haunted cloisters, and the huge high-pitched roofs of the shrines, with their twisted horn-like points. Then, down a narrow alley appeared the garish banners of the Asakusa theatres and cinema palaces. They heard the yelling of the door-touts, and the bray of discordant music. They caught a glimpse of hideous placards whose crude ill.u.s.trations showed the quality of the performance to be seen within, girls falling from aeroplanes, demon ghosts with b.l.o.o.d.y daggers, melodrama unleashed.

Everywhere the same crowds loitered along the pavements. No hustle, no appearance of business save where a messenger-boy threaded the maze on a break-neck bicycle, or where a dull-faced coolie pulled at an overloaded barrow. Grey and brown, the crowd clattered by on their wooden shoes. Grey and black, pa.s.sed the _haikara_ young men with their yellow side-spring shoes. Black and sabre-dragging, the policeman went to and fro, invisibly moored to his wooden sentry-box.

The only bright notes among all these drab mult.i.tudes were the little girls in their variegated kimonos, who fluttered in and out of the entrances, and who played unscolded on the footpaths. These too were the only notes of happiness; for their grown-up relatives, especially the women, carried an air, if not an actual expression, of animal melancholy, the melancholy of driven sheep or of cows ruminant.

The crowds were growing denser. Their faces were all set in one direction. At last the whole roadway was filled with the slow-moving tide. The Harringtons and their friends had to alight from their car and continue the rest of the way on foot.

"They are all going to see the show," Reggie explained to his party, and he pointed to a line of high houses, which stood out above the low native huts. It was a square block of building some hundreds of yards long, quite foreign in character, having the appearance of factory buildings, or of a barracks or workhouse.

"What a dismal-looking place!" said Asako.

"Yes," agreed Reggie, "but at night it is much brighter. It is all lit up from top to bottom. It is called the Nightless City."

"What bad faces these people have!" said Asako, who was romantically set on seeing evil everywhere, "Is it quite safe?"

"Oh yes," said their guide, "j.a.panese crowds are very orderly."

Indeed they suffered no inconvenience from the crowd beyond much staring, an ordeal which awaits the foreigner in all corners of Tokyo.