Kimono by John Paris
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John Paris >> Kimono
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Shidzuye San, as befitted a matron of sober years, wore a plain black
kimono; but Sadako's dress was of pale mauve color, with a bronze sash
tied in an enormous bow. Her hair was parted on one side and caught
up in a bun behind--the latest _haikara_ fashion and a tribute to the
foreign guests. Hers was a graceful figure; but her expression
was spoiled by the blue-tinted spectacles which completely hid her
features.
"Miss Sadako Fujinami, daughter of Mr. Fujinami Gentaro," said Ito.
"She has been University undergraduate, and she speaks English quite
well."
Miss Sadako bowed three times. Then she said, "How do you do" in a
high unnatural voice.
The room was filling up with the little humming-bird women who had
been present at the entrance. They were handing cigarettes and
tea cups to the guests. They looked bright and pleasant; and they
interested Geoffrey.
"Are these ladies relatives of the Fujinami family?" he asked Ito.
"Oh, no, not at all," the lawyer gasped; "you have made great
mistake, Mr. Barrington. Japanese ladies all left at home, never go
to restaurant. These girls are no ladies, they're _geisha_ girls.
_Geisha_ girls very famous to foreign persons."
Geoffrey knew that he had made his first _faux pas_.
"Now," said Mr. Ito, "please step this way; we go upstairs to the
feast room."
The dining-room seemed larger still than the reception room. Down each
side of it were arranged two rows of red lacquer tables, each about
eighteen inches high and eighteen inches square. Mysterious little
dishes were placed on each side of these tables; the most conspicuous
was a flat reddish fish with a large eye, artistically served in a
rollicking attitude, which in itself was an invitation to eat.
The English guests were escorted to two seats at the extreme end of
the room, where two tables were laid in isolated glory. They were to
sit there like king and queen, with two rows of their subjects in long
aisles to the right and to the left of them.
The seats were cushions merely; but those placed for Geoffrey and
Asako were raised on low hassocks. After them the files of the
Fujinami streamed in and took up their appointed positions along
the sides of the room. They were followed by the _geisha_, each girl
carrying a little white china bottle shaped like a vegetable marrow,
and a tiny cup like the bath which hygienic old maids provide for
their canary birds.
"Japanese _sake_" said Sadako to her cousin, "you do not like?"
"Oh, yes, I do," replied Asako, who was intent on enjoying everything.
But on this occasion she had chosen the wrong answer; for real ladies
in Japan are not supposed to drink the warm rice wine.
The _geisha_ certainly looked most charming as they slowly advanced in
a kind of ritualistic procession. Their feet like little white mice,
the dragging skirts of their spotless kimonos, their exaggerated care
and precision, and their stiff conventional attitudes presented a
picture from a Satsuma vase. Their dresses were of all shades, black,
blue, purple, grey and mauve. The corner of the skirt folded back
above the instep revealed a glimpse of gaudy underwear provoking to
men's eyes, and displayed the intricate stenciled flower patterns,
which in the case of the younger women seemed to be catching hold of
the long sleeves and straying upwards. Little dancing girls,
thirteen and fourteen years old--the so-called _hangyoku_ or half
jewels--accompanied their elder sisters of the profession. They wore
very bright dresses just like the dolls; and their massive _coiffure_
was bedizened with silver spangles and elaborately artificial flowers.
"Oh!" gasped the admiring Asako, "I must get one of those _geisha_
girls to show me how to wear my kimonos properly; they do look smart."
"I do not think," answered Sadako. "These are vulgar women, bad style;
I will teach you the noble way."
But all the _geisha_ had a grave and dignified look, quite different
from the sprightly butterflies of musical comedy from whom Geoffrey
had accepted his knowledge of Japan.
They knelt down before the guests and poured a little of the _sake_
into the shallow saucer held out for their ministrations. Then they
folded their hands in their laps and appeared to slumber.
A sucking sound ran round the room as the first cup was drained. Then
a complete silence fell, broken only by the shuffle of the girls' feet
on the matting as they went to fetch more bottles.
Mr. Fujinami Gentaro spoke to the guests assembled, bidding them
commence their meal, and not to stand upon ceremony.
"It is like the one--two--three--go! at a race," thought Geoffrey.
All the guests were manipulating their chop-sticks. Geoffrey raised
his own pair. The two slender rods of wood were unparted at one end to
show that they had never been used. It was therefore necessary to pull
them in two. As he did so a tiny splinter of wood like a match fell
from between them.
Asako laughed.
"That is the toothpick," cousin Sadako explained. "We call such
chop-sticks _komochi-hashi_, chopstick with baby, because the
toothpick inside the chopstick like the baby inside the mother. Very
funny, I think."
There were two kinds of soup--excellent; there was cooked fish and
raw fish in red and white slices, chastely served with ice; there were
vegetables known and unknown, such as sweet potatoes, French beans,
lotus stems and bamboo shoots. These had to be eaten with the aid of
the chop-sticks--a difficult task when it came to cutting up the wing
of a chicken or balancing a soft poached egg.
The guests did not eat with gusto. They toyed with the food, sipping
wine all the time, smoking cigarettes and picking their teeth.
Geoffrey, according to his own description, was just getting his eye
in, when Mr. Fujinami Gentaro rose from his humble place at the far
end of the room. In a speech full of poetical quotations, which must
have cost his tame students considerable trouble in the composition,
he welcomed Asako Barrington, who, he said, had been restored to Japan
like a family jewel which has been lost and is found. He compared her
visit to the sudden flowering of an ancient tree. This did not seem
very complimentary; however, it referred not to the lady's age but
to the elder branch of the family which she represented. After many
apologies for the tastelessness of the food and the stupidity of the
entertainment, he proposed the health of Mr. and Mrs. Harrington,
which was drunk by the whole company standing.
Ito produced from his pocket a translation of this oration.
"Now please say a few words in reply," he directed.
Geoffrey, feeling acutely ridiculous, scrambled to his feet and
thanked everybody for giving his wife and himself such a jolly good
time. Ito translated.
"Now please command to drink health of the Fujinami family," said
the lawyer, consulting his _agenda_. So the health of Mr. and Mrs.
Fujinami Gentaro was drunk with relish by everybody, including the
lady and gentleman honoured.
"In this country," thought Geoffrey, "one gets the speechmaking over
before the dinner. Not a bad idea. It saves that nervous feeling which
spoils the appetite."
An old gentleman, with a restless jaw, tottered to his feet and
approached Geoffrey's table. He bowed twice before him, and held out a
claw-like hand.
"Mr. Fujinami Gennosuke, the father of Mr. Fujinami Gentaro,"
announced Ito. "He has retired from life. He wishes to drink wine with
you. Please wash your cup and give it to him."
There was a kind of finger-bowl standing in front of Geoffrey, which
he had imagined might be a spittoon. He was directed to rinse his
cup in this vessel, and to hand it to the old gentleman. Mr. Fujinami
Gennosuke received it in both hands as if it had been a sacrament. The
attendant _geisha_ poured out a little of the greenish liquid,
which was drunk with much hissing and sucking. Then followed another
obeisance; the cup was returned, and the old gentleman retired.
He was succeeded by Mr. Fujinami Gentaro himself, with whom the same
ceremony of the _sake_ drinking was repeated; and then all the family
passed by, one after another, each taking the cup and drinking. It was
like a visiting figure in the lancers' quadrille.
As each relative bent and bowed, Ito announced his name and quality.
These names seemed all alike, alike as their faces and as their
garments were. Geoffrey could only remember vaguely that he had been
introduced to a Member of Parliament, a gross man with a terrible
wen like an apple under his ear, and to two army officers, tall
clean-looking men, who pleased him more than the others. There were
several Government functionaries; but the majority were business men.
Geoffrey could only distinguish for certain his host and his host's
father.
"They look just like two old vultures," he thought.
Then there was Mr. Fujinami Takeshi, the son of the host and the hope
of the family, a livid youth with a thin moustache and unhealthy marks
on his face like raspberries under the skin.
Still the _geisha_ kept bringing more and more food in a desultory way
quite unlike our system of fixed and regular courses. Still Ito kept
pressing Geoffrey to eat, while at the same time apologizing for the
quality of the food with exasperating repetition. Geoffrey had fallen
into the error of thinking that the fish and its accompanying dishes
which had been laid before him at first comprised the whole of the
repast. He had polished them off with gusto; and had then discovered
to his alarm that they were merely _hors d'oeuvres_. Nor did he
observe until too late how little the other guests were eating. There
was no discourtesy apparently in leaving the whole of a dish untasted,
or in merely picking at it from time to time. Rudeness consisted in
refusing any dish.
Plates of broiled meat and sandwiches arrived, bowls of soup, grilled
eels on skewers--that most famous of Tokyo delicacies; finally, the
inevitable rice with whose adhesive substance the Japanese epicure
fills up the final crannies in his well-lined stomach. It made its
appearance in a round drum-like tub of clean white wood, as big as
a bandbox, and bound round with shining brass. The girls served the
sticky grains into the china rice-bowl with a flat wooden ladle.
"Japanese people always take two bowls of rice at least," observed
Ito. "One bowl very unlucky; at the funeral we only eat one bowl."
This to Geoffrey was the _coup de grace_. He had only managed to stuff
down his bowl through a desperate sense of duty.
"If I do have a second," he gasped, "it will be my own funeral."
But this joke did not run in the well-worn lines of Japanese humour.
Mr. Ito merely thought that the big Englishman, having drunk much
_sake_, was talking nonsense.
All the guests were beginning to circulate now; the quadrille was
becoming more and more elaborate. They were each calling on each
other and taking wine. The talk was becoming more animated. A few bold
spirits began to laugh and joke with the _geisha_. Some had laid aside
their cloaks; and some even had loosened their kimonos at the neck,
displaying hairy chests. The stiff symmetry of the dinner party
was quite broken up. The guests were scattered like rooks, bobbing,
scratching and pecking about on the yellow mats. The bright plumage of
the _geisha_ stood out against their sombre monotony.
Presently the _geisha_ began to dance at the far end of the room. Ten
of the little girls did their steps, a slow dance full of posturing
with coloured handkerchiefs. Three of the elder _geisha_ in plain grey
kimonos squatted behind the dancers, strumming on their _samisens_.
But there was very little music either in the instrument or in the
melody. The sound of the string's twang and the rattle of the bone
plectrum drowned the sweetness of the note. The result was a kind of
dry clatter or cackle which is ingenious, but not pleasing.
Reggie Forsyth used to say that there is no melody in Japanese music;
but that the rhythm is marvelous. It is a kind of elaborate ragtime
without any tune to it.
The guests did not pay any attention to the performance, nor did they
applaud when it was over.
Mr. Ito was consulting his _agenda_ paper and his gold watch.
"You will now drink with these gentlemen," he said. Geoffrey must have
demurred.
"It is Japanese custom," he continued; "please step this way; I will
guide you."
Poor Geoffrey! it was his turn now to do the visiting figure, but
his head was buzzing with some thirty cups of _sake_ which he had
swallowed out of politeness, and with the unreality of the whole
scene.
"Can't do it," he protested; "drunk too much already."
"In Japan we say, 'When friends meet the _sake_ sellers laugh!'"
quoted the lawyer. "It is Japanese custom to drink together, and to
be happy. To be drunk in good company, it is no shame. Many of these
gentlemen will presently be drunk. But if you do not wish to drink
more, then just pretend to drink. You take the cup, see; you lift it
to your mouth, but you throw away the _sake_ into the basin when you
wash the cup. That is _geisha's_ trick when the boys try to make her
drunk, but she is too wise!"
Armed with this advice Geoffrey started on his round of visits,
first to his host and then to his host's father. The face of old Mr.
Fujinami Gennosuke was as red as beet-root, and his jaw was chewing
more vigorously than ever. Nothing, however, could have been more
perfect than his deportment in exchanging the cup with his guest. But
no sooner had Geoffrey turned away to pay another visit than he became
aware of a slight commotion. He glanced round and saw Mr. Fujinami,
senior, in a state of absolute collapse, being conducted out of the
room by two members of the family and a cluster of _geisha_.
"What has happened?" he asked in some alarm.
"It is nothing," said Ito; "old gentleman tipsy very quick."
Everybody now seemed to be smiling and happy. Geoffrey felt the curse
of his speechlessness. He was brimming over with good humour, and was
most anxious to please. The Japanese no longer appeared so grotesque
as they had on his arrival. He was sure that he would have much in
common with many of these men, who talked so good-naturedly among
themselves, until the chill of his approach fell upon them.
Besides Ito and Sadako Fujinami, the only person present who could
talk English at all fluently was that blotchy-faced individual, Mr.
Fujinami Takeshi. The young man was in a very hilarious state, and
had gathered around him a bevy of _geisha_ with whom he was cracking
jokes. From the nature of his gestures they must have been far from
decorous.
"Please to sit down, my dear friend," he said to Geoffrey. "Do you
like _geisha_ girl?"
"I don't think they like me," said Geoffrey. "I'm too big."
"Oh, no," said the Japanese; "very big, very good. Japanese man
too small, no good at all. Why do all _geisha_ love _sumotori_
(professional wrestlers)? Because _sumotori_ very big; but this
English gentleman bigger than _sumotori_. So this girl love you, and
this girl, and this girl, and this very pretty girl, I don't know?"
He added a question in Japanese. The _geisha_ giggled, and hid her
face behind her sleeve.
"She say, she wish to try first. To try the cake, you eat some? Is
that right?"
He repeated his joke in Japanese. The girl wriggled with
embarrassment, and finally scuttled away across the room, while the
others laughed.
All the _geisha_ now hid their faces among much tittering.
Geoffrey was becoming harassed by this _badinage_; but he hated to
appear a prude, and said:
"I have got a wife, you know, Mr. Fujinami; she is keeping an eye on
me."
"No matter, no matter," the young man answered, waving his hand to and
fro; "we all have wife; wife no matter in Japan."
At last Geoffrey got back to his throne at Asako's side. He was
wondering what would be the next move in the game when, to his relief
and surprise, Ito, after a glance at his watch, said suddenly:
"It is now time to go home. Please say good-bye to Mr. and Mrs.
Fujinami."
A sudden dismissal, but none the less welcome.
The inner circle of the Fujinami had gathered round. They and the
_geisha_ escorted their guests to the rickshaws and helped them on
with their cloaks and boots. There was no pressing to remain; and as
Geoffrey passed the clock in the entrance hall he noticed that it
was just ten o'clock. Evidently the entertainment was run with strict
adherence to the time-table.
Some of the guests were too deep in _sake_ and flirtation to be
aware of the break-up; and the last vision granted to Geoffrey of the
M.P.--the fat man with the wen--was of a kind of Turkey Trot going
on in a corner of the room, and the thick arms of the legislator
disappearing up the lady's kimono sleeve.
CHAPTER XII
FALLEN CHERRY-BLOSSOM
_Iro wa nioedo
Chirinuru wo--
Woga yo tore zo
Tsune naran?
Ui no okuyama
Kyo koete,
Asaki yume miji
Ei mo sezu._
The colours are bright, but
The petals fall!
In this world of ours who
Shall remain forever?
To-day crossing
The high mountains of mutability,
We shall see no fleeting dreams,
Being inebriate no longer.
"_O hay[=o] gazaimas!_" (Respectfully early!)
Twitterings of maid-servants salute the lady of the house with the
conventional morning greeting. Mrs. Fujinami Shidzuye replies in the
high, fluty, unnatural voice which is considered refined in her social
set.
The servants glide into the room which she has just left, moving
noiselessly so as not to wake the master who is still sleeping. They
remove from his side the thick warm mattresses upon which his wife
has been lying, the hard wooden pillow like the block of history,
the white sheets and the heavy padded coverlet with sleeves like an
enormous kimono. They roil up all these _yagu_ (night implements),
fold them and put them away into an unsuspected cupboard in the
architecture of the veranda.
Mr. Fujinami Gentaro still snores.
After a while his wife returns. She is dressed for the morning in a
plain grey silk kimono with a broad olive-green _obi_ (sash). Her
hair is arranged in a formidable helmet-like _coiffure_--all Japanese
matrons with their hair done properly bear a remote resemblance to
Pallas Athene and Britannia. This will need the attention of the
hairdresser so as to wax into obedience a few hairs left wayward by
the night in spite of that severe wooden pillow, whose hard, high
discomfort was invented by female vanity to preserve from disarray
the rigid order of their locks. Her feet are encased in little white
_tabi_ like gloves, for the big toe has a compartment all to itself.
She walks with her toes turned in, and with the heels hardly touching
the ground. This movement produces a bend of the knees and hips so
as to maintain the equilibrium of the body, and a sinuous appearance
which is considered the height of elegance in Japan, so that the grace
of a beautiful woman is likened to "a willow-tree blown by the
wind," and the shuffle of her feet on the floor-matting to the wind's
whisper.
Mrs. Fujinami carries a red lacquer tray. On the tray is a tiny teapot
and a tiny cup and a tiny dish, in which are three little salted
damsons, with a toothpick fixed in one of them. It is the _petit
dejeuner_ of her lord. She put down the tray beside the head of
the pillow, and makes a low obeisance, touching the floor with her
forehead.
"_O hay[=o] gazaimas_'!"
Mr. Fujinami stirs, gapes, stretches, yawns, rubs his lean fist in his
hollow eyes, and stares at the rude incursion of daylight. He takes no
notice of his wife's presence. She pours out tea for him with studied
pose of hands and wrists, conventional and graceful. She respectfully
requests him to condescend to partake. Then she makes obeisance again.
Mr. Fujinami yawns once more, after which he condescends. He sucks
down the thin, green tea with a whistling noise. Then he places in his
mouth the damson balanced on the point of the toothpick. He turns it
over and over with his tongue as though he was chewing a cud. Finally
he decides to eat it, and to remove the stone.
Then he rises from his couch. He is a very small wizened man. Dressed
in his night kimono of light blue silk, he passes along the veranda
in the direction of the morning ablutions. Soon the rending sounds of
throat-clearing show that he has begun his wash. Three maids appear
as by magic in the vacated room. The bed is rolled away, the matting
swept, and the master's morning clothes are laid out ready for him on
his return.
Mrs. Fujinami assists her husband to dress, holding each garment ready
for him to slip into, like a well-trained valet. Mr. Fujinami does not
speak to her. When his belt has been adjusted, and a watch with a gold
fob thrust into its interstice, he steps down from the veranda, slides
his feet into a pair of _geta_, and strolls out into the garden.
Mr. Fujinami's garden is a famous one. It is a temple garden many
centuries old; and the eyes of the initiated may read in the miniature
landscape, in the grouping of shrubs and rocks, in the sudden
glimpses of water, and in the bare pebbly beaches, a whole system of
philosophic and religious thought worked out by the patient priests of
the Ashikaga period, just as the Gothic masons wrote their version of
the Bible history in the architecture of their cathedrals.
But for the ignorant, including its present master, it was just a
perfect little park, with lawns six feet square and ancient pine
trees, with impenetrable forests which one could clear at a bound,
with gorges, waterfalls, arbours for lilliputian philanderings and
a lake round whose tiny shores were represented the Eight Beautiful
Views of the Lake of Biwa near Kyoto.
The bungalow mansion of the family lies on a knoll overlooking the
lake and the garden valley, a rambling construction of brown wood with
grey scale-like tiles, resembling a domesticated dragon stretching
itself in the sun.
Indeed, it is not one house but many, linked together by a number of
corridors and spare rooms. For Mr. and Mrs. Fujinami live in one wing,
their son and his wife in another, and also Mr. Ito, the lawyer, who
is a distant relative and a partner in the Fujinami business. Then,
on the farther side of the house, near the pebble drive and the great
gate, are the swarming quarters of the servants, the rickshaw men, and
Mr. Fujinami's secretaries. Various poor relations exist unobserved
in unfrequented corners; and there is the following of University
students and professional swashbucklers which every important Japanese
is bound to keep, as an advertisement of his generosity, and to do his
dirty work for him. A Japanese family mansion is very like a hive--of
drones.
Nor is this the entire population of the Fujinami _yashiki_. Across
the garden and beyond the bamboo grove is the little house of Mr.
Fujinami's stepbrother and his wife; and in the opposite corner, below
the cherry-orchard, is the _inkyo_, the dower house, where old
Mr. Fujinami Gennosuke, the retired Lord--who is the present Mr.
Fujinami's father by adoption only--watches the progress of the family
fortunes with the vigilance of Charles the Fifth in the cloister of
Juste.
* * * * *
Mr. Fujinami Gentaro shuffled his way towards a little room like a
kind of summer-house, detached from the main building and overlooking
the lake and garden from the most favourable point of vantage.
This is Mr. Fujinami's study--like all Japanese rooms, a square box
with wooden framework, wooden ceiling, sliding paper _shoji_, pale
golden _tatami_ and double alcove. All Japanese rooms are just the
same, from the Emperor's to the rickshaw-man's; only in the quality
of the wood, in the workmanship of the fittings, in the newness and
freshness of paper and matting, and by the ornaments placed in the
alcove, may the prosperity of the house be known.
In Mr. Fujinami's study, one niche of the alcove was fitted up as a
bookcase; and that bookcase was made of a wonderful honey-coloured
satinwood brought from the hinterland of China. The lock and
the handles were inlaid with dainty designs in gold wrought by a
celebrated Kyoto artist. In the open alcove the hanging scroll of Lao
Tze's paradise had cost many hundreds of pounds, as had also the Sung
dish below it, an intricacy of lotus leaves caved out of a single
amethyst.
On a table in the middle of this chaste apartment lay a pair of
gold-rimmed spectacles and a yellow book. The room was open to the
early morning sunlight; the paper walls were pushed back. Mr. Fujinami
moved a square silk cushion to the edge of the matting near the
outside veranda. There he could rest his back against a post in
the framework of the building--for even Japanese get wearied by the
interminable squatting which life on the floor level entails--and
acquire that condition of bodily repose which is essential for
meditation.
Mr. Fujinami was in the habit of meditating for one hour every
morning. It was a tradition of his house; his father and his
grandfather had done so before him. The guide of his meditations was
the yellow book, the _Rongo_ (Maxims) of Confucius, that Bible of the
Far East which has moulded oriental morality to the shape of the Three
Obediences, the obedience of the child to his parents, of the wife to
her husband, and of the servant to his lord.
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