Kimono by John Paris
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John Paris >> Kimono
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After the first formalities Asako was shown round the house. The
sameness of the rooms surprised her. There was nothing to distinguish
them except the different woods used in their ceilings and walls, a
distinction which betrayed its costliness and its taste only to the
practised eye. Each room was spotless and absolutely bare, with golden
_tatami_, rice-straw mats with edgings of black braid, fixed into the
flooring, by whose number the size of a Japanese room is measured.
Asako admired the pale white _shoji_, the sliding windows of opaque
glowing paper along the side of the room open to the outdoor light,
the _fusuma_ or sliding partitions between room and room, set in the
framework of the house, some of them charmingly painted with sketches
of scenery, flowers, or people, some of them plain cream-coloured
boards flecked with tiny specks of gold.
Nothing broke the sameness of these rooms except the double alcove,
or _tokonoma_ with its inevitable hanging picture, its inevitable
ornament, and its spray of blossom. Between the double niche stood
that pillar of wood which Sadako explained as being the soul of the
room, the leading feature from which its character was taken, being
either plain and firm, or twisted and ornate, or else still unshaped,
with the bosses of amputated branches seared and black protesting
against confinement. The _tokonoma_, as the word suggests, must
originally have been the sleeping-place of the owner of the room, for
it certainly is the only corner in a Japanese house which is secured
from draughts. But perhaps it was respect for invisible spirits which
drove the sleeper eventually to abandon his coign of vantage to the
service of aesthetic beauty, and to stretch himself on the open floor.
To Asako the rooms seemed all the same. Each gave the same impression
of spotlessness and nudity. Each was stiffly rectangular like the
honey squares fitted into a hive. Above all, there was nothing about
any of them to indicate their individual use, or the character of
the person to whom they were specially assigned. No dining-room, or
drawing-room, or library.
"Where is your bedroom?" asked Asako, with a frank demand for that
sign of sisterhood among Western girls; "I should so like to see it."
"I generally sleep," answered the Japanese girl, "in that room at the
corner where we have been already, where the bamboo pictures are. This
is the room where father and mother sleep."
They were standing on the balcony outside the apartment where Asako
had first been received.
"But where are the beds?" she asked.
Sadako went to the end of the balcony, and threw open a big cupboard
concealed in the outside of the house. It was full of layers of rugs,
thick, dark and wadded.
"These are the beds," smiled the Japanese cousin. "My brother Takeshi
has a foreign bed in his room; but my father does not like them, or
foreign clothes, or foreign food, or anything foreign. He says
the Japanese things are best for the Japanese. But he is very
old-fashioned."
"Japanese style looks nicer," said Asako, thinking how big and vulgar
a bedstead would appear in that clean emptiness and how awkwardly its
iron legs would trample on the straw matting; "but isn't it draughty
and uncomfortable?"
"I like the foreign beds best," said Sadako; "my brother has let me
try his. It is very soft."
So in this country of Asako's fathers, a bedstead was lent for trial
as though it had been some fascinating novelty, a bicycle or a piano.
The kitchen appealed most to the visitor. It was the only room to her
mind which had any individuality of its own. It was large, dark and
high, full of servant-girls scuttering about like little mice, who
bowed and then fled when the two ladies came in. The stoves for
boiling the rice interested Asako, round iron receptacles like
coppers, each resting on a brick fireplace. Everything was explained
to her: the high dressers hung with unfamiliar implements in white
metal and white wood: the brightly labelled casks of _sake_ and
_shoyu_ (sauce) waiting in the darkness like the deputation of a
friendly society in its insignia of office: the silent jars of tea,
greenish in colour and ticketed with strange characters, the names of
the respective tea-gardens: the iron kettle hanging on gibbet chains
from the top of the ceiling over a charcoal fire sunk in the floor;
the tasteful design of the commonest earthenware bowl: the little
board and chopper for slicing the raw fish: the clean white rice-tubs
with their brass bindings polished and shining: the odd shape and
entirely Japanese character which distinguished the most ordinary
things, and gave to the short squat knives a romantic air and to the
broad wooden spoons a suggestion of witchcraft: finally, the little
shrine to the Kitchen God, perched on a shelf close to the ceiling,
looking like the facade of a doll's temple, and decorated with brass
vases, dry grasses, and strips of white paper. The wide kitchen was
impregnated with a smell already familiar to Asako's nose, one of
the most typical odours of Japan, the smell of native cooking, humid,
acrid and heavy like the smell of wood smoke from damp logs, with
a sour and rotten flavour to it contributed by a kind of pickled
horse-radish called _Daikon_ or the Great Root, dear to the Japanese
palate.
The central ceremony of Asako's visit was her introduction to the
memory of her dead parents. She was taken to a small room, where the
alcove, the place of honour, was occupied by a closed cabinet, the
_butsudan_ (Buddha shelf), a beautiful piece of joiner's work in a
kind of lattice pattern covered with red lacquer and gold. Sadako,
approaching, reverently opened this shrine. The interior was all gilt
with a dazzling gold like that used an old manuscripts. In the centre
of this glory sat a golden-faced Buddha with dark blue hair and cloak,
and an aureole of golden rays. Below him were arranged the _ihai_, the
Tablets of the Dead, miniature grave-stones about one foot high, with
a black surface edged with gold upon which were inscribed the names of
the dead persons, the new names given by the priests.
Sadako stepped back and clapped her hands together three times,
repeating the formula of the Nichiren Sect of Buddhists.
"_Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]!_ (Adoration to the Wonderful Law of
the Lotus Scriptures!)"
She instructed Asako to do the same.
"For," she said, "we believe that the spirits of the dead people are
here; and we must be very good to them."
Asako did as she was told, wondering whether her confessor would
give her penance for idolatry. Sadako then motioned her to sit on the
floor. She took one of the tablets from its place and placed it in
front of her cousin.
"That is your father's _ihai_," she said; and then removing another
and placing it beside the first, she added,--
"This is your mother."
Asako was deeply moved. In England we love our dead; but we consign
them to the care of nature, to the change of the seasons, and the cold
promiscuity of the graveyard. The Japanese dead never seem to leave
the shelter of their home or the circle of their family. We bring to
our dear ones flowers and prayers; but the Japanese give them food
and wine, and surround them with every-day talk. The companionship is
closer. We chatter much about immortality. We believe, many of us, in
some undying particle. We even think that in some other world the
dead may meet the dead whom they have known in life. But the actual
communion of the dead and the living is for us a beautiful and
inspiring metaphor rather than a concrete belief. Now the Japanese,
although their religion is so much vaguer than ours, hardly question
this survival of the ancestors in the close proximity of their
children and grandchildren. The little funeral tablets are for them
clothed with an invisible personality.
"This is your mother."
Asako felt influences floating around her. Her mind was in pain,
straining to remember something which seemed to be not wholly
forgotten.
Just at this moment Mrs. Fujinami arrived, carrying an old photograph
album and a roll of silk. Her appearance was so opportune that any one
less innocent than Asako might have suspected that the scene had
been rehearsed. In the hush and charm of that little chamber of the
spirits, the face of the elder woman looked soft and sweet. She opened
the volume at the middle, and pushed it in front of Asako.
She saw the photograph of a Japanese girl seated in a chair with a
man standing at her side, with one hand resting on the chair back. Her
father's photograph she recognised at once, the broad forehead, the
deep eyes, the aquiline nose, the high cheek bones, and the thin,
angry sarcastic lips; not a typically Japanese face, but a type
recurrent throughout our over-educated world, cultured, desperate and
stricken. Asako had very little in common with her father; for his
character had been moulded or warped by two powerful agencies, his
intellect and his disease; and it was well for his daughter that she
had escaped this dire inheritance. But never before had she seen her
mother's face. Sometimes she had wondered who and what her mother had
been; what she had thought of as her baby grew within her; and with
what regrets she had exchanged her life for her child's. More often
she had considered herself as a being without a mother, a fairy's
child, brought into this world on a sunbeam or born from a flower.
Now she saw the face which had reflected pain and death for her. It
was impassive, doll-like and very young, pure oval in outline,
but lacking in expression. The smallness of the mouth was the most
characteristic feature, but it was not alive with smiles like her
daughter's. It was pinched and constrained, with the lower lips drawn
in.
The photograph was clearly a wedding souvenir. She wore the black
kimono of a bride, and the multiple skirts. A kind of little
pocket-book with silver charms dangling from it, an ancient marriage
symbol, was thrust into the opening at her breast. Her head was
covered with a curious white cap like the "luggage" of Christmas
crackers. She was seated rigidly at the edge of her uncomfortable
chair; and her personality seemed to be overpowered by the solemnity
of the occasion.
"Did she love him," her daughter wondered, "as I love Geoffrey?"
Through Sadako's interpretation Mrs. Fujinami explained that Asako's
mother's name had been Yamagata Haruko (Spring child). Her father had
been a _samurai_ in the old two-sworded days. The photograph was not
very like her. It was too serious.
"Like you," said the elder woman, "she was always laughing and happy.
My husband's father used to call her the _Semi_ (the cicada), because
she was always singing her little song. She was chosen for your father
because he was so sad and wrathful. They thought that she would
make him more gentle. But she died; and then he became more sad than
before."
Asako was crying very gently. She felt the touch of her cousin's hand
on her arm. The intellectual Miss Sadako also was weeping, the tears
furrowing her whitened complexion. The Japanese are a very emotional
race. The women love tears; and even the men are not averse from this
very natural expression of feeling, which our Anglo-Saxon schooling
has condemned as babyish. Mrs. Fujinami continued,--
"I saw her a few days before you were born. They lived in a little
house on the bank of the river. One could see the boats passing. It
was very damp and cold. She talked all the time of her baby. 'If it is
a boy,' she said, 'everybody will be happy; if it is a girl,
Fujinami San will be very anxious for the family's sake; and the
fortune-tellers say that it will surely be a little girl. But,' she
used to say, 'I could play better with a little girl; I know what
makes them laugh!' When you were born she became very ill. She never
spoke again, and in a few days she died. Your father became like a
madman, he locked the house, and would not see any of us; and as soon
as you were strong enough, he took you away in a ship."
Sadako placed in front of her cousin the roll of silk, and said,--
"This is Japanese _obi_ (sash). It belonged to your mother. She gave
it to my mother a short time before you were born; for she said,
'It is too bright for me now; when I have my baby, I shall give up
society, and I shall spend all my time with my children.' My mother
gives it to you for your mother's sake."
It was a wonderful work of art, a heavy golden brocade, embroidered
with fans, and on each fan a Japanese poem and a little scene from the
olden days.
"She was very fond of this _obi_, she chose the poems herself."
But Asako was not admiring the beautiful workmanship. She was thinking
of the mother's heart which had beat for her under that long strip of
silk, the little Japanese mother who "would have known how to make her
laugh." Tears were falling very quietly on to the old sash.
The two Japanese women saw this; and with the instinctive tact
of their race, they left her alone face to face with this strange
introduction to her mother's personality.
There is a peculiar pathos about the clothes of the dead. They are so
nearly a part of our bodies that it seems unnatural almost that they
should survive with the persistence of inanimate things, when we who
gave them the semblance of life are far more dead than they. It would
be more seemly, perhaps, if all these things which have belonged to
us so intimately were to perish with us in a general _suttee_. But the
mania for relics would never tolerate so complete a disappearance of
one whom we had loved; and our treasuring of hair and ornaments and
letters is a desperate--and perhaps not an entirely vain--attempt to
check the liberated spirit in its leap for eternity.
Asako found in that old garment of her mother's a much more faithful
reflection of the life which had been transmitted to her, than the
stiff photograph could ever realise. She had chosen the poems herself.
Asako must get them transcribed and translated; for they would be a
sure indication of her mother's character. Already the daughter could
see that her mother too must have loved rich and beautiful things,
happiness and laughter.
Old Mr. Fujinami had called her "the _Semi_." Asako did not yet
know the voice of the little insects which are the summer and autumn
orchestra of Japan. But she knew that it must be something happy and
sweet; or they would not have told her.
* * * * *
She rose from her knees, and found her cousin waiting for her on the
veranda. Whatever real expression she may have had was effectively
hidden behind the tinted glasses, and the false white complexion, now
renovated from the ravages of emotion. But Asako's heart was won by
the power of the dead, of whom Sadako and her family were, she felt,
the living representatives.
Asako took both of her cousin's hands in her own.
"It was sweet of you and your mother to give me that," she said--and
her eyes were full of tears--"you could not have thought of anything
which would please me more."
The Japanese girl was on the point of starting to bow and smile the
conventional apologies for the worthlessness of the gift, when she
felt herself caught by a power unfamiliar to her, the power of the
emotions of the West.
The pressure on her wrists increased, her face was drawn down towards
her cousin's, and she felt against the corner of her mouth the warm
touch of Asako's lips.
She started back with a cry of "_Iya_! (don't!)," the cry of outraged
Japanese femininity. Then she remembered from her readings that such
kissings were common among European girls, that they were a compliment
and a sign of affection. But she hoped that it had not disarranged her
complexion again; and that none of the servants had seen.
Her cousin's surprise shook Asako out of her dream; and the kiss left
a bitter powdery taste upon her lips which disillusioned her.
"Shall we go into the garden?" said Sadako, who felt that fresh air
was advisable.
They joined hands; so much familiarity was permitted by Japanese
etiquette. They went along the gravel path to the summit of the little
hillock where the cherry-trees had lately been in bloom, Sadako in her
bright kimono, Asako in her dark suit. She looked like a mere mortal
being introduced to the wonders of Titania's country by an authentic
fairy.
The sun was setting in the clear sky, one half of which was a tempest
of orange, gold and red, and the other half warm and calm with roseate
reflections. Over the spot where the focus point of all this glory
was sinking into darkness, a purple cloud hovered like a shred of
the monarch's glory caught and torn away on the jag of some invisible
obstruction. Its edges were white flame, as though part of the sun's
fire were hidden behind it.
Even from this high position little could be seen beyond the Fujinami
enclosure except tree-tops. Away down the valley appeared the grey
scaly roofs of huddled houses, and on a hill opposite more trees with
the bizarre pinnacle of a pagoda forcing its way through the midst of
them. It looked like a series of hats perched one on the top of the
other by a merchant of Petticoat Lane.
Lights were glimpsing from the Fujinami mansion; more lights were
visible among the shrubberies below. This soft light, filtered through
the paper walls, shone like a luminous pearl. This is the home light
of the Japanese, and is as typical of their domesticity as the
blazing log-fire is of ours. It is greenish, still and pure, like a
glow-worm's beacon.
Out of the deep silence a bell tolled. It was as though an unseen hand
had struck the splendour of that metallic firmament; or as though a
voice had spoken out of the sunset cloud.
The two girls descended to the brink of the lake. Here at the farther
end the water was broader; and it was hidden from view of the houses.
Green reeds grew along the margin, and green iris leaves, like sword
blades, black now in the failing light. There was a studied roughness
in the tiny landscape, and in the midst of the wilderness a little
hut.
"What a sweet little summer-house!" cried Asako.
It looked like a settler's shack, built of rough, unshapen logs and
thatched with rushes.
"It is the room for the _chanoyu_, the tea-ceremony," said her cousin.
Inside, the walls were daubed with earth; and a round window barred
with bamboo sticks gave a view into what was apparently forest depths.
"Why, it is just like a doll's house," cried Asako, delighted. "Can we
go in?"
"Oh, yes," said the Japanese. Asako jumped in at once and squatted
down on the clean matting; but her more cautious cousin dusted the
place with her handkerchief before risking a stain.
"Do you often have tea-ceremonies?" asked Asako.
The Muratas had explained to her long ago something about the
mysterious rites.
"Two or three times in the Spring, and then two or three times in the
Autumn. But my teacher comes every week."
"How long have you been learning?" Asako wanted to know.
"Oh, since I was ten years old about."
"Is it so difficult then?" said Asako, who had found it comparatively
easy to pour out a cup of drawing-room tea without clumsiness.
Sadako smiled tolerantly at her cousin's naive ignorance of things
aesthetic and intellectual. It was as though she had been asked
whether music or philosophy were difficult.
"One can never study too much," she said, "one is always learning; one
can never be perfect. Life is short, art is long."
"But it is not an art like painting or playing the piano, just pouring
out tea?"
"Oh, yes," Sadako smiled again, "it is much more than that. We
Japanese do not think art is just to be able to do things, showing
off like _geisha_. Art is in the character, in the spirit. And
the tea-ceremony teaches us to make our character full of art, by
restraining everything ugly and common, in every movement, in the
movement of our hands, in the position of our feet, in the looks of
our faces. Men and women ought not to sit and move like animals; but
the shape of their bodies, and their way of action ought to express a
poetry. That is the art of the _chanoyu_."
"I should like to see it," said Asako, excited by her cousin's
enthusiasm, though she hardly understood a word of what she had been
saying.
"You ought to learn some of it," said Sadako, with the zeal of a
propagandist. "My teacher says--and my teacher was educated at the
court of the Tokugawa Shogun--that no woman can have really good
manners, if she has not studied the _chanoyu_."
Of course, there was nothing which Asako would like more than to sit
in this fascinating arbour in the warm days of the coming summer,
and play at tea-parties with her new-found Japanese cousin. She would
learn to speak Japanese, too; and she would help Sadako with her
French and English.
The two cousins worked out the scheme for their future intimacy until
the stars were reflected in the lake and the evening breeze became too
cool for them.
Then they left the little hermitage and continued their walk around
the garden. They passed a bamboo grove, whose huge plumes, black in
the darkness, danced and beckoned like the Erl-king's daughters. They
passed a little house shuttered like a Noah's Ark, from which came a
monotonous moaning sound as of some one in pain, and the rhythmic beat
of a wooden clapper.
"What is that?" asked Asako.
"That is my father's brother's house. But he is illegitimate brother;
he is not of the true family. He is a very pious man. He repeats the
prayer to Buddha ten thousand times every day; and he beats upon the
_mokugy[=o]_ a kind of drum like a fish which the Buddhist priests use."
"Was he at the dinner last night?" asked Asako.
"Oh no, he never goes out. He has not once left that house for ten
years. He is perhaps rather mad; but it is said that he brings good
luck to the family."
A little farther on they passed two stone lanterns, cold and blind
like tombstones. Stone steps rose between them to what in the darkness
looked like a large dog-kennel. A lighted paper lantern hung in front
of it like a great ripe fruit.
"What is that?" asked Asako.
In the failing twilight this fairy garden was becoming more and more
wonderful. At any moment, she felt she might meet the Emperor himself
in the white robes of ancient days and the black coal-scuttle hat.
"That is a little temple," explained her cousin, "for Inari Sama."
At the top of the flight of steps Asako distinguished two stone foxes.
Their expression was hungry and malign. They reminded her of--what?
She remembered the little temple outside the Yoshiwara on the day she
had gone to see the procession.
"Do you say prayers there?" she asked her companion.
"No, _I_ do not," answered the Japanese, "but the servants light
the lamp every evening; and we believe it makes the house lucky.
We Japanese are very superstitious. Besides, it looks pretty in the
garden."
"I don't like the foxes' faces," said Asako, "they look bad
creatures."
"They _are_ bad creatures," was the reply, "nobody likes to see a fox;
they fool people."
"Then why say prayers, if they are bad?"
"It is just because they are bad," said Sadako, "that we must please
them. We flatter them so that they may not hurt us."
Asako was unlearned in the difference between religion and
devil-worship, so she did not understand the full significance of this
remark. But she felt an unpleasant reaction, the first which she had
received that day; and she thought to herself that if she were the
mistress of that lovely garden, she would banish the stone foxes and
risk their displeasure.
The two girls returned to the house. Its shutters were up, and it,
too, had that same appearance of a Noah's Ark but of a more complete
and expensive variety. One little opening was left in the wooden
armature for the girls to enter by.
"Please come again many, many times," was cousin Sadako's last
farewell. "The house of the Fujinami is your home. _Sayonara_!"
* * * * *
Geoffrey was waiting for his wife in the hall of the hotel. He was
anxious at her late return. His embrace seemed to swallow her up to
the amusement of the _boy sans_ who had been discussing the lateness
of _okusan_, and the possibility of her having an admirer.
"Thank goodness," said Geoffrey, "what have you been doing? I was just
going to organise a search party."
"I have been with Mrs. Fujinami and Sadako," Asako panted, "they
would not let me go; and oh!"--She was going to tell him all about her
mother's picture; but she suddenly checked herself, and said instead,
"They've got such a lovely garden."
She described the home of the cousins in glowing colours, the
hospitality of the family, the cleverness of cousin Sadako, and
the lessons which they were going to exchange. Yes, she replied to
Geoffrey's questions, she had seen the memorial tablets of her father
and mother, and their wedding photograph. But a strange paralysis
sealed her lips, and her soul became inarticulate. She found herself
absolutely incapable of telling that big foreign husband of hers,
truly as she loved him, the veritable state of her emotions when
brought face to face with her dead parents.
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