Kimono

CHAPTER XXI

SAYONARA (GOOD-BYE)

  Tomo ni narite
  Onaji minato wo
  Izuru fune no
  Yuku-ye mo shirazu
  Kogi-wakari-nuru!

  Those ships which left
  The same harbour
  Side by side
  Towards an unknown destination
  Have rowed away from one another!

Reggie Forsyth, remaining in Chuzenji, had become a prey to a most crushing reaction. At the time of trial, he had been calm and clear-sighted. For a moment he had experienced a sensation of relief at shaking off the shackles which Yaé's fascination had fastened upon him. He had been aware all along that she was morally worthless. He was glad to have the matter incontestably proved. But his paradise, though an artificial one, had been paradise all the same. It had nourished him with visions and music. Now, he had no companion except his own irrepressible spirit jibing at his heart's infirmity. He came to the reluctant conclusion that he must take Yaé back again. But she must never come again to him on the same terms. He would take her for what she really was, a unique and charming fille-de-joie, and he knew that she would be glad to return. Without something, somebody, some woman to interest him, he could not face another year in this barren land.

Then what about Geoffrey, his friend who had betrayed him? No, he could not regard him in such a tragic light. He was angry with Geoffrey, but not indignant. He was angry with him for being a blunderer, an elephant, for being so easily amenable to Lady Cynthia's intrigues, for being so good-natured, stupid and gullible. He argued that if Geoffrey had been a wicked seducer, a bold Don Juan, he would have excused him and would have felt more sympathy for him. He would have thoroughly enjoyed sitting down with him to a discussion of Yaé's psychology. But what did an oaf like Geoffrey understand about that bundle of nerves and instincts, partly primitive and partly artificial, bred out of an abnormal cross between East and West, and doomed from conception to a life astray between light and darkness? He had been disillusioned about his old friend, and he wished never to see him again.

"What frauds these noble natures are!" he said to himself, "these Old Honests, these sterling souls! And as an excuse he tells me, 'Nothing actually happened!' Disgusting!"

  'To play with light loves in the portal,
  To kiss and embrace and refrain!'

"The virtue of our days is mostly impotence! Lust and passion and love and marriage! Why do our dull insular minds mix up these four entirely separate notions? And how can we jump with such goat-like agility from one circle of thought into another without ever noticing the change in the landscape?"

He strolled over to the piano to put these ideas into music.

Lady Cynthia had decided that it would be bad for him to stop in Chuzenji. Mountain scenery is demoralising for a nature so Byronic. He was forthwith despatched to Tokyo to represent his Embassy at a Requiem Mass to be celebrated for the souls of an Austrian Archduke and his wife, who had recently been assassinated by a Serbian fanatic somewhere in Bosnia. Reggie was furious at having to undertake this mission. For the mountains were soothing to him, and he was not yet ready for encounters. When he arrived in Tokyo, he was in a very bad temper.

* * * * *

Asako had heard from Tanaka that Reggie Forsyth was expected at the Embassy. That useful intelligence-officer had been posted by the Fujinami to keep watch on the Embassy compound, and to report any movements of importance; for the conspirators were not entirely at ease as to the legality of abducting the wife of a British subject, and keeping her against her husband's demands.

Asako had received that day a pathetic letter from Geoffrey, giving detail for detail his account of his dealings with Yaé Smith, begging her to understand and believe him, and to forgive him for the crime which he had never committed.

In spite of her cousin's incredulity, Asako's resolution was shaken by this appeal. At last, now that she had lost her husband, she was beginning to realise how very much she loved him. Reggie Forsyth would be a more or less impartial witness.

Late that evening, in a hooded rickshaw she crossed the short distance which led to the Embassy. Mr. Forsyth had just arrived.

Mr. Forsyth was very displeased to hear Mrs. Barrington announced. It was just the kind of meeting which would exasperate and unnerve him.

Her appearance was against her. She wore a Japanese kimono, unpleasantly reminiscent of Yaé. Her hair was disordered and frantic-looking. Her eyes were red with weeping.

"Let me say at once," observed Reggie, as he offered her a chair, "that I am in no way responsible for your husband's shortcomings. I have too many of my own."

Asako could never understand Reggie when he talked in that sarcastic tone.

"I want to know exactly what happened," she begged. "I have no one else who can tell me."

"Your husband says that nothing actually happened," replied Reggie brutally.

The girl realised that this statement was far from being the vindication of Geoffrey which she had begun to hope for.

"But what did you actually see?" she asked.

"I saw Miss Smith with your husband. As it was in my house, they might have asked my leave first."

Asako shivered.

"But do you think Geoffrey had been—love-making to Miss Smith?"

"I don't know," said Reggie wearily. "From what I heard, I think Miss Smith was doing most of the love-making to Geoffrey; but he did not seem to object to the process."

Asako's yearnings for proof of her husband's innocence were crushed.

"What shall I do?" she pleaded.

"I'm sure I don't know." This scene to Reggie was becoming positively silly. "Take him back to England as soon as possible, I should think."

"But would he fall in love with women in England?"

"Possibly."

"Then what am I to do?"

"Grin and bear it. That's what we all have to do."

"Oh, Mr. Forsyth," Asako implored, "you know my husband so well. Do you think he is a bad man?"

"No, not worse than the rest of us," answered Reggie, who felt quite maddened by this talk. "He is a bit of a fool, and a good deal of a blunderer."

"But do you think Geoffrey was to blame for what happened?"

"I have told you, my dear Mrs. Barrington, that your husband assured me that nothing actually happened. I am quite sure this is true, for your husband is a very honourable man—in details."

"You mean," said Asako, gulping out the words, "that Miss Smith was not actually Geoffrey's—mistress; they did not—sin together."

Asako did not know how intimate were the relations between Reggie and Yaé. She did not understand therefore how cruelly her words lanced him. But, more than the shafts of memory it was the imbecility of the whole scene which almost made the young man scream.

"Exactly," he answered. "In the words of the Bible, she lay with him, but he knew her not."

"Then, do you think I ought to forgive Geoffrey?"

This was too much. Reggie leaped to his feet.

"My dear lady, that is really a question for yourself and yourself alone. Personally, I do not at present feel like forgiving anybody. Least of all, can I forgive fools. Geoffrey Harrington is a fool. He was a fool to marry, a fool to marry you, a fool to come to Japan when everybody warned him not to, a fool to talk to Yaé when everybody told him that she was a dangerous woman. No, personally, at present I cannot forgive Geoffrey Barrington. But it is very late and I am very tired, and I'm sure you are, too. I would advise you to go home to your erring husband; and to-morrow morning we shall all be thinking more clearly. As the French say, L'oreiller raccommode tout."

Asako still made no movement.

"Well, dear lady, if you wish to wait longer, you will excuse me, if, instead of talking rot, I play to you. It is more soothing to the nerves."

He sat down at the piano, and struck up the Merry Widow chorus,—

  "I'll go off to Maxim's: I've done with lovers' dreams;
  The girls will laugh and greet me, they will not trick
  and cheat me;
  Lolo, Dodo, Joujou,
  Cloclo, Margot, Frou-frou,
  I'm going off to Maxim's, and you may go to—"

The pianist swung around on his stool: his visitor had gone.

* * * * *

"Thank God," he sighed; and within a quarter of an hour he was asleep.

He awoke in the small hours with that sick restless feeling on his chest, which he described as a conviction of sin.

"Good God!" he said aloud; "what a cad I've been!"

He realised that an unspoiled and gentle creature had paid him the greatest of all compliments by coming to him for advice in the extremity of her soul's misery. He had received her with silly badinage and cheap cynicism.

At breakfast he learned that things were much more serious than he had imagined, that Asako had actually left her husband and was living with her Japanese cousins. What he had thought to be a lover's quarrel, he now recognised to be the shipwreck of two lives. With a kindly word he might have prevented this disaster.

He drove straight to the Fujinami mansion, at the risk of being late for the Requiem Mass. He found two evil-eyed hooligans posted at the gate, who stopped his rickshaw, and, informing him that none of the Fujinami family were at home, seemed prepared to resist his entry with force.

During the reception of the Austrian Embassy which followed the Mass, an incident occurred which altered the whole set of the young diplomat's thoughts, and, most surprisingly, sent him posting down to the Imperial Hotel to find Geoffrey Harrington, as one who has discovered a treasure and must share it with his friend.

The big Englishman was contemplating a whisky-and-soda in the hall of the hotel. It was by no means the first of its series. He gazed dully at Reggie.

"Thought you were at Chuzenji," he said thickly.

"I had to come down for the special service for the Archduke Franz Ferdinand," said Reggie, excitedly. "They gave us a regular wake, champagne by the gallon! Several of the corps diplomatique became inspired! They saw visions and made prophesyings. Von Falkenturm, the German military attache, was shouting out, 'We've got to fight. We're going to fight! We don't care who we fight! Russia, France, England: yes, the whole lot of them!' The man was drunk, of course; but, after, all, in vino veritas. The rest of the square-heads were getting very rattled, and at last they succeeded in suppressing Falkenturm. But, I tell you, Geoffrey, it's coming at last; it's really coming!"

"What's coming?"

"Why, the Great War. Thank God, it's coming!"

"Why thank God?"

"Because we've all become too artificial and beastly. We want exterminating, and to start afresh. We shall escape at last from women and drawing-rooms and silly gossip. We shall become men. It will give us all something to do and something to think about."

"Yes," echoed Geoffrey, "I wish I could get something to do."

"You'll get it all right. I wish I were a soldier. Are you going to stop in Japan much longer?"

"No—going next week—going home."

"Look here, I'll put in my resignation right away, and I'll come along with you."

"No, thanks," said Geoffrey, "rather not."

In his excitement Reggie had failed to observe the chilliness of his friend's demeanour. This snub direct brought up the whole chain of events, which Reggie had momentarily forgotten, or which were too recent as yet to have assumed complete reality.

"I'm sorry, Geoffrey," he said, as he rose to go.

"Not at all," said Barrington, ignoring his friend's hand and turning aside to order another drink.

Geoffrey had a letter in his pocket, received from his wife that morning. It ran:—

"DEAR GEOFFREY,—I am very sorry. I cannot come back. It is not only what has happened. I am Japanese. You are English. You can never really love me. Our marriage was a mistake. Everybody says so even Reggie Forsyth. I tried my best to want to come back. I went to Reggie last night, and asked him what actually happened. He says that our marriage was a mistake, and that our coming to Japan was a mistake. So do I. I think we might have been happy in England. I want you to divorce me. It seems to be very easy in Japan. You only have to write a letter, which Mr. Ito will give you. Then I can become quite Japanese again, and Mr. Fujinami can take me back into his family. Also you will be free to marry an English girl. But don't have anything to do with Miss Smith. She is a very bad girl. I shall never marry anybody else. My cousins are very kind to me. It is much better for me to stay in Japan. Titine said I was wrong to go away. Please give her fifty pounds from me, and send her back to France, if she wants to go. I don't think it is good for us to see each other. We only make each other unhappy. Tanaka is here. I do not like him now. Good-bye! Good-bye!

"Your loving,

"ASAKO."

From this letter Geoffrey understood that Reggie Forsyth also was against him. The request for a divorce baffled him entirely. How could he divorce his wife, when he had nothing against her? In answer, he wrote another frantic appeal to her to return to him. There was no answer.

Then he left Tokyo for Yokohama—it is only eighteen miles away—to wait there until his boat started.

Thither he was pursued by Ito.

"I am sorry for you." The revolting little man always began his discourse now with this exasperating phrase. "Mrs. Barrington would like very much to obtain the divorce. She wishes very much to have her name inscribed on family register of Fujinami house. If there is no divorce, this is not possible."

"But," objected Geoffrey, "it is not so easy to get divorced as to get married—unfortunately."

"In Japan," said the lawyer, "it is more easy, because we have different custom."

"Then there must be a lot of divorces," said Geoffrey grimly.

"There are very many," answered the Japanese, "more than in any other country. In divorce Japan leads the world. Even the States come second to our country. Among the low-class persons in Japan there are even women who have been married thirty-five times, married properly, honourably and legally. In upper society, too, many divorce, but not so many, for it makes the family angry."

"Marvellous!" said Geoffrey. "How do you do it?"

"There is divorce by law-courts, as in your country," said Ito. "The injured party can sue the other party, and the court can grant decree. But very few Japanese persons go to the court for divorce. It is not nice, as you say, to wash dirty shirt before all people. So there is divorce by custom."

"Well?" asked the Englishman.

"Now, as you know, our marriage is also by custom. There is no ceremony of religion, unless parties desire. Only the man and the woman go to the Shiyakusho, to the office of the city or the village; and the man say, 'This woman is my wife; please, write her name on the register of my family,' Then when he want to divorce her, he goes again to the office of the city and says, 'I have sent my wife away; please, take her name from the register of my family, and write it again on the register of her father's family.' You see, our custom is very convenient. No expense, no trouble."

"Very convenient," Geoffrey agreed.

"So, if Captain Barrington will come with me to the office of Akasaka, Tokyo, and will give notice that he has sent Mrs. Barrington back to her family, then the divorce is finished. Mrs. Barrington becomes again a Japanese subject. Her name becomes Fujinami. She is again one of her family. This is her prayer to you."

"And Mrs. Barrington's money?" asked Geoffrey sarcastically. "You have forgotten that."

"Oh no," was the answer, "we don't forget the money. Mr. Fujinami quite understand that it is great loss to send away Mrs. Barrington. He will give big compensation as much as Captain Barrington desires."

To Ito's surprise, his victim left the table and did not return. So he inquired from the servants about Captain Barrington's habits; and learned from the boy sans that the big Englishman drank plenty whisky-soda; but he did not talk to any one or go to the brothels. Perhaps he was a little mad.

* * * * *

Ito returned to the charge next day. This time Geoffrey had an inspiration. He said that if he could be granted an interview alone with Asako, he would discuss with her the divorce project, and would consent, if she asked him personally. After some demur, the lawyer agreed.

The last interview between husband and wife took place in Ito's office, which Geoffrey had visited once before in his search for the fortune of the Fujinami. The scene of the rendezvous was well chosen to repress any revival of old emotions. The varnished furniture, the sham mahogany, the purple plush upholstery, the gilt French clock, the dirty bust of Abraham Lincoln and the polyglot law library checked the tender word and the generous impulse. The Japanese have an instinctive knowledge of the influence of inanimate things, and use this knowledge with an unscrupulousness, which the crude foreigner only realises—if ever—after it is too late.

Geoffrey's wife appeared hand in hand with cousin Sadako. There was nothing English in her looks. She had become completely Japanese from her black helmet-like coiffure to the little white feet which shuffled over the dusty carpet. There was no hand-shaking. The two women sat down stiffly on chairs against the wall remote from Geoffrey, like two swallows perched uneasily on an unsteady wire. Asako held a fan. There was complete silence.

"I wish to see my wife alone," said Geoffrey.

He spoke to Ito, who grinned with embarrassment and looked at the two women. Asako shook her head.

"I made it quite clear to you, Mr. Ito," said Geoffrey angrily, "that this was my condition. I understand that pressure has been used to keep my wife away from me. I will apply to my Embassy to get her restored."

Ito muttered under his breath. That was a contingency which he had greatly dreaded. He turned to Sadako Fujinami and spoke to her in voluble Japanese. Sadako whispered in her cousin's ear. Then she rose and withdrew with Ito.

Geoffrey was left alone with Asako. But was she really the same Asako? Geoffrey had often seen upper class Japanese ladies at receptions in the hotel at Tokyo. He had thought how picturesque they were, how well mannered, how excellent their taste in dress. But they had seemed to him quite unreal, denizens of a shadow world of bowing, gliding figures.

He now realised that his former wife had become entirely a Japanese, a person absolutely different from himself, a visitant from another sphere. He was English she was Japanese. They were divorced already.

The big man rose from his chair, and held out his hand to his wife.

"I'm sorry, little Asako!" he said, very gently. "You are quite right.
It was a mistake. Good-bye, and—God bless you always!"

With immense relief and gratitude she took the giant's paw in her own tiny hand. It seemed to have lost its grip, to have become like a Japanese hand.

He opened the door for her. Once again, as on the altar-steps of St. George's, the tall shoulders bent over the tiny figure with a movement of instinctive protection and tenderness. He closed the door behind her, recrossed the room and stared into the empty fireplace.

After a time, Ito returned. The two men went together to the district office of the Akasaka Ward. There Geoffrey signed a declaration in Japanese and English to the effect that his marriage with Asako Fujinami was cancelled, and that she was free to return to her father's family.

Next morning, at daylight his ship left Yokohama.

Before he reached Liverpool, war had been declared.

CHAPTER XXII

FUJINAMI ASAKO

  Okite mitsu
  Nete mitsu kaya no
  Hirosa kana.

  When I rise, I look—
  When I lie down, I look—
  Alas, how vast is the mosquito-curtain.

Asako Barrington was restored to the name and home of the Fujinami. Her action had been the result of hereditary instinct, of the natural current of circumstances, and of the adroit diplomacy of her relatives. She had been hunted and caught like a wild animal; and she was soon to find that the walls of her enclosure, which at first seemed so wide that she perceived them not, were closing in upon her day by day as in a mediaeval torture chamber, forcing her step by step towards the unfathomable pit of Japanese matrimony.

The Fujinami had not adopted their foreign cousin out of pure altruism. Far from it. Like Japanese in general, they resented the intrusion of a "tanin" (outside person) into their intimacy. They took her for what she was worth to them.

Since Asako was now a member of the family, custom allowed Mr. Fujinami Gentaro to control her money. But Mr. Ito warned his patron that, legally, the money was still hers, and hers alone, and that in case of her marrying a second time it might again slip away. It was imperative, therefore, to the policy of the Fujinami house that Asako should marry a Fujinami, and that as soon as possible.

A difficulty here arose, not that Asako might object to her new husband—it never occurred to the Fujinami that this stranger from Europe might have opinions quite opposed to Japanese conventions—but that there were very few adequately qualified suitors. Indeed, in the direct line of succession there was only young Mr. Fujinami Takeshi, the youth with the purple blotches, who had distinguished himself by his wit and his savoir vivre on the night of the first family banquet.

True, he had a wife already; but she could easily be divorced, as her family were nobodies. If he married Asako, however, was he still capable of breeding healthy children? Of course, he might adopt the children whom he already possessed by his first wife, but the elder boy showed signs of being mentally deficient, the younger was certainly deaf and dumb, and the two others were girls and did not count.

Grandfather Fujinami Gennosuké, who hated and despised his grandson, was for sweeping him and his brood out of the way altogether, and for adopting a carefully selected and creditable yoshi (adopted son) by marriage with either Sadako or Asako.

"But if this Asa is barren?" said Mrs. Fujinami Shidzuyé, who naturally desired that her daughter Sadako's husband should be the heir of the Fujinami. "That Englishman was strong and healthy. There was living together for more than a year, and still no child."

"If she is barren, then a son must be adopted," said the old gentleman.

"To adopt twice in succession is unlucky," objected Mr. Fujinami
Gentaro.

"Then," said Mrs. Shidzuyé, "the old woman of Akabo shall come for consultation. She shall tell if it is possible for her to have babies."

Akabo was the up-country village, whence the first Fujinami had come to Tokyo to seek his fortune. The Japanese never completely loses touch with his ancestral village; and for over a hundred years the Tokyo Fujinami had paid their annual visit to the mountains of the North to render tribute to the graves of their forefathers. They still preserved an inherited faith in the "wise woman" of the district, who from time to time was summoned to the capital to give her advice. Their other medical counselor was Professor Kashio, who held degrees from Munich and Vienna.

* * * * *

During the first days of her self-chosen widowhood Asako was little better than a convalescent. She had never looked at sorrow before; and the shock of what she had seen had paralyzed her vitality without as yet opening her understanding. Like a dog, who in the midst of his faithful affection has been struck for a fault of which he is unconscious, she took refuge in darkness, solitude and despair.

The Japanese, who are as a rule intuitively aware of others' emotions, recognized her case. A room was prepared for her in a distant wing of the straggling house, a "foreign-style" room in an upper story with glass in the windows—stained glass too—with white muslin blinds, a colored lithograph of Napoleon and a real bed, recently purchased on Sadako's pleading that everything must be done to make life happy for their guest.

"But she is a Japanese," Mr. Fujinami Gentaro had objected. "It is not right that a Japanese should sleep upon a tall bed. She must learn to give up luxurious ways."

Sadako protested that her cousin's health was not yet assured; and so discipline was relaxed for a time.

Asako spent most of her days in the tall bed, gazing through the open doorway, across the polished wood veranda like the toffee veranda of a confectioner's model, past the wandering branch of an old twisted pine-tree which crouched by the side of the mansion like a faithful beast, over the pigmy landscape of the garden, to the scale-like roofs of the distant city, and to the pagoda on the opposite hill.

It rested her to lie thus and look at her country. From time to time Sadako would steal into the room. Her cousin would leave the invalid in silence, but she always smiled; and she would bring some offering with her, a dish of food—Asako's favorite dishes, of which Tanaka had already compiled a complete list—or sometimes a flower. At the open door she would pause to shuffle off her pale blue zori (sandals); and she would glide across the clean rice-straw matting shod in her snow-white tabi only.

Asako gradually accustomed herself to the noises of the house. First, there was the clattering of the amado, the wooden shutters whose removal announced the beginning of the day, then the gurgling and the expectorations which accompanied the family ablutions, then the harsh sound of the men's voices and their rattling laughter, the sound of their geta on the gravel paths of the garden like the tedious dropping of heavy rain on an iron roof, then the flicking and dusting of the maids as they went about their daily soji (house-cleaning), their shrill mouselike chirps and their silly giggle; then the afternoon stillness when every one was absent or sleeping; and then, the revival of life and bustle at about six o'clock, when the clogs were shuffled off at the front door, when the teacups began to jingle, and when sounds of swishing water came up from the bath-house, the crackle of the wood-fire under the bathtub, the smell of the burning logs, and the distant odours of the kitchen.

Outside, the twilight was beginning to gather. A big black crow flopped lazily on to the branch of the neighbouring pine-tree. His harsh croak disturbed Asako's mind like a threat. High overhead passed a flight of wild geese in military formation on their way to the continent of Asia. Lights began to peep among the trees. Behind the squat pagoda a sky of raspberry pink closed the background.

The twilight is brief in Japan. The night is velvety; and the moonlight and the starlight transfigure the dolls' house architecture, the warped pine-trees, the feathery bamboo clumps and the pagoda spires.

From a downstair room there came the twang of cousin Sadako's koto, a kind of zither instrument, upon which she played interminable melancholy sonatas of liquid, detached notes, like desultory thoughts against a background of silence. There was no accompaniment to this music and no song to chime with it; for, as the Japanese say, the accompaniment for koto music is the summer night-time and its heavy fragrance, and the voice with which it harmonizes is the whisper of the breeze in the pine-branches.

Long after Sadako had finished her practice, came borne upon the distance the still more melancholy pipe of a student's flute. This was the last human sound. After that the night was left to the orchestra of the insects—the grasshoppers, the crickets and the semi (cicadas). Asako soon was able to distinguish at least ten or twelve different songs, all metallic in character, like clock springs being slowly wound up and then let down with a run. The night and the house vibrated with these infinitesimal chromatics. Sometimes Asako thought the creatures must have got into her room, and feared for entanglements in her hair. Then she remembered that her mother's nickname had been "the Semi" and that she had been so called because she was always happy and singing in her little house by the river.

This memory roused Asako one day with a wish to see how her own house was progressing. This wish was the first positive thought which had stirred her mind since her husband had left her; and it marked a stage in her convalescence.

"If the house is ready," she thought "I will go there soon. The
Fujinamis will not want me to live here permanently."

This showed how little she understood as yet the Japanese family system, whereby relatives remain as permanent guests for years on end.

"Tanaka" she said one morning, in what was almost her old manner, "I think I will have the motor car to-day."

Tanaka had become her body servant as in the old days. At first she had resented the man's reappearance, which awakened such cruel memories. She had protested against him to Sadako, who had smiled and promised. But Tanaka continued his ministrations; and Asako had not the strength to go on protesting. As a matter of fact, he was specially employed by Mr. Fujinami Gentaro to spy on Asako's movements, an easy task hitherto, since she had not moved from her room.

"Where is the motor car, Tanaka?" she asked again.

He grinned, as Japanese always do when embarrassed.

"Very sorry for you," he answered; "motor car has gone away."

"Has Captain Barrington—?" Asako began instinctively; then, remembering that Geoffrey was now many thousands of miles from Japan, she turned her face to the wall and began to cry.

"Young Fujinami San," said Tanaka, "has taken motor car. He go away to mountains with geisha girl. Very bad, young Fujinami San, very roué."

Asako thought that it was rather impertinent to borrow her own motor car without asking permission, even if she was their guest. She did not yet understand that she and all her possessions belonged from henceforth to her family—to her male relatives, that is to say; for she was only a woman.

"Old Mr. Fujinami San," Tanaka went on, happy to find his mistress, to whom he was attached in a queer Japanese sort of way, interested and responsive at last, "old Mr. Fujinami San, he also go to mountain with geisha girl, but different mountain. Japanese people all very roué. All Japanese people like to go away in summer season with geisha girl. Very bad custom. Old Mr. Fujinami San, not so very bad, keep same geisha girl very long time. Perhaps Ladyship see one little girl, very nice little girl, come sometimes with Miss Sadako and bring meal-time things. That little girl is geisha girl's daughter. Perhaps old Mr. Fujinami San's daughter also, I think: very bastard: I don't know!"

So he rambled on in the fashion of servants all the world over, until Asako knew all the ramifications of her relatives, legitimate and illegitimate.

She gathered that the men had all left Tokyo during the hot season, and that only the women were left in the house. This encouraged her to descend from her eyrie, and to endeavour to take up her position in her family, which was beginning to appear the less reassuring the more she learned about its history.

The life of a Japanese lady of quality is peculiarly tedious. She is relieved from the domestic cares which give occupation to her humbler sisters. But she is not treated as an equal or as a companion by her menfolk, who are taught that marriage is for business and not for pleasure, and consequently that home-life is a bore. She is supposed to find her own amusements, such as flower-arrangement, tea-ceremony, music, kimono-making and the composition of poetry. More often, this refined and innocent ideal degenerates into a poor trickle of an existence, enlivened only by scrappy magazine reading, servants' gossip, empty chatter about clothes, neighbours and children, backbiting, envying and malice.

Once Sadako took her cousin to a charity entertainment given for the Red Cross at the house of a rich nobleman. A hundred or more ladies were present; but stiff civility prevailed. None of the guests seemed to know each other. There was no friendly talking. There were no men guests. There was three hours' agony of squatting, a careful adjustment of expensive kimonos, weak tea and tasteless cakes, a blank staring at a dull conjuring performance, and deadly silence.

"Do you ever have dances?" Asako asked her cousin.

"The geisha dance, because they are paid," said Sadako primly. Her pose was no longer cordial and sympathetic. She set herself up as mentor to this young savage, who did not know the usages of civilized society.

"No, not like that," said the girl from England; "but dancing among yourselves with your men friends."

"Oh, no, that would not be nice at all. Only tipsy persons would dance like that."

Asako tried, not very successfully, to chat in easy Japanese with her cousin; but she fled from the interminable talking parties of her relatives, where she could not understand one word, except the innumerable parentheses—naruhodo (indeed!) and so des'ka (is it so?)—with which the conversation was studded. As the realization of her solitude made her nerves more jumpy, she began to imagine that the women were forever talking about her, criticizing her unfavorably and disposing of her future.

The only man whom she saw during the hot summer months, besides the inevitable Tanaka, was Mr. Ito, the lawyer. He could talk quite good English. He was not so egotistical and bitter as Sadako. He had traveled in America and Europe. He seemed to understand the trouble of Asako's mind, and would offer sympathetic advice.

"It is difficult to go to school when we are no longer children," he would say sententiously. "Asa San must be patient. Asa San must forget. Asa San must take Japanese husband. I think it is the only way."

"Oh, no," the poor girl shivered; "I wouldn't marry again for anything."

"But," Ito went on relentlessly, "it is hurtful to the body when once it has custom to be married. I think that is reason why so many widow women are unfortunate and become mad."

Every day he would spend an hour or so in conversation with Asako. She thought that this was a sign of friendliness and sympathy. As a matter of fact, his object at first was to improve his English. Later on more ambitious projects developed in his fertile brain.

He would talk about New York and London in his queer stilted way. He had been a fireman on board ship, a teacher of jiujitsu, a juggler, a quack dentist, Heaven knows what else. Driven by the conscientious inquisitiveness of his race, he had endured hardships, contempt and rough treatment with the smiling patience inculcated in the Japanese people by their education. "We must chew our gall, and bide our time," they say, when the too powerful foreigner insults or abuses them.

He had seen the magnificence of our cities, the vastness of our undertakings and had returned to Japan with great relief to find that life among his own people was less strenuous and fierce, that it was ordered by circumstances and the family system, that less was left to individual courage and enterprise, that things happened more often than things were done. The impersonality of Japan was as restful to him as it is aggravating to a European.

But it must not be imagined that Ito was an idle man. On the contrary, he was exceedingly hard working and ambitious. His dream was to become a statesman, to enjoy unlimited patronage, to make men and to break men, and to die a peer. When he returned to Japan from his wanderings with exactly two shillings in his pocket, this was his programme. Like Cecil Rhodes, his hero among white men, he made a will distributing millions. Then he attached himself to his rich cousins, the Fujinami; and very soon he became indispensable to them. Fujinami Gentaro, an indolent man, gave him more and more authority over the family fortune. It was dirty business, this buying of girls and hiring of pimps, but it was immensely profitable; and more and more of the profits found their way into Ito's private account. Fujinami Gentaro did not seem to care. Takeshi, the son and heir, was a nonentity. Ito's intention was to continue to serve his cousins until he had amassed a working capital of a hundred thousand pounds. Then he would go into politics.

But the advent of Asako suggested a short cut to his hopes. If he married her he would gain immediate control of a large interest in the Fujinami estate. Besides she had all the qualifications for the wife of a Cabinet Minister, knowledge of foreign languages, ease in foreign society, experience of foreign dress and customs. Moreover, passion was stirring in his heart, the swift stormy passion of the Japanese male, which, when thwarted, drives him towards murder and suicide.

Like many Japanese, he had felt the attractiveness of foreign women when he was traveling abroad. Their independence stimulated him, their savagery and their masterful ways. Ito had found in Asako the physical beauty of his own race together with the character and energy which had pleased him so much in white women. Everything seemed to favor his suit. Asako clearly seemed to prefer his company to that of other members of the family. He had a hold over the Fujinami which would compel them to assent to anything he might require. True, he had a wife already; but she could easily be divorced.

Asako tolerated him, faute de mieux. Cousin Sadako was becoming tired of their system of mutual instruction, as she tired sooner or later of everything.

She had developed a romantic interest in one of the pet students, whom the Fujinami kept as an advertisement and a bodyguard. He was a pale youth with long greasy hair, spectacles and more gold in his teeth than he had ever placed in his waist-band. Popriety forbade any actual conversation with Sadako; but there was an interchange of letters almost every day, long subjective letters describing states of mind and high ideals, punctuated with shadowy Japanese poems and with quotations from the Bible, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Bergson, Eucken, Oscar Wilde and Samuel Smiles.

Sadako told her cousin that the young man was a genius, and would one day be Professor of Literature at the Imperial University.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE REAL SHINTO

  Yo no naka wo
  Nani ni tatoyemu?
  Asa-borake
  Kogi-yuku fune no
  Ato no shira-nami.

  To what shall I compare
  This world?
  To the white wake behind
  A ship that has rowed away
  At dawn!

When the autumn came and the maple trees turned scarlet, the men returned from their long summer holidays. After that Asako's lot became heavier than ever.

"What is this talk of tall beds and special cooking?" said Mr.
Fujinami Gentaro. "The girl is a Japanese. She must live like a
Japanese and be proud of it."

So Asako had to sleep on the floor alongside her cousin Sadako in one of the downstairs rooms. Her last possession, her privacy, was taken away from her. The soft mattresses which formed the native bed, were not uncomfortable; but Asako discarded at once the wooden pillow, which every Japanese woman fits into the nape of her neck, so as to prevent her elaborate coiffure becoming disarranged. As a result, her head was always untidy, a fact upon which her relatives commented.

"She does not look like a great foreign lady now," said Mrs. Shidzuyé, the mistress of the house. "She looks like osandon (a rough kitchen maid) from a country inn."

The other women tittered.

One day the old woman of Akabo arrived. Her hair was quite white like spun glass, and her waxen face was wrinkled like a relief map. Her body was bent double like a lobster; and her eyes were dim with cataracts. Cousin Sadako said with awe that she was over a hundred years old.

Asako had to submit to the indignity of allowing this dessicated hag to pass her fumbling hands all over her body, pinching her and prodding her. The old woman smelt horribly of daikon (pickled horse-radish). Furthermore the terrified girl had to answer a battery of questions as to her personal habits and her former marital relations. In return, she learned a number of curious facts about herself, of which she had hitherto no inkling. The lucky coincidence of having been born in the hour of the Bird and the day of the Bird set her apart from the rest of womankind as an exceptionally fortunate individual. But, unhappily, the malignant influence of the Dog Year was against her nativity. When once this disaffected animal had been conquered and cast out, Asako's future should be a very bright one. The family witch agreed with the Fujinami that the Dog had in all probability departed with the foreign husband. Then the toothless crone breathed three times upon the mouth, breasts and thighs of Asako; and when this operation was concluded, she stated her opinion that there was no reason, obstetrical or esoteric, why the ransomed daughter of the house of Fujinami should not become the mother of many children.

But on the psychical condition of the family in general she was far from reassuring. Everything about the mansion, the growth of the garden, the flight of the birds, the noises of the night-time, foreboded dire disaster in the near future. The Fujinami were in the grip of a most alarming ingé (chain of cause and effect). Several "rough ghosts" were abroad; and were almost certain to do damage before their wrath could be appeased. What was the remedy? It was indeed difficult to prescribe for such complicated cases. Temple charms, however, were always efficacious. The old woman gave the names of some of the shrines which specialized in exorcism.

Some days later the charms were obtained, strips of rice paper with sacred writings and symbols upon them, and were pasted upon posts and lintels all over the house. This was done in Mr. Fujinami's absence. When he returned, he commented most unfavourably on this act of faith. The prayer tickets disfigured his house. They looked like luggage labels. They injured his reputation as an esprit fort. He ordered the students to remove them.

After this sacrilegious act, the old woman, who had lingered on in the family mansion for several weeks, returned again to Akabo, shaking her white locks and prophesying dark things to come.

* * * * *

For some reason or other, the witch's visit did not improve Asako's position. She was expected to perform little menial services, to bring in food at meal-times and to serve the gentlemen on bended knee, to clap her hands in summons to the servant girls, to massage Mrs. Fujinami, who suffered from rheumatism in the shoulder, and to scrub her back in the bath.

Her wishes were usually ignored; and she was not encouraged to leave the house and grounds. Sadako no longer took her cousin with her to the theatre or to choose kimono patterns at the Mitsukoshi store. She was irritated at Asako's failure to learn Japanese. It bored her to have to explain everything. She found this girl from Europe silly and undutiful.

Only at night they would chatter as girls will, even if they are enemies; and it was then that Sadako narrated the history of her romance with the young student.

One night, Asako awoke to find that the bed beside her was empty, and that the paper shoji was pushed aside. Nervous and anxious, she rose and stood in the dark veranda outside the room. A cold wind was blowing in from some aperture in the amado. This was unusual, for a Japanese house in its night attire is hermetically sealed.

Suddenly Sadako appeared from the direction of the wind. Her hair was disheveled. She wore a dark cloak over her parti-coloured night kimono. By the dim light of the andon (a rushlight in a square paper box), Asako could see that the cloak was spotted with rain.

"I have been to benjo," said Sadako nervously.

"You have been out in the rain," contradicted her cousin. "You are wet through. You will catch cold."

"Sa! Damaré! (Be quiet!)" whispered Sadako, as she threw her cloak aside, "do not talk so loud. See!" She drew from her breast a short sword in a sheath of shagreen. "If you speak one word, I kill you with this."

"What have you done?" asked Asako, trembling.

"What I wished to do," was the sullen answer.

"You have been with Sekiné?" Asako mentioned the student's name.

Sadako nodded in assent. Then she began to cry, hiding her face in her kimono sleeve.

"Do you love him?" Asako could not help asking.

"Of course, I love him," cried Sadako, starting up from her sorrow. "You see me. I am no more virgin. He is my life to me. Why cannot I love him? Why cannot I be free like men are free to love as they wish? I am new woman. I read Bernard Shaw. I find one law for men in Japan, and another law for women. But I will break that law. I have made Sekiné my lover, because I am free."

Asako could never have imagined her proud, inhuman cousin reduced to this state of quivering emotion. Never before had she seen a Japanese soul laid bare.

"But you will marry Sekiné, Sada dear; and then you will be happy."

"Marry Sekiné!" the girl hissed, "marry a boy with no money and leave you to be the Fujinami heiress, when I am promised to the Governor of Osaka, who will be home Minister when the next Governor comes!"

"Oh, don't do that," urged Asako, her English sentimentalism flooding back across her mind. "Don't marry a man whom you don't love. You say you are a new woman. Marry Sekiné. Marry the man whom you love. Then you will be happy."

"Japanese girls are never happy," groaned her cousin.

Asako gasped. This morality confused her.

"But that would be a mortal sin," she said. "Then you could never be happy."

"We cannot be happy. We are Fujinami," said Sadako gravely. "We are cursed. The old woman of Akabo said that it is a very bad curse. I do not believe superstition. But I believe there is a curse. You also, you have been unhappy, and your father and mother. We are cursed because of the women. We have made so much money from poor women. They are sold to men, and they suffer in pain and die so that we become rich. It is a very bad ingé. So they say in Akabo, that we Fujinami have a fox in our family. It brings us money; but it makes us unhappy. In Akabo, even poor people will not marry with the Fujinami, because we have the fox."

It is a popular belief, still widely held in Japan, that certain families own spirit foxes, a kind of family banshee who render them service, but mark them with a curse.

"I do not understand," said Asako, afraid of this wild talk.

"Do you know why the Englishman went away?" said her cousin brutally.

It was Asako's turn to cry.

"Oh, I wish I had gone with him. He was so good to me, always so kind and so gentle!"

"When he married you," said Sadako, "he did not know that you had the curse. He ought not to have come to Japan with you. Now he knows you have the curse. So he went away. He was wise."

"What do you mean by the curse?" asked Asako.

"You do not know how the Fujinami have made so much money?"

"No," said Asako. "It used to come for me from Mr. Ito. He had shares or something."

"Yes. But a share that means a share of a business. Do you not know what is our business?"

"No," said Asako again.

"You have seen the Yoshiwara, where girls are sold to men. That is our business. Do you understand now?"

"No."

"Then I will tell you the whole story of the Fujinami. About one hundred and twenty years ago our great-great-grandfather came to Yedo, as Tokyo was then called. He was a poor boy from the country. He had no friends. He became clerk in a dry goods store. One day a woman, rather old, asked him: 'How much pay you get?' He said, 'No pay, only food and clothes.' The woman said, 'Come with me; I will give you food and clothes and pay also,' He went with her to the Yoshiwara where she had a small house with five or six girls. Every night he must stand in front of the house, calling. Then the drunken workmen, and the gamblers, and the bad samurai would come and pay their money. And they pay their money to him, our great-great-grandfather. When the girls were sick, or would not receive guests, he would beat them, and starve them, and burn o kyu (a medical plant called moxa, used for cauterization) on their backs. One day he said to the woman who was mistress of the house, 'Your girls are too old. The rich friends do not come any more. Let us sell these girls. I will go into the country and get new girls, and then you will marry me and make me your partner.' The woman said, 'If we have good luck with the girls and make money, then I marry you.' So our great-great-grandfather went back to his own country, to Akabo; and his old friends in the country were astonished, seeing how much money he had to spend. He said 'Yes. I have many rich friends in Yedo. They want pretty country girls to be their wives. See, I pay you in advance five pieces of gold. After the marriage more money will be given. Let me take your prettiest girls to Yedo with me. And they will all get rich husbands.' They were simple country people, and they believed him because he was a man of their village, of Akabo. He went back to Yedo with about twenty girls, fifteen or sixteen years old. He and the other clerks of the Yoshiwara first made them jor[=o]. From those twenty girls he made very much money. So he married the woman who kept the house. Then he hired a big house called Tomonji. He furnished it very richly; and he would only receive guests of the high-class people. Five of his girls became very famous oiran. Even their pictures, drawn by Utamaro, are worth now hundreds of yen. When our great-great-grandfather died he was a very rich man. His son was the second Fujinami. He bought more houses in the Yoshiwara and more girls. He was our great-grandfather. He had two sons. One was your father's father, who bought this land and first built a house here. The other was my grandfather, Fujinami Gennosuké, who still lives in the inkyo. They have all made much money from girls; but the curse was hurting them all, especially their wives and daughters."

"And my father?" asked Asako.

"Your father wrote a book to say how bad a thing it is that money is made from men's lust and the pain of Women. He told in the book how girls are tricked to come to Tokyo, how their parents sell them because they are poor or because there is famine, how the girls are brought to Tokyo ten and twenty at a time, and are put to auction sale in the Yoshiwara, how they are shut up like prisoner, how very rough men are sent to them to break their spirit and to compel them to be jor[=o]. There is a trial to see how strong they are. Then, when the spirit is broken, they are shown in the window as 'new girls' with beautiful kimono and with wreath of flowers on their head. If they are lucky they escape disease for a few years, but it comes soon or late—rinbyo, baidoku and raibyo. They are sent to the hospital for treatment; or else they are told to hide the disease and to get more men. So the men take the disease and bring it to their wives and children, who have done no wrong. But the girls of the Yoshiwara have to work all the time, when they are only half cured. So they become old and ugly and rotten very quickly. Then, if they take consumption or some such thing, they die and the master says, 'It is well. She was already too old. She was wasting our money.' And they are buried quickly in the burial place of the jor[=o] outside the city boundary, the burial place of the dead who are forgotten. Or some, who are very strong, live until their contract is finished. Then they go back to the country, and marry there and spread disease. But they all die cursing the Fujinami, who have made money out of their sorrow and pain. I think this garden is full of their ghosts, and their curses beat upon the house, like the wind when it makes the shutters rattle!"

"How do you know all these terrible things?" asked Asako.

"It is written in your father's book. I will read it to you. If you do not believe, ask Ito San. He will tell you it is true."

So for several evenings Sadako read to this stranger Fujinami her own father's words, the words of a forerunner.

Japan is still a savage country, wrote Fujinami Katsundo, the Japanese are still barbarians. To compare the conventional codes, which they have mistaken for civilization, with the depth and the height of Occidental idealism, as Christ perceived it and Dante and St. Francis of Assisi and Tolstoy, is "to compare the tortoise with the moon." Japan is imitating from the West its worst propensities—hard materialism, vulgarity and money-worship. The Japanese must be humble, and must admit that the most difficult part of their lesson has yet to be learned. Cut and dried systems are useless. Prussian constitution, technical education, military efficiency and bravado—such things are not progress. Japan must denounce the slavery of ancestor-worship, and escape from the rule of the dead. She must chase away the bogeys of superstition, and enjoy life as a lovely thing, and love as the vision of a life still more beautiful. She must cleanse her land of all its filth, and make it what it still might be—the Country of the Rising Sun.

Such was the message of Asako's father in his book, The Real Shinto.

"We are not allowed to read this book," Sadako explained; "the police have forbidden it. But I found a secret copy. It was undutiful of your father to write such things. He went away from Japan; and everyone said, 'It is a good thing he has gone; he was a bad man; he shamed his country and his family.'"

There was much in the book which Asako could not follow. Her cousin tried to explain it to her; and many nights passed, thus, the two girls sitting up and reading by the pale light of the andon. It was like a renewal of the old friendship. Sometimes a low whistle sounded from outside the house. Sadako would lay aside the book, would slip on her cloak and go out into the garden, where Sekiné was waiting for her.

When she was left to herself Asako began to think for the first time in her life. Hitherto her thoughts had been concerned merely with her own pleasures and pains, with the smiles and frowns of those around her, with petty events and trifling projects. Perhaps, because some of her father's blood was alive in her veins, she could understand certain aspects of his book more clearly than her interpreter, Sadako. She knew now why Geoffrey would not touch her money. It was filthy, it was diseased, like the poor women who had earned it. Of course, her Geoffrey preferred poverty to wealth like that. Could she face poverty with him? Why, she was poor already, here in her cousins' house. Where was the luxury which her money used to buy? She was living the life of a servant and a prisoner.

What would be the end of it? Surely Geoffrey would come back to her, and take her away! But he had no money now, and it would cost much money to travel to Japan. And then, this terrible war! Geoffrey was a soldier. He would be sure to be there, leading his men. Supposing he were killed?

One night in a dream she saw his body carried past her, limp and bleeding. She screamed in her sleep. Sadako awoke, terrified.

"What is the matter?"

"I dreamed of Geoffrey, my husband. Perhaps he is killed in the war."

"Do not say that," said Sadako. "It is unlucky to speak of death. It troubles the ghosts. I have told you this house is haunted."

Certainly for Asako the Fujinami mansion had lost its charm. Even the beautiful landscape was besieged by horrible thoughts. Every day two or three of the Yoshiwara women died of disease and neglect, so Sadako said and therefore every day the invisible population of the Fujinami garden must be increasing, and the volume of their curses must be gathering in intensity. The ghosts hissed like snakes in the bamboo grove. They sighed in the pine branches. They nourished the dwarf shrubs with their pollution. Beneath the waters of the lake the corpses—women's corpses—were laid out in rows. Their thin hands shook the reeds. Their pale faces rose at night to the surface, and stared at the moon. The autumn maples smeared the scene with infected blood; and the stone foxes in front of the shrine of Inari sneered and grinned at the devil world which their foul influence had called into being through the black witchcraft of lechery, avarice and disease.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE AUTUMN FESTIVAL

  Yo no naka ni
  Ushi no Kuruma no
  Nakari-seba,
  Omoi no iye wo
  Ikade ide-mashi?

  In this world
  If there were no
  Ox-cart (i.e. Buddhist religion),
  How should we escape
  From the (burning) mansion of our thought?

During October, the whole family of the Fujinami removed from Tokyo for a few days in order to perform their religious duties at the temple of Ikégami. Even grandfather Gennosuké emerged from his dower-house, bringing his wife, O Tsugi. Mr. Fujinami Gentaro was in charge of his own wife, Shidzuyé San, of Sadako and of Asako. Only Fujinami Takeshi, the son and heir, with his wife Matsuko, was absent.

There had been some further trouble in the family which had not been confided to Asako, but which necessitated urgent steps for the propitiation of religious influences. The Fujinami were followers of the Nichiren sect of Buddhism. Their conspicuous devotion and their large gifts to the priests of the temple were held to be causes of their ever-increasing prosperity. The dead Fujinami, down from that great-great-grandfather who had first come to seek his fortune in Yedo, were buried at Ikégami. Here the priests gave to each hotoké (Buddha or dead person) his new name, which was inscribed on small black tablets, the ihai. One of these tablets for each dead person was kept in the household shrine at Tokyo, and one in the temple at Ikégami.

Asako was taken to the October festival, because her father too was buried in the temple grounds—one small bone of him, that is to say, an ikotsu or legacy bone, posted home from Paris before the rest of his mortality found alien sepulture at Père Lachaise. Masses were said for the dead; and Asako was introduced to the tablet. But she did not feel the same emotion as when she first visited the Fujinami house. Now, she had heard her father's authentic voice. She knew his scorn for pretentiousness of all kinds, for false conventions, for false emotions, his hatred of priestcraft, his condemnation of the family wealth, and his contempt for the little respectabilities of Japanese life.

* * * * *

A temple in Japan is not merely a building; it is a site. These sites were most carefully chosen with the same genius which guided our Benedictines and Carthusians. The site of Ikégami is a long-abrupt hill, half-way between Tokyo and Yokohama. It is clothed with cryptomeria trees. These dark conifers, like immense cypresses, give to the spot that grave, silent, irrevocable atmosphere, with which Boecklin has invested his picture of the Island of the Dead. These majestic trees are essentially a part of the temple. They correspond to the pillars of our Gothic cathedrals. The roof is the blue vault of heaven; and the actual buildings are but altars, chantries and monuments.

A steep flight of steps is suspended like a cascade from the crest of the hill. Up and down these steps, the wooden clogs of the Japanese people patter incessantly like water-drops. At the top of the steps stands the towered gateway, painted with red ochre, which leads to the precincts. The guardians of the gate, Ni-O, the two gigantic Deva kings, who have passed from India into Japanese mythology, are encaged in the gateway building. Their cage and their persons are littered with nasty morsels of chewed paper, wherever their worshippers have literally spat their prayers at them.

Within the enclosure are the various temple buildings, the bell-tower, the library, the washing-trough, the hall of votive offerings, the sacred bath-house, the stone lanterns and the lodgings for the pilgrims; also the two main halls for the temple services, which are raised on low piles and are linked together by a covered bridge, so that they look like twin arks of safety, floating just five feet above the troubles of this life. These buildings are most of them painted red; and there is fine carving on panels, friezes and pediments, and also much tawdry gaudiness. Behind these two sanctuaries is the mortuary chapel where repose the memories of many of the greatest in the land. Behind this again are the priests' dormitories, with a lovely hidden garden hanging on the slopes of a sudden ravine; its presiding genius is an old pine-tree, beneath which Nichiren himself, a contemporary and a counterpart of Saint Dominic, used to meditate on his project for a Universal Church, founded on the life of Buddha, and led by the apostolate of Japan.

* * * * *

For the inside of a week the Fujinami dwelt in one of a row of stalls, like loose-boxes, within the temple precincts. The festival might have some affinity with the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, when the devout left their city dwellings to live in booths outside the walls.

Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o].

(Adoration to the Wonderful Law of the Lotus Scriptures!)

The famous formula of the priests of the Nichiren sect was being repeated over and over again to the accompaniment of drums; for in the sacred text itself lies the only authentic Way of Salvation. With exemplary insistence Mr. Fujinami Gennosuké was beating out the rhythm of the prayer with a wooden clapper on the mokugy[=o], a wooden drum, shaped like a fish's head.

Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o].

From every corner of the temple enclave the invocation was droning like a threshing machine. Asako's Catholic conscience, now awakening from the spell which Japan had cast upon it, became uneasy about its share in these pagan rites. In order to drive the echo of the litany out of her ears, she tried to concentrate her attention upon watching the crowd.

Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o].

Around her was a dense multitude of pilgrims, in their hundreds of thousands, shuffling, chaffering and staring. Some, like the Fujinami, had hired temporary lodgings, and had cooks and servants in attendance. Some were camping in the open. Others were merely visiting the temple for the inside of the day. The crowds kept on shifting and mingling like ants on an ant-hill.

Enjoyment, rather than piety, was the prevailing spirit; for this was one of the few annual holidays of the industrious Tokyo artisan.

In the central buildings, five feet above this noisy confluence of people, where the golden images of the Buddhas are enthroned, the mitred priests with their copes of gold-embroidered brown were performing the rituals of their order. To right and left of the high altar, the canons squatting at their red-lacquered praying-desks, were reciting the sutras in strophe and antistrophe. Clouds of incense rose.

In the adjoining building an earnest young preacher was exhorting a congregation of elderly and somnolent ladies to eschew the lusts of the flesh and to renounce the world and its gauds, marking each point in his discourse with raps of his fan. Foxy-faced satellites of the abbey were doing a roaring trade in charms against various accidents, and in sacred scrolls printed with prayers or figures of Nichiren.

The temple-yard was an immense fancy fair. The temple pigeons wheeled disconsolately in the air or perched upon the roofs, unable to find one square foot of the familiar flagstones, where they were used to strut and peck. Stalls lined the stone pathways and choked the spaces between the buildings. Merchants were peddling objects of piety, sacred images, charms and rosaries; and there were flowers for the women's hair, and toys for the children, and cakes and biscuits, biiru (beer) and ramuné (lemonade) and a distressing sickly drink called "champagne cider" and all manner of vanities. In one corner of the square a theatre was in full swing, the actors making up in public on a balcony above the crowd, so as to whet their curiosity and attract their custom. Beyond was a cinematograph, advertised by lurid paintings of murders and apparitions; and farther on there was a circus with a mangy zoo.

The crowd was astonishingly mixed. There were prosperous merchants of Tokyo with their wives, children, servants and apprentices. There were students with their blue and white spotted cloaks, their képis with the school badge, and their ungainly stride. There were modern young men in y[=o]fuku (European dress), with panama hats, swagger canes and side-spring shoes, supercilious in attitude and proud of their unbelief. There were troops of variegated children, dragging at their elders' hands or kimonos, or getting lost among the legs of the multitude like little leaves in an eddy. There were excursion parties from the country, with their kimonos caught up to the knees, and with baked earthen faces stupidly staring, sporting each a red flower or a coloured towel for identification purposes. There were labourers in tight trousers and tabard jackets, inscribed with the name and profession of their employer. There were geisha girls on their best behaviour, in charge of a professional auntie, and recognizable only by the smart cut of their cloaks and the deep space between the collar and the nape of the neck, where the black chignon lay.