Day was fading into twilight as we trailed after the Satsuma men into the heart of Shinagawa. On either side of the Tokaido extended rows of handsome two-storied inns and teahouses, set one against the other without a gap except where divided by narrow cross streets. The upper windows and balconies of every building were sealed over with opaque screens to prevent persons from looking down upon the daimio and his retinue, and across the entrances of the side streets were stretched frail ropes of twisted straw, behind which kneeling crowds waited for the passage of the last Satsuma man.

The street was guarded by wardsmen, or householders, bearing iron staves with large rings at the top. We shuffled along between these warders, with downbent heads, perilously close to the rear of the procession. Three or four times the wardsmen seemed inclined to halt us, but we passed by them with outward indifference, keeping well in advance of the crowds that surged out behind us into the Tokaido from the unbarred side streets.

Midway of the long suburb Yoritomo turned sharply into a narrow street leading towards the bay. I stooped under the barring rope after him, and found myself in the midst of a dense crowd of men, many of whom were still kneeling. Packed side by side in the jam were cotton-clad tradesmen and silk-gowned samurais, half-naked artisans and nobles in lacquered norimon palanquins. All alike were provided with paper lanterns, round, square, or octagonal in shape, and inscribed with crest or name in Chinese ideographs. These lanterns and the rows of similar ones hung along the fronts of the houses were being lighted as twilight deepened into darkness.

Suddenly the crowd through which we were attempting to pass swayed forward and filled the air with the clash of their wooden clogs on the hard ground. The rope had been taken down and the crowd permitted to surge out into the Tokaido. While we worked our way in against the outpouring stream, I was pleased to see that there were no women in the jam. But on either side of the street wide-flung screens exposed to view artistically decorated interiors where smiling young girls in gorgeous dress knelt on the mats, twanging odd music on their three-string samisens or preening themselves before mirrors of polished bronze. In other houses dainty waiting maids fluttered about like butterflies, serving the hungry guests. The crowd in the street was the sweetest one with which I had ever come in contact, and this was no less true when we elbowed our way through a band of breech-clouted porters. The explanation was not far off when, with the breaking of the jam, we approached a building through whose latticed front issued clouds of vapor and a babel of chatter and laughter.

When opposite this house I glanced in through the wide spaces of the lattice and was startled to see a large company of nude men and women splashing about together in a great tank of hot water. It was a public bath—public in all senses of the term! As we passed by, a dripping nymph stepped up from the water within a foot of the lattice and gazed idly out into the street, as naively unconscious in look and manner and as innocent of costume as Eve before the Fall.

Yoritomo swung by unheeding, and hastened on to the open front of one of the larger teahouses. A moment later we had entered a long stone-paved passageway that ran back through the centre of the building. On one side we looked in upon the charcoal ranges and sniffed the savory odors of the inn kitchen, on the other we viewed through half-closed screens the commoner guest-rooms of the house.

At sight of our tattered robes bowing waitresses sought to usher us into one of these front apartments. Yoritomo thrust past them and on down the passage, fifty paces or more, until we came out into a veritable fairy garden, strung with myriads of painted lanterns. As we seated ourselves on a low bench under a grape arbor, the host overtook us and, bowing curtly, asked what we desired.

“Does Kohana, the free geisha, still live here?” asked Yoritomo.

“Kohana San, the artist patronized by princes, still honors my poor establishment,” replied the man.

“We would speak with her,” said Yoritomo, pushing back his hat until his pale aristocratic face could be seen in the soft lantern light.

The landlord, who had been about to turn us off, hesitated and answered in a more respectful tone: “The most famous dancer of Yedo enjoys the favor of daimios. How then can I bid her come to attend those who seem no more than Yamabushi?”

Yoritomo drew a sheet of paper from his bosom, and taking his brush pen from the case at his girdle, wrote a few small ideographs in the classical Chinese character. Swift as were his strokes, the first letter was scarcely drawn before the host was kowtowing, forehead to earth. He rose, touched the finished writing to his brow, and clattered off on his high wooden clogs across the fairyland of his garden. “You have declared yourself!” I exclaimed.

“To him, no. My manner of writing convinced him that I am of high rank. But I wrote only a quotation from one of the ancient poems. Even if he is learned enough to read it—”

“Will this dancer then grasp your meaning?”

“Kohana is one of the higher class of geisha called shirabyoshi,—one of the superior artists. She is of samurai blood, and the old geisha who bought her in childhood, and trained her after the manner of geishas, gave her the highest of women’s culture. Before I left Yedo I bought the girl’s freedom from service. She was then in her eighteenth year.”

“You bought her freedom!” I murmured. “You who look so coldly upon women!”

“I could do no more for her,—and no less. We loved, but love cannot bind a true samurai when duty calls. I vowed to give my life to the service of the Mikado and Dai Nippon. To have lingered with her after that would have been despicable.”

I sat silent, reflecting upon the strange customs of this queer people and the hidden depths in the nature of my friend. All my intimacy with him, backed by close study of KÄmpfer and Siebold, had failed to prepare me for the bizarre contrasts and impressions of the mysterious land of Nippon. In the garden about us pleasure-seekers strolled along the rough-paved walks on lacquered clogs, but none disturbed our seclusion in the arbor until the landlord came shuffling back. He kowtowed before us, with loud insuckings of his breath. I could scarcely hear his murmured words: “Kohana San sends humble greetings to the honorable writer, and entreats him and his honorable companion to honor her lowly dwelling with their august presence.”

“We need no guide,” replied Yoritomo, as the landlord rose to conduct us.

The man again prostrated himself and held to the obsequious salute until we had moved away. The moon gave no light through the curtain of drifting cloud, but as we hastened along a winding path, in through the gay rows of swaying paper lanterns, I made out amidst the graceful trees and flowering shrubs grotesque bronze figures, odd shaped rocks, and quaint pagoda-topped stone lanterns.

Soon the path led down along the shore of a tiny lake, whose still surface glinted with the many-hued reflections of the lanterns. We crossed over at one corner on a frail bamboo bridge, arched like a quarter-round of hoop, and passed through a fern-set rockery, to a gateless opening in a hedge of bamboos. Beside this entrance, resplendent in a miniature kimono of silver-wrought blue silk, waited a doll-like little maiden of twelve, who, having duly kowtowed to us, tottered ahead on her high clogs, to conduct us to the house of her mistress.

A few steps brought us to a rambling red-tiled bungalow with broad, low eaves and deep-set verandas. Mounting daintily before us up the rough stone steps, the child knelt upon the polished planking of the veranda, to remove our sandals. If she was astonished at our mudstained leggings, she showed not the slightest sign, but bowed us into the house with winsome smiles.

Though all the screens were open, the interior before us was dark as midnight. The little maiden reached down one of the lanterns that hung from the eaves among the tinkling wind-bells, and lighted us in across two tiny rooms to a large apartment fronting on a miniature garden court. All one side of the room was open to the court veranda, and two of the other walls were formed of sliding screens, but the far end of the room was closed with a solid partition containing a shallow double alcove.

The little maid hastened to place two soft leather cushions for us, hesitating just perceptibly over the second until Yoritomo indicated that it was to be laid beside the first, close before the raised floor of the larger recess. Having kowtowed while we reposed ourselves on knees and heels, she pattered about the room with a taper, lighting the pith wicks of several little saucer lamps that were set about the room in square paper frames.

I glanced around the apartment in the increasing glow. The soft, thick mats, all about three by six feet in size, were set in the floor on a level with the slotted sill-beams of the wall-screens. Unlike those I had seen in the front rooms of the inns, they were not only immaculately white and clean but were bordered with strips of silk. The sliding screens of the room were rimmed with gold leaf and painted with exquisite landscapes in rich soft colors. The low ceiling and the recessed wall behind us were finished in fanciful cabinetwork, and the beautiful grain of the two woods used was polished without oil or varnish to a surface that shone like satin.

The one side of the recess was an open closet, filled with shelves and drawers; the other was the sacred tokonoma mentioned by the Dutch writers. Upon its wall hung a blue silk banner, painted with a summer view of Fuji-yama. Below, on the polished floor, a vase of plain earthenware held a single fragrant spray of Cape jasmine. Across from the vase stood the bronze figure of a playful kitten, with paw outstretched in graceful invitation. Before it were placed a few grains of boiled rice, a tiny cup of amber liquid, and a stick of burning incense. It was the emblem and godlet of the geishas,—a frolicsome young cat, behind whose velvet touch lurked cruel claws, ever ready to mangle.

Would the worshipper of this image meet her former lover with feline treachery?

As I asked myself the question the room re-echoed with a ripple of gentle laughter, melodious as the note of an Æolian harp, sweeter than the tinkle of fairy bells. I faced to front, and saw floating towards us a vision as wondrously beautiful as a Buddhist angel. Against the jet blackness of her high coiffure glinted comb crests and pin heads of amber and coral, while from slender throat to tiny feet she was enveloped in a robe of scarlet silk, gorgeously embroidered with flowers in gold thread, and her plump little hand fluttered a vividly colored fan.

Like my friend’s, the girl’s face showed the samurai type in its oval contour, small mouth, and aristocratic nose,—features so markedly different from the broad, flat faces of the lower classes. The characteristic lack of prominence of her brows and the bridge of her nose lent to the upper part of her face a mildness of expression well in keeping with the inimitable gracefulness and gentleness of her bearing, but her rosebud mouth and lustrous black eyes held all the subtle allurement of a Spanish Carmen’s.

Bound about as she is by narrow skirts, modesty compels the Japanese woman to assume in walking a short, scuffling, intoed gait, with forward bent body and head. Yet even to this awkward movement Kohana San, the dancer, contrived to give a semblance of grace as she hastened forward to prostrate herself at the feet of my friend.

The little maid was tripping from the room. The geisha sank down before us, her forehead upon the mat between her little olive-hued hands, and her body quivering with an excess of emotion which even a lifetime of training could not enable her to repress.

Yoritomo gazed down upon her as serenely impassive in look as a bronze Buddha. Yet beneath his placid tone even I could detect the hidden note of tenderness: “Kohana, we have come to you from a long journey.”

“My lord!” she murmured, “to my lowly house first of all!”

She rose to her knees and gazed into his face with a look of such radiant love and devotion that I forgot on the instant my suspicion of her loyalty. And in the same moment I forgave the thick powdering of rice flour upon her face, and the dark red stain of thistle juice upon her lips, and the greasy pomade with which her hair was matted and stiffened.

For a minute or more the lovers sat silent and motionless, gazing into one another’s eyes, Yoritomo gravely smiling, Kohana melting to happy tears. That was their greeting after three years of separation!

“Tomo,” I whispered in English, “do you not see how she has waited and longed for you all the time since you left her? Console her for the past! I will go out and leave you.”

“Do not trouble,” he replied. “Have I not told you that we Japanese do not kiss and embrace?” He turned and spoke to the girl, who was glancing at me out of the corners of her long eyes with intense curiosity: “Kohana, my brother is weary, and we have not bathed in two days.”

“My lord! no bath in two days!” she gasped, and she clapped her hands sharply. There sounded an answering “Hai!” and the little serving maid appeared at the end of the room—“Quick, girl! see that the bath is heated.”

As the child trotted away, Yoritomo peered out through the open side of the room into the dim garden. “Close the shoji,” he ordered.

Kohana hastened across, and from either end of the room drew white paper screens out along the slotted sill and lintel-beams, until the room was shut in from the garden. Within a minute she was again kneeling before us. Yoritomo smiled into her beaming face, and said: “You will now be honored by seeing the countenance of my august brother. He is my friend and benefactor.”

At the word, I lifted off my deep-brimmed hat and looked at her, smiling. What she had expected to see I cannot say. My oval face and even my nose might easily have passed for Japanese, and my cheeks were tanned almost to the darkness of Yoritomo’s. But the two days’ stubble upon my lip and chin was very thick for the beard of an Oriental, and my forehead much too white, while yet far more my round blue eyes spoke of a terrifying world all unknown to this gentle girl. Before my look her eyes widened and purpled with terror. She sank down at my feet in speechless fear.

“Is it so Kohana welcomes my friend and brother?” asked Yoritomo in quiet reproach. “There is nothing to fear.”

The girl straightened and gazed up at me, wide-eyed yet with a smile on her trembling lips. “Tojin sama! forgive the rudeness of one who is foolish and ignorant! Accept the humble greetings of your servant!”

“Is the tojin so fearful a beast or devil in the eyes of Kohana San that she still trembles?” I asked.

“Woroto Sama is my friend and brother. He has been my benefactor during all my travels among the tojin,” added Yoritomo.

“Among the tojin, my lord! You have travelled among the barbarians?—beyond the sea?” “To the five continents. I sailed away with Woroto Sama towards the rising sun, and sailed back with him from the setting sun. The world is an enormous ball, Kohana, and I have been around it as a gnat might crawl around Fujiyama.”

“My lord is no gnat!” she laughed. “I do not understand. Even Fuji-san rests broadly upon the back of Dai Nippon, and Dai Nippon upon the back of the great fish. How then could my lord go beneath? Did my lord see the great fish?”

“I saw greater things than the fish of our myth. Beyond the seas are lands vastly greater than Nippon. I have sailed in the black ships and seen the power of the tojin. Tell me quickly. Has word come of the fleet from America?”

“No more, my lord, than a message from the tojin at Deshima that the black ships had sailed for Dai Nippon and would force the Shogunate to open other ports than Nagasaki.”

Yoritomo’s eyes glowed. “We are in time, brother! All now turns upon the wisdom or folly of the Elder Council.”

Kohana rose to her feet barely in time to mask my face from the gaze of the child-maid. She had returned to announce that the bath was ready.

“Go bid the landlord prepare his best dishes for my guests. Then see that no one enters unannounced,” said her mistress.

The child turned away in smiling obedience. Yoritomo signed me to rise and follow Kohana, who took up a lantern and thrust open one of the screens of the inner wall. We walked along a smooth planked passage twenty or thirty paces to a little room with sloping slatted floor. Beside the door stood clothes-racks, on which hung thin towels of cotton print. Three or four buckets of cold water ranged along the wall, and at the lower end, half sunk below the level of the floor, was a great tub, or wide-mouthed barrel, from which warm vapors were beginning to rise.

The geisha hung her lantern to a convenient hook, and unwrapped her long crepe obi, or sash. In a moment she had slipped off her gold-brocaded robe and disclosed a still more beautiful under kimono of azure silk embroidered with gold dragons. Loosening the inner obi, she dropped her blue robe from her graceful shoulders, and stood before us as nude and as unconscious as the nymph of the public bath. Though I was aware that she was a member of a profession that her people class little above the courtesans, one look into her earnest, smiling face convinced me that her thoughts were innocent of all immodesty.

“Our customs are not the customs of the Occident, but they are now your customs, Woroto,” said Yoritomo, and he ungirt his priest robe. There was no escape, and my hesitancy was brief. My friend had submitted to many customs repugnant to him, in my country. Since this was a custom of his country, I could do no less. His matter-of-fact manner, taken with the girl’s naive unconsciousness of all wrong, helped me to realize that true modesty and purity are of the spirit and not of outward convention.

The ordeal was no light one, yet long before the bath was finished I had begun to forget my embarrassment in the girl’s ecstasies of wonder and delight over the whiteness of my skin. Though distinctly a brunette in all else than the color of my eyes, I seemed marvellously fair to this daughter of the Orient, whose own skin was of the olive tint of southern Italy and Spain.

With strict impartiality she aided our ablutions with the cold water, and then, at a sign from Yoritomo, led me first to the tub. It was scalding hot, yet the girl betrayed surprise when I insisted upon the addition of two cooling buckets before I would venture in. Even with that I was almost parboiled before Kohana had finished shaving my friend and dressing his hair.

When at last he came to take my place in purgatory, the girl deftly set about drying and shampooing me, still exclaiming upon the fairness of my skin, though it was now far other than “snow white.” Having dried the “honorable tojin sama,” she proceeded to shave my face and crown with her queer little razor and to reknot my cue. To my vast relief, she then cast aside my Yamabushi robe and soiled leggings, and left me to dress myself in the rich garments I had worn inside my tatters.