No. V. TEA-HOUSES AND GEISHA GIRLS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7424, 10 June 1902, Page 1

No. V. TEA-HOUSES AND GEISHA GIRLS.

[Ail Rights Reserved.] Tea-houses and Geisha, girls make up thab mournful ceremony a Japanese banquet ; the food is of no consequencer— to a European.' Taken separately they are not baid ; your own dinners at tie foreign hotel would be much, enlivened by performances of Geishas—they would do as well as a Yeomanry band. And tea-houses are not so bad if you don't take their tea, though " their teas are leas awful than the dinners, unless ryou do the correct and take salted cherry blossom with f hem. Japanese dinners are a refined kind of torture; you are expected to sit on your heels and eat off ihe. floor. . Lovely little mouseanees, with scarlet pefciicoate, come and fetel before you. But. what is the use ■. of it when you aie kneeling yoursslf, because, not being a Jap, you oaa't sit on your own knee ; besides your in&usemee spends all her time in playing hide-and-seek with your sake bottle. No good restaura-at will* let you •drink sake that isn't .hot enough, and as you don"t drink it at all, it soon gets bfelow the proper point, aa>d your aiouseinee goes for more. You ara behaviug very badly. The Japanese never keeps his sake waiting. The food is a worse trial. Live fish-might' do if you could persuade yourself to \treat it Jika an oyster, but seaweed soup, end Jiard sweetmeats, and custard made with pickle and fish jniee, a?e novelties too striking for the male EuropeWn st&mach. Wher. you are ditriraing you oateh at straws, tind when yom are naving a Japaii»as banquet you catch at anything you know by sight H:ko a phun or a potato, but it is only a fiublkr form of torture, for the plum is sura to be salted 1 and the potato' cooked in syrup. Even if the things, were good to eat, you couldn't help yourself with chopsticks; it's too like eating soup with a fork.. Undeterred by your not eating, the dinner goes on for hours, whiie you wonder which will happen first— your knee-joints give way or your calves go fiat. If you , have been to a Japanese banquet before, you prop yourself up against the wall. That is the oniy way .you can sit on the flcor. for hours. The mousemees are so - pretty and «o nice that if you do get up to leave in the. middle, they always persuade you to kneel? <Jown again. And when it is all over comes the unkindeat cut of all. Politeness demands that you 6hould maike a separate excuse for each dish you cannot eat; it's -no/ use, for as you are getting .into, your riksha, your iromsemee bands you a pile of white wooden boxes in which she has carefully packed everything you could not eat, for you to take to your honourable family, and etiquette demands that you should take .them, though you give them to the riksha- . boy as soon as you are out of sight. Etiquette is the Kaiser of Japan. It ia ; no good, looking at Geishas while you are going through .these . totturesr|-^g^t • are not an ft state of ipsl!3a^^''make"anow-' ances for their voices or thedr music, and their wit is lost upon, you, which is per* haps just as-well. The Geisha, except in the kind of ballets you get at the Maple Club, does not suit Europeans. She dances with 'her feet, and sings without a voice-. She doea not, as the 10100' gnid! assert, ( belong to the oldest profession in the world — riot necessary, her real function is to console the dissipated Japanese for the" absence of actresses in his country. Madama. Sada Yacoo is a Japanese woman," but a Western idea.' ' ' . . . ■ ' • Japanese ladies have actors to fall! in love with, but the Japanese man has to iall back on the Geisha. The ancient Greeks-did not have actresses either, perhaps their plays we're as dull (on the stage) as' Japanese plays, wihicli run their banquets close. • The ancient Gr&ak was as "wise as the modern Jap; he did not want to be separated by the footlight and the cat-gut torture? of the orchestra from his goddess. The wisest of the ancients, like the Japanese, did nob hang about stage doors, or send jewellery on the off chance to actresses, whom he did not know. If you ask a man to dinner and take. him to tho Oaiety afterwards, you Epoil his dinner or. lose half the performance. Instead of going to the Gaiety, the Japs made the Gaiety come to them. Japanese wjves ( are not taught accomplishments, but virtues, which are their only reward. The Japanese man wants something more tih,an an actress. " The Geisha is expected to be excellent in that way, and to 'be: at his back besides ; when he is too idle, to attend any more to her dancing and singing, he beckons her to. come closer and entertain, him with her blandishmetns. Geishas are not always beautiful, they are always elegant and clever; they are; the best-dressed women in Japan — the Japanese do not think it lady-like for their wives to dress well. Wives wear a sort of

half mourning, and no wonder. The Geisha begins training for her future honours early. Girls are chosen for cleverness at seven or eight years old — beauty is only considered skin-deep for a Geisha. They are trained in dancing and singing and the art of conversation. The latter is most important ; a Geisha has constantly to ba bandying with sake - fuddled admirers and to switch lovers on or off. She is expected to sing and dance and play. Any music-hall artist in London would promise to shoot herself if she could not do better with a week's practice. But the training of these Qeislhas extends over four years, and is perfect of its kind. The popular Geisha, like the popular actress, is xnnioh courted ; she often makes a, brilliant marriage, and is often ho better than she should be ; but she is not a professional courtesan. No Japanese could understand ''The Second Mrs Tanqueray." Ladies with pasts get married every day there ; s their pasts are no objection, but they have to be paste when they marry; in that divorce-monger-ing land Caesar's wife ceases to be a wife if she is not above suspicion. / It is hard fpr .Europeans to take the Geisha seriously for all J;he.ir^c»n^lishmenfe. Theylobfc^^lM^ea^to-are children — whan they ; are not cats. It is easy to detect them from women of the elder profession ; the Geisha looks like an angel with wings of rich brocade, a chalk face, geranium lips, and flowers in her glossy hair. The Geisha may often be seen in rikshas with their duennas; the others rarely go out. The houses in the Yoshiwara are glorified tea-houses, and may be used as suob. They remind one of the Arabian Nights. But the tea-houses are apt to be lovely ; it is their business, except those whion go in for the dull respectability of being inns. A tea-hcuse isn't teatotal. It is generally not a 'house at all ; but a garden, full of summer-houses, and quite as often consists of nothing but a roof and a view. You can never get to a view in Japan without passing through a teabouse, and your way is blocked by gay little mouscmees who rub their knees together and bow and hiss their respects and give you tea. They don't sell it, but you give them a Qhai-dai tea present — three-half-pence (worth only three farthings) for five cups of tea, and you n€«dn't drink it. One often wonders what they do with the tea that isn't drunk in, Japan ; it doesn't seem to go back in the pot for the next person, who won't 'drink it either. Surely Mr Coleman, or whoever it was made a fortune by the mustard people left on their plates, ought to go to Japan and establish a corner in tea-leavings. Perhaps tea plants are kept in good humour' by having the tea put back in the soil. As the tea-shed is built across the path, this pretty performance is a tell. Some of the tea-houses are as beautiful as dreams of coming fortunes. They may be in the Chinese style with masonic I mean masonry, ornaments like that 'described below ; they may have exquisite old wooden terraces overhanging a lake with the sacred mountain Fujiyama staring at them like a house to let ; or they may be themselves overhung with fragrant lavender wistaria blossoms four feet long, which sweeps the waters of a river in the midst of a gay capital ; they may be dear little dolls' houses, built of odorous unpainted pine wood and planted in a retired corner of paradise like the point of Tomi Oka. The dolls are always there, pretty little mousmees, who take off your boots to prevent you spoiling the deep, soft, prim-rose-coloured matting, or kicking fhe house down when you grow impatient. Time is a snail in. Japan. There is a tea-house in every temple, run by the priests. If Europeans go there they sell other things stronger than tea. Riksha-boys' tea-houses you always have with you on the great high roads. Almost any house may turn tea-house or shop among the lower-class Japanese. Delightful as those thatched belvederes are, where you pay your tea money and look at the view, there is nothing a foreigner enjoys so mucb as the city teaihouses with Chinese gardens. About inns I shall say nothing, they are respectable places enough for a landi which has no arbitrary rules about decency. It is the restaurant tea-house at which the Japanese defies our conventions. Even a banker asking his family lawyer to dinner docs not include wives ; he asks him to dinner at a restaurant, and engages Geisha-s — famous for their beauty and wit, but not necessarily for their morals— to make themselves agreeable to him. Both wives regard' this as a natural feature of hospitality. As you drive through Shiba at night you will know where the Japanese gentleman is enjoying himself in the primitive way by large wooden lanterns with paper glasses and projecting eaves, and by the rikshs,boys smoking, and doubtless scardalmongerir.g, at the gates. You will hear the tinkle of the samisen and the poor little Geishas' voices. Some-times, if the night is hot, and the banquetters -have reached the drunken stage, the shutters will be taken down and you will see the party enjpying itself. The Japanese take their pleasures badly ; ike host and his guests sit in a semi-circle more or less drugged with gorging and sake, and the Geishas are ranged in semi-circle opposite if they still have a boul for musdcj or come iqloser aadj

! enchant them, vrafcb prettiness and wifctinesg. Tho^Japaneso do Kofc laugh for pleasure cr I kiss for love ; they have a derisive laugh to show anger, and they giggle at wit, hut the hearty English laugh of enjoyment is unknown to them. Wo went to suoh a fes-bouse at Kobe. I -wanted to stay in the garden, the size of aback yard', which, contained _a river and a waterfall' amd ; a ialw, -{.ad. ever so., many little islands connected with hog-back bridges, gwraislwid with pa.?odas and the mushroom-topped lanterns which aro never lit, and shrines and lighthouses all of mossy old masonary. The lake didn't seem to contain any water, though I was. assured that this .was the case. Its top was paved with broad lotus leaves, from which sprang, like crowns standing on soeptres, huge 1 .rosecoloured blossoms, and all round the lake were freaks 'in maples (not Blunder's). The tour de force, a fir tree taught to grow in tiie shape of a junk, looked as like a ship as any otlu-r junk. The whole scene looked l^ke a willow pattern plate, convert-; f'i by the moon into a garden for a toy ation. It made. me feel quite like a poet, b^.,o,ur hosi> had nab taken us there for poetry, but for a spree. We were sad dogs. QuV little summer-house was only; lit by two^Tush lights on tall candle-sticks of wrought iron ; I was .sorry to observe that they were lit with Bryant and May's m»teheSj_Jbut these wero very likely not reafe ;_ vThen some little mousemees cnane and brought in Geishas, who could not sing, and Japanese dishes, which we could 1 not ea^t, and sake, which we could! not drink, or we might have warmed to our work. It was a cold night, as well s.s cold cheer ; there are moments when picburesqueness fails, even if there had' not been ladies with us. But we went through it as one goes through a masonic installation, realising the adage that bleesed are those who expect nothing.