Asako

“ He would tease her about a supposed fondness for rice, for chop-sticks, for paper umbrellas and jiujitsu. She liked him to tease her, just as a child likes to be teased, while all the time on the verge of tears. With Asako, tears and laughter were never far apart.
"Why do you tease me because I am Japanese?" she would sob; "besides,
I'm not really. I can't help it. I can't help it!"
"But, sweetheart," her Captain Geoffrey would say, suddenly ashamed of his elephantine humour, "there's nothing to cry about. I would be proud to be a Japanese. They are jolly brave people. ”

“ The new life appealed to Asako's love of novelty, and the strangeness of it to her child's love of make-believe. The summoning of her parents' spirits awakened in her the desire for a home, which lurks in every one of us; the love of old family things around us, the sense of an inheritance and a tradition. She was tired of hotel life; and she turned for relaxation to playing at Japan with cousin Sadako, just as her husband turned to tennis. ”

“ Much bowing began, in which Asako felt her disadvantage. The long lines of the kimono, with the big sash tied behind, lend themselves with peculiar grace to the squatting bow of Japanese intercourse. But Asako, in the short blue jacket of her tailor-made serge, felt that her attitude was that of the naughty little boys in English picture books, bending over for castigation.
Mrs. Fujinami wore a perfectly plain kimono, blackish-brown in colour, with a plain gold sash. It is considered correct for middle-aged ladies in Japan to dress with modesty and reserve. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If I had a husband, I would always fear he kiss somebody else."
"That is why I am so happy with Geoffrey," said Asako, "I know he would never love any one but me."
"It is not safe to be so sure," said her cousin darkly, "a woman is made for one man, but a man is made for many women."
Asako, arrayed in a Japanese kimono, and to all appearance as Japanese as her cousin, was sitting in the Fujinami tea-parlour. ”

“ A broken heart like a broken horse is of great service to its owner.
But Asako was like one stricken with an unknown disease. Its violence appalled her, and in her uncertainty she prayed for death. Moreover, she was surrounded by counsellors who traded on her little faith, who kept on reminding her that she was a Japanese, that she was among her father's people who loved her and understood her, that foreigners were notoriously treacherous to women, that they were blue-eyed and cruel-hearted, that they thought only of money and material things. ”

“ The Fujinami had hypnotized Asako with this phrase, as a hen can be hypnotized with a chalk line. Day after day it was dinned into her ears, cutting off all hope of escape from the country or of appeal to her English friends.
"You had better marry a Japanese," said Sadako, "or you will become old maid. Why not marry Ito San? He says he likes you. He is a clever man. He has plenty of money. He is used to foreign ways."
"Marry Mr. Ito!" Asako exclaimed, aghast; "but he has a wife already."
"They will divorce. It is no trouble. There are not even children." ”

“ The house stood on a high hill; and Asako, seated at the window, could watch the multiplex activity of the streets below, the jolting tramcars, the wagons, the barrows and the rickshaws. To the left was a labyrinth of little houses of clean white wood, bright and new, like toys, with toy evergreens and pine-trees bursting out of their narrow gardens. This was a geisha quarter, whence the sound of samisen music and quavering songs resounded all day long. ”

“ Beyond the brown sluggish river, the roofs and pinnacles of Asakusa were more fairy-like than a theatre scene. Asako was thinking of that first snow-white day, which introduced Geoffrey and her to the Embassy and to Yaé Smith.
She shivered. Darkness was falling. A Japanese house is a frail protection in winter time; and a charcoal fire in a wooden box is poor company. The maid came in to close the shutters for the night. Where was Tanaka? He had gone out to a New Year party with relatives. Asako felt her loneliness all of a sudden ”

“ 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. ”

“ Little Asako had nothing in common with the argumentative heroines of Bernard Shaw or with the desperate viragos of Ibsen, to whom Sadako felt herself spiritually akin. Asako must be a fool. She exasperated her Japanese cousin, who at the same time was envious of her, envious above all of her independent wealth. As she observed to her own mother, it was most improper that a woman, and a young woman too, should have so much money of her own. ”

“ Asako rang up Reggie; and on the next afternoon the young diplomat called for the Barringtons in a motor-car, where Miss Yaé Smith was already installed. They drove through Tokyo. It was like crossing London for the space of distance covered; an immense city—yet is it a city, or merely a village preposterously overgrown?
There is no dignity in the Japanese capital, nothing secular or permanent, except that mysterious forest-land in the midst of the moats and the grey walls, where dwell the Emperor and the Spirit of the Race. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Asako was glad on the whole that she had no visitors. The Fujinami were busy with their New Year preparations. Christmas Day passed by, unheeded by the Japanese, though the personality and appearance of Santa Claus are not unknown to them. He stands in the big shop windows in Tokyo as in London, with his red cloak, his long white beard and his sack full of toys. Sometimes he is to be seen chatting with Buddhist deities, with the hammer-bearing Daikoku, with Ebisu the fisherman, with fat naked Hotei, and with Benten, the fair but frail. ”

“ They tell their husbands, 'You give money to me.' They just do everything themselves, writing cheques all the time!"
"Really?" said Asako; "but my husband is the kindest and best man in the world!"
"Quite right, quite right. Love your husband like a good little girl. But don't forget your old lawyer, Ito. I was your father's friend. We were at school together here in Tokyo."
This interested Asako immensely. She tried to make the lawyer talk further, but he said that it was a very long story, and he must tell her some other time. Then she asked him about her cousin, Mr. Fujinami Gentaro. ”

“ Asako asked helplessly.
"Ladyship has pretty house by river brink," suggested Tanaka. "Ladyship can stay two month, three month. Then the springtime come and Ladyship feel quite happy again. Even I, in the winter season, I find the mind very distress. It is often so."
To be alone, to be free from the daily insults and cruelty; this in itself would be happiness to Asako.
"But will Mr. Fujinami allow me to go?" she asked, timorously.
"Ladyship must be brave," said the counselor. "Ladyship is not prisoner. Ladyship must say, I go. But perhaps I can arrange matter for Ladyship." ”

“ The clusters of lights started, moved onwards, paused, re-grouped themselves, and struggled forward, until in the narrow street of the village under the hill Asako could distinguish the shapes of the lantern-bearers and their strange antics, and the sacred palanquin, a kind of enormous wooden bee-hive, which was the centre of each procession, borne on the sturdy shoulders of a swarm of young men to the beat of drums and the inevitable chant. ”

“ Meanwhile Asako was a way of access to first-hand knowledge of that world of European womanhood which so strongly attracted Sadako's intelligence, that almost incredible world in which men and women were equal, had equal rights to property, and equal rights to love. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Murata began to laugh nervously, as all Japanese do when embarrassed.
"Mon Dieu!" he exclaimed, "but I do not know myself. The money has been paid regularly for nearly twenty years; and I know the Fujinami are very rich. Indeed, Captain Barrington, I do not think Asako would like Japan. It was her father's last wish that she should never return there."
"But why?" asked Geoffrey. He felt that Murata was keeping something from him. The little man answered,—
"He thought that for a woman the life is more happy in Europe; he wished Asako to forget altogether that she was Japanese." ”

“ This was the procurator. At his side, sat his clerk, similarly but less sprucely garbed.
Asako, utterly weary, was preparing to sit down on one of the benches. The warder pulled her up by the nape of her kimono. She had to stand during her examination.
"What is your name? What is your age? What are your father's and mother's names?"
The monotonous questions were repeated all over again; and then,—
"To confess were better. When you confess, we shall let you go. If you do not confess, we keep you here for days and days."
"I am feeling sick," pleaded Asako; "may I eat something?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Asako was deeply moved. In England we love our dead; but we consign them to the care of nature, to the change of the seasons, and the cold promiscuity of the graveyard. The Japanese dead never seem to leave the shelter of their home or the circle of their family. We bring to our dear ones flowers and prayers; but the Japanese give them food and wine, and surround them with every-day talk. The companionship is closer. We chatter much about immortality. We believe, many of us, in some undying particle. ”

“ Asako was crying very gently. She felt the touch of her cousin's hand on her arm. The intellectual Miss Sadako also was weeping, the tears furrowing her whitened complexion. The Japanese are a very emotional race. The women love tears; and even the men are not averse from this very natural expression of feeling, which our Anglo-Saxon schooling has condemned as babyish. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This money was to be the only tie between Asako and her native land.
To cut off a child from its family, of which by virtue of vested interests it must still be an important member, was a proceeding so revolutionary to all respectable Japanese ideas that even the enlightened Murata demurred. In Japan the individual counts for so little, the family for so much. But Fujinami had insisted, and disobedience to a man's dying wish brings the curse of a "rough ghost" upon the recalcitrant, and all kinds of evil consequences. ”