When called to a teahouse, the geisha always plays a piece of serious music, unless her guests expressly dispense with what they do not understand. After this duty is discharged, she may play whatever she or her guests please; and she generally takes to popular songs as they are the easiest to render. With Government officials and others who do not pretend to be musical connoisseurs, the geisha finds it all plain sailing as they appear satisfied with whatever she may thrum on her samisen; but at a party of amateur singers or musicians, her knowledge and skill are taxed to the utmost. She would then be required to play the most difficult pieces that they know; but though she does as best she can, there are not many geisha who can always pull through such trying ordeals. Some indeed throw up the game at the outset, while others calmly advise their guests to go to professional musicians if they wish to hear good music. But beyond these occasional calls for her skill when she may have to blush for her imperfect knowledge, the geisha has little to do. Her most important duty is to impart animation and often to arouse mirth where there is none, and one’s finer sense is sometimes jarred by the hollowness and affectation of her loud peals of laughter; but it is too much to expect that when, behind the gay and insouciant life that the world imagines with envy to be hers, the same cares and troubles oppress her as prey upon the rest of mankind, there would always be sincerity and spontaneity in her actions.
The geisha plays the samisen, sings, dances, and talks on the most trivial topics. Her object, her raison d’être, is to beguile the time that is irksome to her guests. Sometimes she fails to conjure up merriment, or she is too indifferent and makes no efforts in that direction. The silence or dull talk becomes oppressive; and in such cases she fortifies herself against ennui by blowing and squeezing between her lower lip and teeth the berry of the winter-cherry, from which the pulp has been deftly extracted at
