SAKÉ AND SONG
THE Japanese have always been great epicureans, but never was jollity so rife as when, after the coming of the war, merchants jumped like pawns into positions of commercial power and prominence. And from the national game was borrowed a word with which to christen these parvenus, a word by which they are now known round the world—narikin. The lavish entertainments these narikin permitted themselves, became the talk of Japan. The freedom with which they displayed their wealth and the generally boisterous nature of the Japanese at play, are open to any who cares to look on.
The house I lived in stood up against a hill overlooking the whole of the city of Kobe. Immediately beneath it was the finest and most expensive tea-house, or restaurant, in the city, and it was frequented by officials of the highest rank and the rich in general. It was there for me to watch day and night, and I made use of my position. There below were the long, wooden strips of grating across the length of the room. During summer the paper doors were removed. Every afternoon at about four, I could see the waitresses, stripped to the waist, sitting before their little mirrors, making their toilet for the evening.
From my balcony, late one afternoon, I looked down upon the street. From out of the Tokiwa tea-house came two geisha, gorgeously dressed in their tremendous, richly colored silk obi (girdles) round their fantastically embroidered kimonos—two tiny mites absolutely smothered in finery. "They are being introduced to tea-house managers," the boy in the house informed me. "And the two men walking behind them are their new masters."
Then came the usual arrivals of geisha in rickshaws,—attired in red and gold. The gentlemen narikin came next, and the quiet waitresses began to slip about over the mats in their incessant round of duties. Gradually, as the saké began to take effect, the sounds would grow more and more audible, all would burst into song accom-
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