But the majority of evenings are spent in riotous carousing in which Bacchus proves himself no antiquarian.
However much all other forms of Japanese social life may be closed to him, no foreigner is ever a total outsider to these affairs. He is bound, sooner or later, to become friendly with some Japanese, and few Japanese have any conception of entertainment other than with geisha. And I was no exception. I had gone to Osaka one day, and there, at a commercial exhibition, met a gentleman who proved to be my preceptor in the amenities of geishadom. My friend—for so I may now call him—was a sober little gentleman devoted to his unusually charming young wife. "You wait for me half an hour and I be free to go with you show you Osaka. I will introduce you to my best of friend. You American, I know. I lived in America ten years. My wife was born in America. You wait half an hour." I promised. And that was my beginning.
In a sense the Japanese are the most sociable people in the world, and I found myself taken in by strangers everywhere, in just such a free and easy manner. Yet with the men at the boarding-house I found it almost impossible to become intimate. While home we were very friendly, but they never asked me to join them in any adventure. Girl friends are things practically unknown to them. Except geisha, whom, other than his sisters, is a man to know? During my stay there, my neighbor once brought up two girls on a visit: one was Eurasian, the other pure native. The absence of real privacy in Japanese houses minimizes any suspicion which might attach itself to such a visit. I was introduced to them. I tried to be sociable, especially as they both spoke English but my efforts failed.
Come to the home of the Westerner and his wife will entertain you. The Japanese girl doesn't get any such training and never knows what it is to be sociable with men. Therefore the Japanese cannot understand our courtesies and attention to young women. Naturally, they put upon it the wrong interpretation.
Among the young men living at the house, the subject of women seldom came up for discussion. From all appearances, they might all have been celibate priests. One day, however, we were watching the girls in the tea-houses across the way, and I led them on to talk about morality in Japan.
"Do young men ever have girl friends?" I asked him.
