“Yes, my lady.”
“You made a detour to see the ‘five elements’ tomb of the Maid of Nagara?”
“Even like the dew drop, that when autumn comes lodges trembling on grass, must I roll off to die.” The woman recited the lines, just the words only, with no tune or intonation. I did not know what for, but volunteered the information:
“I heard that song at the tea stall.”
“The old woman told you then. Long ago she was with us as our servant here, before I. …” Here she looked at me, and I pretended to know nothing.
“It was when I was young. I used to tell her the story of Nagarano Otome, every time she called on us after leaving here. The song was very difficult for her to remember. But hearing if told her so often, she finally got everything by heart.”
“That accounts for it; I thought she knew a very literary sort of thing for a woman of her station—however that song is a sad one.”
“Sad, do you think? If I were that maiden, I would have never sung like that. In the first place, what good will it serve to throw yourself into a river and die?”
“None whatever. What would you have done?”
“What would I have done? Why it is easy enough. I would have made sweethearts of both Sasada Otoko and Sasabe Otoko.”
“Both?”
“Yes, yes.”
“You are great.”
“Not great at all; but only natural.”
“Now I see, you can thus get along without flying into the land of fleas or the land of mosquitoes?”
“You see, you can live on without feeling like a crab?”
“Hoh ho-ke-kyo,” the warbler recovered its note, which it had almost lost, and vindicated the fact with loudness that was wholly unexpected. Once recovered, the song seemed to flow out of its own accord, as the bird held down its head, quivered its swelling throat, opened its mouth as wide as it could, and kept on:
“Hoh ho-ke-kyo. Hoh hokke-kyo. …”
The bird went on without stopping, and the woman took the trouble to tell me:
“That is the real poetry.”
V
“Pardon, Danna40 but may I ask you if you are from Tokyo?”
“Do I look from Tokyo?”
“Look? Why a glance … your language tells.”
“Can you tell where in Tokyo?”
“Well, that is a puzzler; Tokyo is so large. … Let me see. You cannot be from downtown. You must belong to uptown. The uptown parts are … Kojimachi, eh? Or Koishikawa? If not, you must be from Ushigome or Yotsuya?”
“Somewhere around there. You seem to know Tokyo well?”
“Well, I am Tokyo-born, Danna, look what I may.”
“No wonder, I thought you looked a city man.”
“Aha, he, he, he, it is all up with a fellow, Danna, when he comes down to this.”
“What made you to drift into a place like this?”
“You are right, Danna, it is drifted that I have done. I had gone down so low that I could not go lower, and had to say goodbye to Tokyo.”
“You ran a barbershop from the beginning?”
“No, not ran, Danna, I am only a journeyman barber. There is a block named Matsunagacho, a dingy small place … a gentleman like you don’t know it, of course. But Ryukan-bashi … you don’t know that either, eh? It is a pretty well known bridge. …”
“I say, give me little more soap, won’t you? It hurts.”
“It hurts? I am very particular about shaving, Danna. I never consider my work done, until I have gone over along and then gone over contrariwise, cutting each individual hair at the very root. No, what the latter-day barbers do is not shaving but letting the razor slide over the face. Bear it a bit more and you will be done.”
“Bear I have done, quite a while now. There is a good fellow, put some warm water, if not soap.”
“You can stand no longer? My shaving never hurts. The fact is, you have allowed your beard to grow too long without shaving.”
The barber reluctantly let go my cheek, which he was pinching with the force of clinched nippers, and taking down a thin apology of a red cake of soap, he had no sooner wetted it in a basin of water than he went all over my face with it. To have a piece of soap applied directly to the skin of my face was one of my rarest experiences in barber shops, and I was not over-pleased to see that the water in which the soap was dipped had the appearance of having stood there for some days!
Sitting in a barber’s chair, I was called upon, in vindication of my right as a customer, to look into a mirror. I have been thinking, for sometime, however, if I should not waive this right. A mirror owes it to itself that its surface is perfectly even and flat, and the image it reflects shall be faithful to the original. If the owner of a mirror, which is not possessed of this common quality, forces you to look into it, you may charge him, as you will a poor photographer, with intentionally injuring your looks. Snubbing the vain may serve cultural purposes; but I fail to see the justice of insulting you by calling a reflection your face, which makes a mockery of it. The mirror, which I was expected to exercise patience to look into, has decidedly been insulting me. I slightly turn my face right, and the mirror makes all nose of it. I turn left, and my mouth extends clear up to the ears. I look a perfect picture of a crushed toad, when I turn my eyes upward. My head elongates itself limitlessly, the moment I incline it ever so little forward. I must make of myself monsters of all imaginable variety as long as I sit before this mirror. Who can say that I was not undergoing a torture?
Moreover, this barber was no common barber. He appeared human enough, when I first looked in, and
