In after months, when I got to know Mr. S. better, I learned the meaning of this casual formula. It indicated that an evening's entertainment of some magnificence had been carefully thought out and discreetly arranged, at the expense of the Asahi (local newspaper). Every foreign pressman was treated in the same way, and an excellent plan it was, beautifully filling the double purpose of flattering the visitor and inducing in him a deep, if ephemeral, sense of importance, and of providing the Japanese staff for once with a really square meal. What passed the understanding was how the Asahi, and the other newspapers, and for that matter the politicians, the men of the Gaimusho (Foreign Office), and the industrialists managed to find the money for this endless entertaining of all those on whom they wanted, for some reason, to make an agreeable impression. Knowing the cost of things one would often, at those long, sumptuous banquets, feel that one was munching bars of gold. I am inclined to blame myself for having left Japan with this amusing little mystery, like many other and larger mysteries, unsolved; but to inquire of one's host, in any country, how he does it, is a ticklish business after all and here, among these polite, unbending people, with whom after months of constant and friendly association one remains on the formal terms of the first meeting, might well be a serious mistake.

We drove back to the hotel and, having dismissed the jeep, went for some distance on foot, skirting the canal with its cherry and willow trees, until we reached a quiet residential quarter of solid, square villas, standing each in its own garden. One of these was the restaurant, and we approached it carefully, since restaurants were illegal and the night was full of sharp little eyes. In my few weeks in Tokyo there had already been several brushes with the military police while I was setting about my lawful occasions, and these had been so disagreeable, the men so truculent and uncouth, that the imagination boggled at the thought of how it would be were one discovered in a genuine misdemeanour. Small figures gently slid open the doors as we walked up the little flagged path and closed them at once behind us. We took off our shoes and, after exchanging salutations with the owner, went up a flight of steep, narrow stairs of highly polished and slippery black wood and into a room in which, cross-legged on a cushion and with an air of having been there since the beginning of time, waited a smiling dapper little man, whom Mr. S. introduced as his colleague, Mr. Hayashi.

The room was bare except for a long, low table with three cushions placed beside it, a porcelain hibashi, or charcoal fire, the wall painting in the alcove and a vase containing a spray of red camellias. There were new rush mats on the floor, perhaps in honour of the season, which gave off a pleasant smell, clean and musty, like a hayloft. The shutters were drawn back to display the garden, where a twisted umbrella pine, its old branches supported by wooden beams, stood against a background of rocks and boulders: in the water was a reflection of the moon, set neatly, and as if according to plan, in the very middle.

Mr. S. had given his invitation in an offhand way, and without knowing if I were free to come, but it was clear that many and elaborate preparations had been made, and everything was ready. As Mr. Hayashi embarked on a speech of welcome, maids brought hot, moist towels to wipe our hands and faces, and others put in front of us the cups of tea and the sweet, sticky cakes, made of sugar and crushed beans, which are the prelude to a long and formidable dinner. It was to be a geisha party, not, Mr. S. explained, as such parties were conducted nowadays in Tokyo, where the girls freely help themselves to the clients' drink and exchange a noisy repartee with each other across the table, but in an older and quieter tradition. As he spoke, a veteran geisha came to find out what were the songs and dances he would like to have performed. She had brought two of her pupils with her, and she apologized for them in advance, saying they were only fifteen years old and were still learning their profession. She was a woman of about forty, dressed in sober grey, with an obi of brown, purple, and gold, befitting her advanced years; her voice was deep and husky, a change from the twitter of most Japanese women, and her manner was suave and assured. It was the first time in Japan that I had seen a woman entirely at her ease in masculine society. She was neither shrinking nor assertive: taking in and summing up the gathering with one shrewd look of her narrow, dark eyes, she calmly squatted down on the floor, and allowed Mr. Hayashi to offer her a drink of sake from his cup. All the important men of Kyoto, the big bosses, the writers, the politicians, the artists, the actors, the police, the journalists, would be known to her: she must have seen them at their most brilliant and their most ridiculous: the intricate weaving of local plot and counterplot which goes steadily on under the admirably smooth and polished surface of Japanese life, would be divulged to her step by step in the course of her long, gay evenings: composed and smiling, ruthless and secret, she was the incarnation of Old Japan.

The two girls who came tripping into the room in her wake were separated from her by many years of experience. She had told us that they were fifteen, but they seemed to be nearer nine, just two little dolls with piping, treble voices and chilly, red, childish paws. Seen from close at hand, they were without attraction of any sort. The lacquer they used to keep their towering coiffures in place had left brown stains round their foreheads and necks, and the dead white of their powder made their teeth look very yellow. They were gorgeously dressed in pinks and reds and emerald greens, with artificial plum blossom and carnations, silver beads, combs, birds, and pagodas nodding and tinkling in their hair. Prostrating herself, each uttered a little speed in English, in stilted, affected tones:

`I am Yuki: please remember me.'

`My name is Haro: will you please come here again?'

Then, squeaking, each ran to her place at the table. The long repast of raw fish, boiled fish, fried fish, fish soup, egg soup, omelette, cold rice cake wrapped in black, sticky, sweetish seaweed, hot rice with shrimps, bean curd and sukiyaki, all washed down by an endless flow of hot sake and cold whisky, went gravely forward. Great pains had been taken to serve every separate dish in the most alluring way: the sashimi, for instance, was a little masterpiece preared by the owner's own hand, the raw white tunny fish being cunningly folded to look like camellias, and fastened to a real bough of the tree which, laid out on a wide, flat, mirrored tray, seemed to be floating along on a stream. Thus it was possible to find a continuing interest in the meal long after appetite was dead. The little girls neither ate nor drank, but giggled, slapped each other and made pert remarks to the men, who were entranced. With me, they made heavier weather, and, after we had counted up to ten in Japanese, English, French, Russian, German, and Spanish, and agreed to love each other always, conversation began to flag. Miss Yuki opened my handbag, powdered her nose from my compact and rouged her lips with my stick; and she was on the point of lighting herself one of my cigarettes when a sudden, peremptory bark from the veteran caused her to change her mind and put everything quickly back again, snuggling up close to me afterwards with an inane expression on her blank little face. Gently a little cold hand began to caress my hair; fully appreciating the difficulties of a baby geisha called upon to entertain a foreign woman who spoke little Japanese, I yet began to feel that there must be some mistake, and was edging rather nervously away when another bark from the veteran sent the pair of them scurrying away to the farther end of the room, at which there was a small raised platform.

The old geisha strummed a soft, melancholy phrase on her samisen and sang, producing her voice in a throaty, unnatural way that was something like the yodel of an Austrian peasant. The two children had knelt down on the platform with their backs to the room, and now, slowly rising, they pivoted round to face us, sketched a greeting lightly with their fans and broke into the dance of the Four Seasons. It was a slow, languorous dance, evocative rather than descriptive, mood passing gently into mood, the blitheness of spring into the arrogance of summer, the pensiveness of autumn into the forlorn despair of winter, with no quickening or slackening of pace other than a sudden brusque step forward or an impatient toss of the fan: the effect was achieved, the mood created, by exquisitely considered movements of head, hands, and feet, by the majestic sweep of long trailing sleeves, the slow rhythmic turns and halfturns of the body; and the whole was pervaded by a subtle unity of thought and feeling, so that at summer's height one sensed the approach of autumn, in winter darkness there was yet a promise of spring. The young geisha were no longer mere impertinent little chatterboxes; they were transformed, as on summer evenings I was to see the country girls transformed, changing, as they danced the bon-odori in honour of the dead, from a commonplace mob into the exponents of an ancient and a difficult art. They had become all poetry, rhythm, colour, acquiring importance, not of themselves, but through the merit of a long, impersonal tradition.

Presently the singer fell silent. The children sank down with their backs to us, their heads covered in their sleeves, as a sign that the dance was over, and then scrambled up, threw a last coquettish sally at the men and scampered away, to get their suppers and go to bed. The veteran said that they were good talented girls but would need several more years of patience before they could be regarded as expert. They were still very awkward. Not that people nowadays could tell the difference, she added: things had changed since her day. A geisha had to know her business then, for she was entertaining gentlemen and connoisseurs. Nowadays, you never knew what might not turn up; the gentry had disappeared, and the only people with money to spend were these new-yen barbarians, or Chinese, or Koreans. We were not to think she had anything against her honourable clients, but could they, she appealed to us, be trusted to appreciate the finer points of a costume, a song, or a dance? She thought not. And some of the foreign gentlemen who were staying in the country had curious little ways; they seemed unable to get it into their heads that the geisha were only there to be looked at. And the girls themselves, she lamented, were not as they used to be. The old discipline was gone. They answered you back and took no trouble. Yet how could you blame them, in the absence of a discerning public? Here in Kyoto things were still not too bad, but they had come to a pretty pass in Tokyo, if one could believe what people said. Of course in Tokyo they had always been rather a mixed lot, whereas here . . . and thus she scolded and rambled on, quietly and evenly as if discussing the weather, while Mr. S., become strangely fluent under the influence of sake, translated. I longed to know her views on the geisha trade union, which had been formed some months earlier and which was now demanding that all the new laws passed to make their lives happier and freer be abolished forthwith: and if she were a member, or even a shop steward: but I refrained from asking, lest she think me indiscreet.

It was growing late, and Mr. Hayashi was fast asleep. All evening he had remained cross-legged, his knees almost touching the floor, like a small idol, moving only as he leant across the table to secure some prize with his chopsticks; and now, in his sleep, he kept the position still, the sticks poised in his right hand, his head drooping sideways a little, his mouth hanging open. Every party I was ever to attend in Kyoto concluded with the collapse, in some form or other, of Mr. Hayashi. Mr. S. was very wide awake, although red in the face. He clamoured for the immediate removal of the Emperor and the setting-up of a Japanese Republic. Carefully, one by one, he turned the sake bottles upside down over his cup. They were all empty. At that he grew a little morose, and his intellect turned into unaccustomed paths. He was filled with a desire to know more of the reason for things. By what right, for instance, he demanded, loudly and suddenly, do we kill all these hundreds and thousands of microbes? The little creatures are given life in the same way as ourselves. Who was to say what should live and not live? He glared challengingly round the room: the old geisha crept silently away. The moment seemed to have come when the party might be brought to a close.

Mr. Hayashi was roused and, a little uncertainly, we all made our way downstairs and through the garden into the road. The last trams were gone, the streets deserted; only now and again was heard the click-clack, click-clack of wooden geta echoing in the distance. Reviving wonderfully in the cool night air, we paused to admire the moon above the canal. The evening was, it appeared, by no means over for my two companions. They escorted me as far as the gates of the Miyako, from which a glare of lights and a wail of saxophones indicated that here, too, Saturday evening celebrations were in progresss, and, having taken a ceremonious farewell, they set out again for the geisha house.

Tracy, Honor. "Kyoto." Ch. 6, Kakemono: A Sketch Book of Post-War Japan. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1950,75-80.