Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
"Asako dear," Countess Saito continued, "would you like to go to England?" Asako's heart leaped. "Oh yes!" she answered gladly. Her hostess sighed reproachfully. She had tried to make life so agreeable for her little visitor; yet from the tone of her voice it was clear that Japan would never be home for her.
"What did you say to him?" she demanded. "I tell him he must ask you." "But why drag me into it? It's your own affair." "In France and in Japan," said Asako, "a girl do not say Yes and No herself. It is her father and her mother who decide. I have no father or mother; so I think he must ask you." "And what do you want me to say?"
They don't give money to their husbands. They tell their husbands, 'You give money to me. They just do everything themselves, writing cheques all the time!" "Really?" said Asako; "but my husband is the kindest and best man in the world!" "Quite right, quite right. Love your husband like a good little girl. But don't forget your old lawyer, Ito. I was your father's friend.
So Asako thought; and she broached the matter to Geoffrey that very evening. "Wouldn't it be sweet to have a ducky little Japanese house all our very own?" she urged. "Oh yes," her husband agreed, wearily, "that would be great sport." Mr. Fujinami Gentaro was delighted at the success of his daughter's diplomacy.
One of them walked miles and miles every day to get water from a certain spring for his sick mother; another, when a tiger was going to eat his father, rushed to the animal and cried, 'No, eat me instead! Little boys and girls in Japan are always being told to be like the Twenty-four Children." "Oh, how I'd hate them!" cried Asako.
But Asako was so happy and so shiningly innocent. She returned to her circle of admirers, and Geoffrey to his studies of the Far East. He read the Lafcadio Hearn books, and did not perceive that he was taking opium. The wonderful sentences of that master of prose poetry rise before the eyes in whorls of narcotic smoke.
"If we go to Japan now, we shall be in time to see the cherry-blossoms." "Why, little Yum Yum," cried her husband, delighted, "are you tired of Pharaohs?" "Egypt is very interesting," said Asako, correctly; "it is wonderful to think of these great places standing here for thousands and thousands of years. But it makes one sad, don't you think? Everybody here seems to have died long, long ago.
Upstairs in her bedroom, Asako had unrolled the precious obi. An unmounted photograph came fluttering out of the parcel. It was a portrait of her father alone taken a short time before his death. At the back of the photograph was some Japanese writing. "Is Tanaka there?" Asako asked her maid Titine. Yes, of course, Tanaka was there, in the next room with his ear near the door.
"Oh, those are the hikité chaya" said Yaé glibly, "the Yoshiwara tea-houses." "Do they live there?" asked Asako. "Oh, no; rich men who come to the Yoshiwara do not go to the big houses where the oiran live. They go to the tea-houses; and they order food and geisha to sing, and the oiran to be brought from the big house. It is more private.
"What is the matter?" "I dreamed of Geoffrey, my husband. Perhaps he is killed in the war." "Do not say that," said Sadako. "It is unlucky to speak of death. It troubles the ghosts. I have told you this house is haunted." Certainly for Asako the Fujinami mansion had lost its charm. Even the beautiful landscape was besieged by horrible thoughts.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking