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Updated: May 3, 2025
They had reached a very narrow street, where raffish beer-shops were doing a roaring trade. They caught a glimpse of dirty tablecloths and powdered waitresses wearing skirts, aprons and lumpy shoes all very haikara.
You can live in a haikara house, you can read haikara books, you can wear a haikara hat. It has become indeed practically a Japanese equivalent for that untranslatable expression "chic." Asako Harrington, like all simple people, had little familiarity save with the superficial stratum of her intelligence. She lived in the gladness of her eyes like a happy young animal.
"It must be clearly understood," said the master, "that it is the husband of our Sada who will be the Fujinami yoshi." Ito bowed. "Thanks to the master," he said, "there is money in plenty. There is no desire to speak of such matters. The request is for Asa San only. Truly, the heart is speaking. That girl is a beautiful child, and altogether a haikara person.
Shidzuyé San, as befitted a matron of sober years, wore a plain black kimono; but Sadako's dress was of pale mauve color, with a bronze sash tied in an enormous bow. Her hair was parted on one side and caught up in a bun behind the latest haikara fashion and a tribute to the foreign guests.
"What do you think of him?" Asako asked Tanaka, who had been watching the interview with an attendant chorus of boy sans. "He is haikara gentleman," was the reply.
Now, haikara, is a native corruption of the words "high collar," and denoted at first a variety of Japanese "nut," who aped the European and the American in his habits, manners and dress of which pose the high collar was the most visible symbol. The word was presumably contemptuous in its origin. It has since, however, changed its character as so to mean anything smart and fashionable.
No hustle, no appearance of business save where a messenger-boy threaded the maze on a break-neck bicycle, or where a dull-faced coolie pulled at an overloaded barrow. Grey and brown, the crowd clattered by on their wooden shoes. Grey and black, passed the haikara young men with their yellow side-spring shoes.
When the Fujinami returned to Tokyo, the wing of the house in which the unfortunate son had lived, had been demolished. An ugly scar remained, a slab of charred concrete strewn with ashes and burned beams. Saddest sight of all was the twisted iron work of Takeshi's foreign bedstead, once the symbol of progress and of the haikara spirit.
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