United States or Nicaragua ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Oni mo jiuhachi, azami no hana. Between Kimiko and other geisha there was a difference of gentle blood. Before she took a professional name, her name was Ai, which, written with the proper character, means love. Written with another character the same word-sound signifies grief. The story of Ai was a story of both grief and love. She had been nicely brought up.
But the spring passed, and the summer came, and Kimiko remained simply Kimiko. Three times she had contrived, for reasons unspoken, to put off the wedding-day. In the period of the eighth moon, Kimiko ceased to be playful, and told her reasons very gently but very firmly: "It is time that I should say what I have long delayed saying.
Next upon the left comes the House of Kajita; and in that house are Kohana, the Flower-Bud, and Hinako, whose face is pretty as the face of a doll. Opposite is the House Nagaye, wherein live Kimika and Kimiko.... And this luminous double litany of names is half-a-mile long.
Kimika said that a fool had tried to kill himself because of Kimiko, and that Kimiko had taken pity on him, and nursed him back to foolishness. Taiko Hideyoshi had said that there were only two things in this world which he feared, a fool and a dark night. Kimika had always been afraid of a fool; and a fool had taken Kimiko away.
The inscription on the lantern of the last-named house reveals the relationship between Kimika and Kimiko, and yet something more; for Kimiko is styled Ni-dai-me, an honorary untranslatable title which signifies that she is only Kimiko No.2.
It was in the period of the fourth moon that Kimiko was carried away to the home prepared for her, a place in which to forget all the unpleasant realities of life,-a sort of fairy-palace lost in the charmed repose of great shadowy silent high-walled gardens. Therein she might have felt as one reborn, by reason of good deeds, into the realm of Horai.
And she added, with not unselfish tears, that Kimiko would never come back to her: it was a case of love on both sides for the time of several existences. Nevertheless, Kimika was only half right. She was very shrewd indeed; but she had never been able to see into certain private chambers in the soul of Kimiko. If she could have seen, she would have screamed for astonishment.
Wasuraruru Mi naran to omo Kokoro koso Wasure nu yori mo Omoi nari-kere. "To wish to be forgotten by the beloved is a soul-task harder far than trying not to forget." Poem by Kimiko. The name is on a paper-lantern at the entrance of a house in the Street of the Geisha. Seen at night the street is one of the queerest in the world.
Thus Ai became a geisha; and Kimika renamed her Kimiko, and kept the pledge to maintain the mother and the child-sister. The mother died before Kimiko became famous; the little sister was put to school. Afterwards those things already told came to pass. The young man who had wanted to die for love of a dancing-girl was worthy of better things.
By and by she proved to be, as Kimika wished, slightly dangerous. So a lamp is to night-fliers: otherwise some of them would put it out. The duty of the lamp is to make pleasant things visible: it has no malice. Kimiko had no malice, and was not too dangerous. Anxious parents discovered that she did not want to enter into respectable families, nor even to lend herself to any serious romances.
Word Of The Day