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Updated: May 17, 2025
They are pretty, nevertheless, these little Niponese, in their smiles and childishness. The men, on the other hand, wear many a pot hat, pompously added to the long national robe, and giving thereby a finishing touch to their cheerful ugliness, resembling nothing so much as dancing monkeys.
The Niponese police agents had called and threatened them with the law for letting rooms outside of the European concession to a Frenchman morganatically married to a Japanese; and the terror of being prosecuted brought them to me, with a thousand apologies, but the humble request that I should leave.
In the central quarters the virtuous Niponese are already closing their little booths, putting out their lamps, shutting the wooden framework, drawing their paper panels. Further on, in the old-fashioned suburban streets, all is shut up long ago, and our carts roll on through the black night. We cry out to our djins: "Ayakou! ayakou!"
Chrysanthème gives him a shake, wishing him to get up and share our blue mosquito net. After a little pressing he does as he is bid and follows us, looking like an overgrown boy only half awake. I make no objection to this singular hospitality; after all, it looks so little like a bed, the matting we are to share, and we sleep in our clothes, as we always do according to the Niponese fashion.
Little Bambou is four years old, a yellow baby, fat and round all over, with fine bright eyes; coaxing and jolly, sleeping whenever he is not laughing. Of all my Niponese family, Bambou is the one I love the most. Tuesday, August 27th.
Now Chrysanthème appears on the verandah, looking out as if she expected us; and with her wonderful bows of hair and long falling sleeves, her silhouette is thoroughly Niponese. As I enter, she comes forward to kiss me, in a graceful, though rather hesitating manner, while Oyouki, more demonstrative, throws her arms around me.
On account of the stormy heat, the little suburban houses have been left open like sheds, and we can see all that is going on. Lamps ever lighted burn before the altars dedicated to Buddha and to the souls of the ancestors; but all good Niponese have already lain down to rest.
We rush like a whirlwind through the darkness, all five in Indian file, dashing and jolting over the old uneven flagstones, dimly lighted up by our red balloons fluttering at the end of their bamboo stems. From time to time some Niponese, night-capped in his blue kerchief, opens a window to see who these noisy madcaps can be, dashing by so rapidly and so late.
Under the traditional tents of bluish-green gauze, we can see them, stretched out in rows by whole families; they are either sleeping, or hunting the mosquitoes, or fanning themselves. Niponese men and women, Niponese babies too, lying side by side with their parents; each one, young or old, in his little dark-blue cotton night-dress, and with his little wooden block to rest the nape of his neck.
They are so laughing, so merry, all these little Niponese dolls! Rather a forced mirth, it is true, studied and at times with a false ring in it; nevertheless one is attracted by it. Chrysanthème is an exception, for she is melancholy. What thoughts can be running through that little brain? My knowledge of her language is still too restricted to enable me to find out.
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