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Updated: June 10, 2025
To the left was a labyrinth of little houses of clean white wood, bright and new, like toys, with toy evergreens and pine-trees bursting out of their narrow gardens. This was a geisha quarter, whence the sound of samisen music and quavering songs resounded all day long.
The music becomes quicker and quicker and the runners run faster and faster, for they must keep time to the melody; and the geisha wins. In another part of the room, guests and geisha are playing ken. They sing as they play, facing each other, and clap their hands, and fling out their fingers at intervals with little cries and the samisen keep time. Choito don-don! Otagaidane; Choito don-don!
Such a dinner party would have been better had it not been started at all. After a while, they began singing ditties in outlandish voices. One of the geishas came in front of me, and taking up a samisen, asked me to sing something.
Out of the night came the velvety tones of a mighty bell; the sing-song prayers of many priests; the rippling laugh of a little child and the tinkling of a samisen. Every sound made for simple joy and peace.
The dishes were crystallized lotus leaves and flowers, and the chopsticks were of the rarest ebony. As soon as they sat down, the sliding doors opened and ten lovely goldfish dancers came out, and behind them followed ten red-carp musicians with the koto and the samisen. Thus the hours flew by till midnight, and the beautiful music and dancing had banished all thoughts of the centipede.
Everywhere one hears the booming of the tsudzumi, the little hand-drums of the geisha, and sweet plaintive chants of girls, and tinkling of samisen, and the measured clapping of hands in the dance, and the wild cries and laughter of the players at ken. And all these are but echoes of the diversions of sailors. Verily, the nature of sailors differs but little the world over.
From the servants' quarters came the tinkle of the samisen, and a breeze laden with the scent of flowers brought with it also the distant sound of voices and laughter. Nicholas Grimm had joined Billie, and the two young people now lingered in the arbor. In the curve of a path they caught an occasional glimpse of a white dress.
Sharing the vogue of the biwa-bozu, but differing from it in the nature of the story recited as well as in that of the instrument employed, was the joruri, which derived its name from the fact that it was originally founded on the tragedy of Yoshitsune's favourite mistress, Joruri. In this the performer was generally a woman, and the instrument on which she accompanied herself was the samisen.
And without striving to destroy it-which would mean to fall from one extreme into another we must recognize that, no matter what we wish to do for the family, for society, for education, and for the country, it is against individualism that the work will have to be done." A woman carrying a samisen, and accompanied by a little boy seven or eight years old, came to my house to sing.
During the dinner there had been a sound of suppressed laughter and the tinkle of music behind the partitions, and now, after the last round of the innumerable courses had been served, the partitions were shoved aside and four samisen players entered followed by eight dancing girls. Nothing could equal the grace of their bows as they glided softly in. Their smiles of welcome were inimitable.
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