Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/186

156 In the course of the next fortnight I became well acquainted with Tanaka Okusama, and through her with many others. She was a most intelligent, capable woman, who conducted one business while her husband had charge of another, grain and rice being the commodities in which they dealt. She considered herself middle-aged at the age of thirty-two, wore therefore most sombre colours, and was the mother of six boys, two of whom joined her at Ikao. Her explanation of the emma song was followed by an avowal of religious disbelief. She was neither a Buddhist nor a Shintoist, but believed that the priests taught old wives' fables, and for her own part concentrated her mind on her business and her family. A free-thinking Japanese woman was a novel phenomenon to me then, though I have since met several. The fragments of Western history which she had acquired were also interesting items in her conversation. Plied with questions about English sights and customs, I was also asked to give an opinion on Cæsar, Napoleon, and Epaminondas. What I recalled of the last hero was so shadowy that I felt inclined to parody the Oxford undergraduate's evasive reply: "About Epaminondas little is known, but it may safely be assumed that, as he lived, so he died." However, Tanaka Okusama knew more than that about him, for she had just been reading "Keikoku Bidan," a popular novel by Yano Fumiō, who is supposed to have selected Theban politics for his subject, that he might administer useful lessons to his compatriots. I suspected that novel-reading was the source of most of the lady's knowledge. Indeed, she disclaimed all pretension to the title of bluestocking.