Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/275

Rh asked to sing me an old song, playful, if possible, because the foreigner would find it more easy to understand. Crouching over a long-stringed koto, she sang (the weather was very hot) this popular mosquito song:

It was explained that a wife would be showing disrespect to her husband by taking rest under the mosquito-net in his absence. If, therefore, he happened to stop out all night, she must still wait for him, outside the net, until the bell for matins sounded the retreat of her winged persecutors. "The Bell Seven" is named in accordance with old reckoning: the time represented is really four in the morning, when the Japanese day begins. That was the last I saw of O Mitsu, for etiquette forbade her taking supper at my hotel in company with her husband and father-in-law.

We spent the evening with the Tanaka family. There, too, I observed the reticence imposed on women in their own homes. Tanaka Okusama, who at Ikao had discoursed so brightly on every possible subject from ethics to Epaminondas, crept quietly from one to another of her guests, offering tea and cakes, but never joining in the conversation. Her husband, who had a most genial, refined face, made an excellent host: the four boys sat silently in a corner. Many questions were put about European houses and habits,