Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/317

Rh accords to filial self-sacrifice. Happy she is not, though she may one day become so, for, when her contract shall have expired, marriage will be no impossibility. But she is much less unhappy than if she wore black.

It might be thought that the operation of natural laws, regulating supply and demand, would sufficiently account for her existence. But those who prefer fancy to fact are given the choice between two legends. According to one, the Emperor Komatsu Tenno sent forth his eight daughters to be women of pleasure and set the fashion in seven provinces; from them the courtesans of Settsu, Hiogo, and Eguchi were said to be descended. Though one may doubt the authenticity of this imperial origin, the incongruity between rank and the exercise of the scarlet profession did not affect the Eastern mind, as it does our minds, with a sense of repulsion. On the contrary, it is no uncommon thing in the old romances to find a heroine of noble birth resorting, reluctantly indeed, but without any feeling of irremediable guilt, to the sale of her charms, until she should find a chance of regaining liberty and her lover. In fact, one of the classes into which courtesans were divided, that of tsubone-jōro, was so called from the word tsubone, signifying the ladies' apartments in a Daimyo's house, because the daughter of Ichinomiya, a Daimyo, being driven by stress of weather to Hiroshima and by want of money to sell her favours, became prototype and founder of aristocratic demireps. The country-folk, respecting her station, would not reckon her among common joro, but prefixed the substantive tsubone rather than blur their nice appreciation of class distinction. The second legend sounds less apocryphal. After the great sea-fight of Dan-no-ura