Page:Sketches of Tokyo Life (1895).djvu/74

50 sing, and dance, and generally to diffuse gaiety and good humour among the convives. They continued to rise in public favour through the last century of the Tokugawa dynasty; and the immediate effect of the Restoration upon them has been to increase their popularity. The samurai and others who flocked from the provinces to the capital when all offices were thrown open to talent, took kindly to the sybaritism which had been one of the causes of ruin to those they were supplanting. It is certainly strange that this leisurely form of pleasure should be so extensively patronised by the very men who, by their restless energy, have brought to their country a new era of extraordinary progress. The old order has passed away, and now the new order is taking shape; and the unrestrained licence of the intervening period is beginning to lose countenance. But the process of social reconstruction is inevitably tardy; and at the present moment it cannot be denied that the number of geisha in Tokyo has enormously augmented in response, it is to be inferred, to an increasing demand.

The geisha’s praises have been sung abroad, because her parallel is nowhere to be found, and unlike the demi-mondaines of other nationalities, her lapses from virtue appear to leave her still in possession of her modesty and native grace. Whether it is due to her indifference to reputation or to her acknowledgment of such lapses as part and parcel of her profession, we cannot say; but even among her class a woman with a virtuous reputation is more sought for at the best teahouses than her lax sisters. Her vices as a class, however, are forgotten in her individual charms, and her presence has by custom become almost indispensable at convivial parties which would be insipid without her contagious vivacity.

The geisha’s chief attraction, in addition to her graceful manners, is her exquisite taste in dress, the harmonious blending of its hues and tints being according to Japanese canon unsurpassed. The actual style she adopts differs