Page:Sketches of Tokyo Life (1895).djvu/83

Rh into three classes, the jimaye, the kakaye, and the tataki-wake. The jimaye is the freest of all. She is her own mistress, and, living in her own house, does just as she pleases. Not so the kakaye, to which class a great majority of geisha belong. Having no means of buying her own dress or renting a house, the kakaye enters service in a geisha-house for a certain term, varying with her age and other circumstances. Her life is far from happy, though much naturally depends upon the disposition of her task-mistress. While she is lodged, boarded, and clothed, she is expected to hand over all her earnings to her mistress. It is usual, on the other hand, for her to receive a tithe of her earnings for her private expenses; but as this rule does not always hold good, the geisha seldom gives up all her receipts; indeed, without retaining a considerable portion of them she could not possibly buy those articles of ornament to which geisha are addicted in a greater degree than other women. To her mistress her engagement is a purely speculative business; she may become a popular favourite when the outlay would be repaid many times over, or she may turn out to be a tea-grinder, as a stay-at-home is facetiously called on the supposition that she remains indoors to grind tea into powder such as is drunk at a tea-ceremony. The number of kakaye in a single house varies in different localities. In many houses the jimaye has two or more kakaye of her own, against whose attempts to appropriate any portion of their earnings she guards by appearing as far as possible at the same tea-house with them. In some quarters a single house engages ten or more kakaye so that there may be some among them popular enough to offset others who may be tea-grinders. The articling of a kakaye is sometimes a matter of difficulty. The girl must, before her engagement, apply in person for a license at the Metropolitan Police Board, where a middle-aged police-sergeant warns her of the temptations of the new life she is about to enter, and only grants her