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38 we were assigned to an open room on an extension, with an unobstructed view of Kobe from every angle. It was merely a corner of the great big, open garden, as it were.

The girls showed they were being taxed unduly, having to entertain a foreigner. I could not speak to them very well, and put myself in the hands of my friend. Being new to these intimacies, I requested that the girls dance for me, as otherwise I should have been on the outside of the jollity—none of the witticisms which provoked so much laughter being interpreted to me. I thought perhaps my friend regarded them as too vulgar for the ears of a foreigner.

The geisha is not an over-attractive personality. Her grace is too cramped, too limited. Her movements while dancing are extremely proper, according to code, and seldom, if ever, rise to any terpsichorean liveliness as we know it. She turns about on the balls of her feet, kicking the trailing gowns outward, not immodestly, and manipulates a fan in definitely prescribed ways. The fan is the essence of the art, next to which in importance is the movement of the hands. Otherwise, neither the music nor the dance quickened my artistic sense to a thrill.

They taught me a song. The melody was simple and so monotonous that it almost wearied me. But the words, when interpreted to me, made me understand—and then I sang with them, and loved Japan in that song.

Literally it is this:

They seemed to be drunk with the very repetition of the song. To me it was but a translation, and I could see the picture it presented. But they sang it over and over again, taught it to me with a patience which is either childish or sublime, that is, either without understanding or with a sense of the oneness of the universe, almost as though it were a prayer. They repeated it over and over again, and it was the only song sung that evening with any interest. It seemed