Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

Oh!

If I were to immerse myself in this blue seawater, wouldn't my body dissolve into blue—

O-Yuki stood transfixed within a world so intensely blue and clear it chilled her to the bone.
As if blue-greenness were seeping into the very skin, this sea remained indigo blue even near the shore.
The sky was an even deeper sapphire blue, with cloud colors shining azure through the heavens.

"My, everything seems to glow."

"It's called fuchibe jasper."

her husband, George Di Morgan, explained.

O-Yuki couldn’t remain transfixed in the blue radiance forever.

The whitewashed houses stood in rows, and the marble glowed with such radiance that it shone like jasper.
Along the shore of the promenade ahead, rows of palm trees grew thickly, and mimosa resembling golden kerria and broom were covered in golden blossoms.

Along the shore's crescent-shaped palm-lined avenue, two-horse carriages and stylish single-horse carriages passed incessantly. Unfamiliar automobiles also passed.

"Nice is like the Dragon Palace."

O-Yuki peered into the sea's depths from the shore, watching as if drawn inward—even in the profoundest reaches, the swaying algae appeared blue through the azure clarity. At her feet, amidst sand and pebbles, shimmering objects mingled—whether blue southern bean jade or green fragments of colored glass—scattered like spilled treasures.

“Have I ever, even once, been in a place where I felt like this—”

Enveloped in an unexpectedly pure and clear world, O-Yuki found herself different from the self who had been in dark, drizzly Paris until yesterday, feeling as though she’d been bewitched by a fox.

“Because Paris seemed to make you recall Kyoto.”

Upon arriving here, Morgan suddenly felt delighted that O-Yuki showed traces of her former self, her expression appearing somewhat carefree. Her features had always carried a lonely air, but since leaving Japan, she had grown noticeably more nervous, with a sharpness setting in—yet now she appeared refreshed,

“You’ve become the O-Yuki of old.”

Morgan rejoiced.

Even in their white teeth that smiled softly, the blue seemed to seep through.

“What are you looking at?”

When told this, O-Yuki brought the tip of her finger to the corner of Morgan’s eye,

“It’s like blue light is shining from between my fingernails—”

As O-Yuki gazed intently, looking even childlike, Morgan laughed loudly, “Ahaha!”

“You’ve become ten or twenty years younger since arriving in Nice.
You won’t cry anymore, will you?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do something like cry.”

“The color of the sky here, the color of the water here—they’ve made you into a child. Do you like it?”

O-Yuki didn’t even have time to respond. Hastily, she tapped Morgan’s elbow and pointed at a man and woman diving into the water.

“Mermaid, mermaid.”

The vivid colors of the young woman’s swimsuit and the whiteness of her limbs and face displayed a wondrous beauty within the rippling blue water’s patterned surface.

“Western people are truly beautiful, aren’t they?”

With a sigh, O-Yuki murmured,

“Instead—unlike you—their hearts aren’t kind.”

With that, Morgan took his wife’s hand.

The moment Morgan brushed O-Yuki’s bared forehead up to her hairline, he exclaimed.

“Oh, Maria Kannon!”

His eyes, brimming with curiosity, blazed with the intensity of a wondrous discovery,

“Beautiful, beautiful.
You are extremely beautiful.”

and while holding O-Yuki’s head with both hands, he continued to gaze at her endlessly.

The Kyoto-born O-Yuki’s skin was as white as even that of fair-skinned Western women.
But O-Yuki’s whiteness was subdued—somehow lacking in vital warmth, carrying a coldness that evoked the smoothness of porcelain, a frigid pallor.
When placed within the lucid emerald-green air, the eyes beneath her broad forehead—protected by plump eyelids, elegantly narrow and elongated—their compassionate corners resembled those of the white porcelain Kannon that Morgan had seen in Japan.

Or rather, at that moment, O-Yuki’s entire being appeared like a Maria Kannon statue. Today’s O-Yuki was so noble and tender that one might recall the venerated statues—those Maria icons believers had secretly crafted in the likeness of Merciful Mother Kannon and worshipped during the era of Christianity’s prohibition and extreme oppression. Oh, if one were to enshrine her in that grotto over there—a life-sized Maria Kannon in truth—Morgan’s heart, as he caressed O-Yuki, came to be accompanied even by reverence.

“I will cherish O-Yuki for all my life.”

While directing his gaze to the mountainside of the mountain towering toward the dimly darkening sea, Morgan spoke as though praying in his heart.

O-Yuki, without taking her eyes off the blue of her husband’s eyes that had spoken those words,

“As for me—after all the commotion that’s surrounded me—even if you were to cast me aside, I would never return to Japan in disgrace.”

Wrapping his arm around O-Yuki’s back, Morgan pulled her close tightly.
Though unspoken aloud, it was an embrace laden with gratitude and remorse.

Though we both bear wounds, let us never speak of them again from this day forth.

In the man’s heart and in the woman, such feelings pressed insistently, making their two souls tighten.

“Shall we build a villa in Nice?”

Morgan said this as if changing the subject.

For Morgan, this was not his first visit to Nice as a tourist.
He had come several times before with Paris’s dazzling fashionable women for secret trysts, yet now he had somehow become remarkably puritanical.

First-class hotels stood proudly facing the sea, each boasting its own scenic location.
Their frontage formed a great arcing road along the shore’s center, where the octagonal Casino de la Jetée—jutting into the water—tinted the night blue like a dreamlike dragon palace, its crimson lights blazing reflections across the waves.

From the hotel windows as well, beautiful lights began to stream forth.
From the foothills here and there as well, dragon palace lantern-like lights began to kindle.
The stars in the sky glittered blue and purple, but the dragon lights were red and resplendent.

“Blue moon.”

With that, Morgan called O-Yuki to the window.

“Have you ever seen such a moon?”

“Uh,” O-Yuki replied absently.
The moon over Ōsawa Pond in Outer Kyoto’s Saga—its reflection, clouded by water’s tarnish, was blue yet darker still.
What they had seen from the boat on the Hozu River that night visiting Arashiyama’s hot spring was blue, but whiter still.

The moon she had viewed from the third span of Uji Bridge—she had meant to mention it, but fearing being asked with whom she had seen it, O-Yuki suddenly fell silent.

For O-Yuki, a night as though she had lodged at a dragon palace came to an end.

The world of dance and music in Kyoto’s Gion district, which O-Yuki had long been accustomed to, was undoubtedly beautiful, but its stylized formality meant that when struck by nature’s excessive clarity, she instead felt uncertain whether she was awake or in reality, as though wandering through a dreamlike realm.

It was truly a splendid morning.

The azure of heaven and earth, permeated by sunlight, shone wrapped in rainbow hues.

“Where is that far distant place beyond the sea?”

“You see palm trees lining this jade-green shore.”
“Beyond the Mediterranean lies Africa’s tropical lands.”
“That over there is Corsica Island.”
“You remember Napoleon—the one I told you about recently?”
“This area is called the Maritime Alps.”
“Those peaks behind us form part of the Alps mountain range.”

Morgan explained everything meticulously before inviting her out for a walk.

“Yes, let’s sit on that bench under the palm tree.”

“Before that, let me show you the morning market.”

Morgan accompanied O-Yuki toward Ashidaka Road—a place like a flower market where various flowers bloomed and florists’ stalls stretched for an entire block.

The morning market bustled with people staying in Nice who had come out both to shop and to stroll.
O-Yuki found herself spacing out again.
As if intoxicated by the scent of flowers, she kept buying whatever was offered and gathering them up.
Where had he come from? A cute Italian boy carrying a basket stood by her side, and when O-Yuki could no longer hold them all, she let him put them into the basket on his back.

“Madam, Madam.”
“Ah, what a splendid madam.”
“What a beautiful face you have, what splendid attire you wear.”

The flower-selling women were incessantly praising the female customers. At one moment,

“What do you think you’re doing? Someone like you couldn’t possibly afford such fine flowers.”
“You can’t even appreciate this lovely fragrance.”
“Cheapskate woman!”

No matter how much they pressed, they hurled insults at the departing backs of customers who wouldn’t buy.

“Oh, there’s fresh fish—”

O-Yuki got caught up at the fresh fish stall and was delighted to hold a scoop net.

On a large tray, Mediterranean small fish—flapping and jumping—were being scooped up in every variety. Each time their bodies fluttered, various lights sparkled alongside the silvery-blue water. Another boy, like O-Yuki’s page, immediately received them.

O-Yuki suddenly recalled the poverty of her geisha days—though she had worn beautiful kimonos, there had been nothing she could buy, nothing she could afford. Even more than that, she found herself recalling—without consciously intending to—how as a child, even when passing through bustling streets like Shinkyogoku, she had only ever stood before goldfish shops, never having experienced scooping up and buying as she pleased, yet desperately wanting one of those round glass globe goldfish bowls.

When she saw the money Morgan was paying—compared to buying cheap goldfish at a night stall—he was spending an incomparably higher sum for O-Yuki’s fleeting interest.

Blue rosemary, red stock, anemones, roses, and mimosa with bending branches.
The flowers spilled from both O-Yuki’s hands and Morgan’s arms as they carried them, and overflowed so abundantly from the basket on the attendant boy’s back that—

“I’ll spread these flowers in the room for you to rest, O-Yuki.”

Morgan was saying this, but the golden flowers all gave O-Yuki the illusion of gold coins. Not only the diamonds—she felt as though light were emanating from her very being. That she had been bought for forty thousand yen—now even her strange fixation on this fact until now struck her as peculiar.

Had there ever been a man this kind—O-Yuki lay utterly spent on the palm-shaded bench, as if buried beneath mimosa flowers.

There had been lovers.
There were those who brought joy and those who brought sorrow—but there had been no kind man like Morgan.

When she tried telling herself clearly, "There isn't anyone," suddenly—as if sunlight had dimmed—she realized for the first time that perhaps it wasn't so—that everyone had actually been kind.

The one who brought joy—that was the man of the brush, who wrote with such flair.
The one who brought sorrowful parting—that was a Kyoto University law student who had joined a bank in Osaka.

Perhaps those people, knowing how well Morgan treated me, had tried to let me live a happy life.

As she thought this, O-Yuki’s heart melted away.
There were times I resented being sent off to a foreign country where I couldn’t even understand the language—but once accustomed, there come days like today—

O-Yuki’s heart was melting away with sadness.

The resolve crystallized—to entrust her entire life to Morgan and see it through wherever that might lead, with the conviction that she was no longer a woman of Japan by nationality.

“Unlike Paris—even in such a bright place, are you so lonely?”
“We’ll go to Kyoto again before long.”

Morgan, thinking O-Yuki was sinking into homesickness, comforted her.

“No, I’m not lonely at all.”

Not at all—it was actually when I was in Kyoto that my heart felt lonely, O-Yuki wanted to say. That was when, about a year after Morgan and O-Yuki had married and departed for America together, they returned to Kyoto for a visit. Near Nanzen-ji Temple, by the zoo, at the banks of the Kusakawa River—to their temporary villa there,

“You mustn’t let your guard down, I tell you.”

Someone reported this, and a scandal nearly erupted.

“You—when you came last time, didn’t you sweet-talk me while secretly redeeming the tayu of Shimabara?”
“No, I know full well—that after you left for Yokohama, that tayu went chasing after you too.”
“I know everything, I tell you.”

And so the situation turned into a clamorous affair.
Before O-Yuki’s own affairs could be settled, someone brought up how Morgan had covertly arranged for Hinamado Tayu of Kobayashirō in the Shimabara pleasure quarters to be redeemed from her family for five hundred yen—and O-Yuki found herself dwelling on that incident too, wondering if it might indeed be true.

After a year’s absence, O-Yuki—visiting her homeland in the floral spring—found everything dear to her: people she knew and those she didn’t, kimonos, scents, the language. She busily engaged with them all.
At that very time, Japan was in a springtime of successive victories in its war against Russia, so beneath the eaves of the Kusakawa house too, they hung Japanese and American flags, and the two of them were in high spirits.

Coinciding with this, there were night cherry blossoms in full bloom at Maruyama Park, and even the Shimabara tayu processions—which had been restrained due to the wartime climate—were held that year.

At the very front of the procession, young geishas took hold of ropes to pull out the flower cart, followed by Yoshino Tayu leading at the head and a *hanabito* tayu with her hair styled in a *kasa-tome shimagemage* bringing up the rear; with thirty or forty geishas, about the same number of tayu, and *kamuro* apprentices and *shinzou* attendants parading along—and upon hearing that special viewing seats had been set up for foreigners, O-Yuki recalled Hinamado and flew into a rage.

Are they trying to ruin my reputation—O-Yuki had grown reluctant even to go out.

To O-Yuki, nothing brought greater sorrow than the rumor that Morgan had taken another lover.

And so, when even Japan and Kyoto—places she had yearned for so deeply—proved no place to linger, there remained nothing but to return to France.

“Why don’t you go to America?”

When asked such questions, Morgan would answer that he preferred France, but there lay something unspoken between them—a secret even within their marriage that they kept through mutual consideration.

—Elder Sister and Mother both seem to be living comfortably—

That’s fine—I have not a single worry left for the future.
O-Yuki wanted to cry out.
With the forty-thousand-yen redemption price, Elder Sister had become the proprietress of Katorou.
The monthly allowance of 150 yen was neither too much nor too little for the old mother’s pocket money.

O-Yuki, amid the mimosa flowers and the golden sunlight, nimbly sprang up from the bench like a bee,

“Alright, I’ve brightened up now.”

And, shaking off her dampened heart, she said.

“Shall we go to the casino? I wonder if even I could win at gambling.”

“No, I want to hear your kokyū when I’m in such a pleasant mood.”
“Please play for me, Pear Blossom O-Yuki.”

“That would be quite agreeable, wouldn’t it?”

O-Yuki did not resist.
The romance that had been sung of as “the forty-thousand-yen Morgan O-Yuki”—since the sob of the kokyū’s strings had also marked their bond’s beginning—must now have Morgan too immersed in memories mirroring her own, she thought.

“Shall I return to the room and play, or shall I bring it here?”

“The shore is too crowded with people, and carriages keep coming through.”

"But everyone already knew about that."

When O-Yuki smiled and said this—meaning their love story had been so much talked about—Morgan laughed cheerfully.

―At that time, O-Yuki―resolved never to speak or play again―had poured the tale of her romance with Morgan onto the kokyū’s strings, letting it flow into that dream-like Dragon Palace and azure heavens; to summarize it briefly would yield this account.

In Kyoto, near Shijō Bridge at a place called Nawate Shinbashi-agaru, there was a teahouse named Ono-tei.
Because they catered exclusively to foreign guests, there was a custom among their peers of not considering the courtesans invited there as first-rate.

Across the Kamo River lay Pontocho and Gion.
When it came to spring dances, Gion held its Miyako Odori early in the season, and Pontocho followed suit by beginning the Kamo River Dance.
The geiko and maiko of Gion, imbued with the discernment of that illustrious name, were schooled from childhood in all matters with graceful composure—the arts of song and dance alongside feminine refinements.

Clad in embroidered long-sleeved kimonos with brocade obi loosely tied and trailing down, a maiko crossing Sanjo-Shijo Ohashi Bridge appeared so captivating one might wonder which noble house's young lady she was.
It remained an unwritten rule that those who hadn't undergone such maiko training could never secure favorable standing even within Gion's pleasure quarters.
Even among the teahouses they frequented, strict hierarchies prevailed.

The maid of Ono-tei whispered to the nineteen-year-old O-Yuki.

“That foreigner keeps insisting on having you brought to Umegae—”

Umegae was the inn at Maruyama Hot Springs.

“They say Mr. Morgan’s from an American millionaire family—the son of one of those big clans.”

Morgan, who had come to witness Japan’s spring, stayed at Sawamura Ryokan and made a show of his wealth.

II

One might dismiss out of hand whether the wealthy and handsome could truly experience unrequited love or heartbreak—yet it is precisely there that love’s peculiar wonder lies—this we cannot deny.

In our nation, even the illustrious commander of *The Tale of Genji*—the Shining Genji whose beauty and authority could enrapture all who beheld him and make every woman he courted feel profoundly honored, unworthy, or profoundly grateful—had a woman who would not yield, as Murasaki Shikibu herself wrote in her work that meticulously wove into it the life depictions of that era.

If wealth and masculine charm alone were all that mattered, then the legend of courtesan Takao of Shin-Yoshiwara—who made them kill Lord Sendai without compliance, leading to her tsurishigiri slashing in a boat on the Ōkawa River—would never have been born.

Even an unmarried, handsome thirty-year-old young man from the American millionaire Morgan family could not have his way with the women of this country through wealth and good looks alone.

To summarize, around the thirtieth year of Meiji (1897), it was not that money's prestige fell short of today's measure, but women's hearts remained detached from material possessions and social reputation.
It was an era when even women of the pleasure quarters could declare without hesitation, "We may sell our bodies, but never our hearts," and those who engaged in romantic dalliances remained quite scarce—though to say scarce is not to say nonexistent.
This phrasing leaves much to be desired, but terms like "men purchasing hell" and the indelibly repulsive phrase "noblewomen's misconduct" exist—matters I must address separately when writing of that era by clarifying the social climate that bred such odious expressions, thereby cleansing the shame unjustly cast upon all women.

Now, curiously enough, there was also this phenomenon: certain women tended to take pride in winning over men they had once successfully courted.
Conversely, when hearing of someone who had suffered heartbreak or a man who had been spurned, if they did not look down on such a person, it might appear as though they were compromising their own social standing.
Therefore, many women became ensnared by men whom they would consider scoundrels, turning into targets for love hunters and being hauled up like buckets from a well.

To return to Mr. Morgan, it had become known—though from where exactly none could say—that he had come to the Orient from America seeking solace from the wounds of failed love.
It was rumored that he had come to the Land of the Rising Sun in search of a woman who could soothe love’s wounds that even France had failed to heal.

However, considering how he had flaunted his wealth and caroused through romantic circles, even in the pleasure quarters he had let slip the women he fell for time and again.

When Morgan first met O-Yuki during her nineteenth year, they parted ways without complication; however, he returned during her twenty-first year to confess his affections and established her as his legal wife by her twenty-third year.
This occurred during his third visit to Japan; after their marriage and return home, he came once the following year and again the next year, but after that, Mr. Morgan abruptly ceased coming to Japan altogether.

Before his dealings with O-Yuki had even begun, and prior to setting foot in Kyoto, Morgan had already fallen for someone.
That person was Oshika-san—a Kyoto-born master of the shamisen with jet-black hair, who demonstrated exceptional brilliance in the sound of her plectrum at Kōrōkan in Shibayamauchi.
Oshika-san was a woman of entirely different bearing from O-Yuki—thick-browed, with teeth so white they seemed translucent, her fine hair puffed out in thick sideburns in a style more suited to Edo tastes, a large-framed, vivacious woman with a crisp laugh.

Oshika-san was a Kyoto woman with Edo temperament and style—it was no wonder anyone would favor her.
She had been destined to become the concubine of the previous Duke Konoe, but the duke had passed away.
Among the women I have known, she resembled Yanagibashi geisha Owariya Shinkichi—a beloved concubine who had captivated the Lord of Owari from the previous or penultimate generation and nearly provoked a domestic scandal.
I came to know Shinkichi after she had left her role as a concubine—somewhat embittered and coarsened by then—but she was a woman who, had one softened the features of the current Ichikawa Ennosuke and added height to his frame, might have borne some resemblance to him.

“Miss Oshika was greatly admired around the time Ding Ruchang of China came here.”

And once, at Kōrōkan, an elderly woman named Oyasusan—the most senior there—told me with deep feeling.

“If only he had stayed by Miss Oshika’s side—it was so heartbreaking.”

Yet because Miss Oshika remained so cherished by Konoe that all treated her as exceptional, they say even after returning to Qing China, Ding Ruchang kept sending letters expressing his lingering affection.

Oyasusan knew—so they say—that even after the First Sino-Japanese War began, the Admiral had not forgotten Miss Oshika.
But in February of the 28th year (1895), when the Japanese Navy occupied Weihaiwei, Ding Ruchang calmly took his own life.

Afterward, several times I heard Miss Oshika's secret stories and wanted to leave a record of one woman's fate intertwined with her era—but I lost that opportunity, and now, with both Miss Oshika herself and Oyasusan having passed away, I deeply regret it.

Ding Ruchang's death had occurred just slightly before the year Morgan first arrived, so it was only natural that Miss Oshika paid no heed to Morgan's earnest entreaties—though for Morgan, her Kyoto accent must have felt nostalgically familiar.
He went to Kyoto and there too took notice of Sandai Tsuru and other first-rate maiko.

Ono-tei, a teahouse on Nawate Street that specialized in foreign clientele, had been taking good care of O-Yuki.
There were times when meek O-Yuki would play the kokyū, and Morgan would listen with rapt attention.
The sound of the kokyū’s strings—as if sharing choked sobs with a wounded heart—had even come to seem like O-Yuki’s own emotions—but,

“I’ll take this kokyū with me.”

It was during his second visit to Japan that he made this declaration.

"I want to take O-Yuki with me."

He had said this, but at the time, O-Yuki had a student to whom she had promised her future; without mentioning that fact, she replied lightly that she would think it over until their next meeting, never imagining he would return.
Morgan, who believed this, handed over a great many envelopes with addresses written on them.

The following year—though in truth, less than six months had passed—Morgan came and declared his intention to formally redeem her as his wife.
It was to the extent that even such rumors arose.
O-Yuki’s brother ran a barbershop around Sanjo, and he—thinking that if she was to be given to someone of Morgan’s caliber, even if a foreigner—took it upon himself to use that envelope to summon Morgan—

Even had there been a diamond ring as a gift, O-Yuki could not bring herself to betray the person to whom she had pledged her future.

“I don’t want a foreigner.”

Even if she coldly refused,

“Now, O-Yuki, that’s too heartless of you.”

It was not as though she were expressing resentment or anything of that nature.
When O-Yuki grew weary and withdrew to a temple within Tofuku-ji under the guise of recuperating from illness, he pulled strings to discover her whereabouts. Through their mutual acquaintance Kobayashi Yoneka as intermediary, he sent an immense basket—too large to carry even with both hands—overflowing with fruits and confections.
Flower arrangements arrived each dawn without fail.

Amid these developments, the visited now found herself compelled to become the visitor—for the pitiable American youth had fallen prey to a lingering lovesickness.

“I will die holding this kokyū.”

For O-Yuki—whose lifeblood was the old capital’s traditional ambiance—such sentiment resonated perfectly.

"But I don’t want to be a mistress."

To the point of pressing right to the very brink—near the decisive moment—Morgan drove the situation.

"You won’t be a mistress."
"O-Yuki, you are my wife."

Morgan declared he would properly make her his legal wife and marry her honorably.

What was there to say? O-Yuki, who had found herself unable to refuse any longer,

"What will Mother say... I must consult her properly and see—"

The final escape route lay with her mother and nowhere else. It wasn’t only the old-fashioned mothers of Gion geisha. At that time, there were still many old women who disliked the smell of boiling beef. To take refuge in the excuse of "it being a foreigner"—in such circumstances, her mother became the last resort.

However, invoking Mother as a lifeline turned out to be a success too significant to dismiss as merely an old-fashioned Japanese refusal.
At that moment, Morgan felt a shuddering sensation—as if a cold hand had stroked against the grain of his body coursing with youthful blood aflame.

That was truly an unpleasant memory.
The reason for his heartbreak that had driven him to seek solace in Japan was that the mother of the young lady who returned his affections had thwarted their romance.
He couldn’t help but grimace.
For he thought it went without saying that the mothers of geisha girls in Japan’s ancient capital were even less understanding—and far more prejudiced against hairy barbarians—than that celebrated madam of New York high society.

However, Morgan resolved to act with genuine sincerity.
Even though their races differed, these demure old-fashioned people.
If even women who absolutely revered men were to rebuff him, that would leave a stain of male disgrace he could never show his face anywhere in the world.
Now that he had broached the matter, he was absolutely determined to succeed this time no matter what—

While Morgan was solidifying such resolve, around O-Yuki too, discussions began with heads put together.

On the side of the family council, people came to the hut behind Komaeura—from her teahouse proprietor, her family home, and even Ono-tei—and in the end, it was decided they should demand a substantial sum to withdraw their claims.

“No matter what, you mustn’t accept a man of a different stripe.”

To the mother who was hesitating, her sister and aunts—

“If you’re so fond of Yuki, why not say you’ll have him adopted into the Kato family? That’s what everyone suggests.”

This was deemed an excellent idea and became one of the conditions.

O-Yuki was again at a casual drinking gathering, pleading tearfully with her favored gossip columnist.

“Don’t just amuse yourself writing about me and Morgan—please consider this seriously.”
“I absolutely won’t agree.”

She wiped her tears with a handkerchief and dabbed so much that the cuffs of her crepe underrobe wrinkled, but the other party—

“Take that kind of talk somewhere else.”
“Even if you cry to me, there’s nothing I can do.”
“Just do as your mother and the others say and try demanding a hefty sum.”
“If he weren’t truly smitten, even an American wouldn’t throw away a fortune on a mere whim.”

O-Yuki had no intention of letting such discussions reach the earnest student, who was in the prime of their training, and risk unsettling their mind; thus, she made every effort to conceal matters from that person even when questioned.

So they stated that unless she was made the legal wife—if he intended to come as an adopted son—it would not do, and finally brought up forty thousand yen.

Forty thousand yen—if today, one might say such an amount was mere chicken feed around Shinbashi, but forty thousand yen before the Russo-Japanese War would have had monetary value worth twice over and over again, even several times over compared to now.
In Akasaka, Manryū had even elevated its name through ten thousand yen.

An old woman from Gion said.

“After the Great War, everything tripled in price, so that song ‘Pi no Pi no Pi’ became popular, you know—it meant three times three times three.”

When that era of triple-triple-triple arrived, even maiko’s obi sashes began glittering with large diamonds in their dragons’ eyes—but Morgan did not suddenly line up forty thousand yen before O-Yuki.

Even when pressed to the brink in a situation where cutting open the golden envelope and scattering its contents had become unavoidable, Mr. Morgan—unlike Kameya Chūbei, that Osaka libertine of the Genroku era who would have flown into a rage—calmly summoned a consulting doctor from New York.
Dr. Pikero was likely a specialist in law or economics.

That Morgan had quietly summoned his advisor at that time was likely because, given that this was already a three-year-long courtship and a price tag of forty thousand yen had been affixed, he reasoned that at least until some rival suitor emerged from elsewhere, there was no risk of her becoming another’s cultivated flower.

The first condition of legal wife status met with no objections, the second condition of adoption as a son-in-law was absolutely impossible and thus withdrawn, and the third issue—the redemption fee—having been incrementally raised from two or three thousand yen up to twenty thousand yen upfront with the remainder in monthly installments of twenty-five hundred yen each—was recalculated by the consultant as thirty thousand yen upfront and the rest in installments.

It was surely not because they anticipated [the O-Yuki faction] would not push back, but with that development, the strategists of the O-Yuki faction grew all the more insistent on forty thousand yen in immediate payment.

Mr. George Morgan had first taken notice of O-Yuki around Kanpei’s current age—thirty-four—but as matters teetered on resolution yet remained unsettled, driven to extremity, he one night slipped a pistol into his pocket,

“I can’t endure this slow agony any longer.”
“This is like skinning a snake alive.”
“And all because your heart keeps faltering.”
“I’ll die.”

The words rang with such raw sincerity that O-Yuki stood paralyzed.
“This torment comes from me alone.”

Then she—the one who had been restraining him—turned hysterical and rushed to the riverbank.
Torn between choices with no escape, she tried to cast herself into the waters.

Dr. Pikero must have been shocked as well.
It was promptly decided to arrange for forty thousand yen.

All of this sent shockwaves through the traditional Gion-cho pleasure quarters.

“Well, have you heard about O-Yuki?”

Wherever people gathered and spoke, it was of that rumor.

“Forty thousand yen, you know.”

While some women called it splendid, others—since she had resisted so vehemently—began to say they might as well take her place.

“Don’t make such a fuss over forty thousand yen.”

“Exactly, that’s not right.”

The matter was no longer confined to the flower-and-willow world.

Kyoto, Osaka, Tokyo—it became a nationwide topic.

“Once rumors have started circulating, to come clean now would only bring sorrow—but what am I to do—”

O-Yuki was sitting huddled beside her lover’s desk, harboring a fleeting hope that in the end she might become this person’s wife.

“I had heard about it.”
“I might as well congratulate you on your success.”

said the twenty-nine-year-old, handsome and brilliant top student from Kagoshima attending Kyoto University’s law department.

“I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me, but I can’t promise we’ll end up together. Even if you tell me what to do now, nothing will change.”
“You should go.”

O-Yuki would undoubtedly have been perplexed had she been told to die in that situation; yet having her lover address her with such rationality left her feeling as desolate as if she had been cast aside.

An indescribable desolation—what remained unresolved in O-Yuki’s heart before she could fully reconcile it within herself—persisted even as the marriage arrangements progressed.

The forty thousand yen became the betrothal money.
O-Yuki had completely withdrawn from the geisha registry.

The world was a curious place—O-Yuki, the kokyū geisha who had never been particularly remarkable, rapidly gained prominence once talk of Morgan’s redemption fee began circulating.

Moreover, as the redemption fee gradually rose, her popularity soared until first-class teahouses were constantly vying for her.
Of course, for first-class patrons, not knowing the face of this now-renowned courtesan was seen as nothing short of disgraceful, so they demanded she be summoned at all costs.
Since the wealthy were capricious, once matters reached that point, if they heard she was at another teahouse, they would insist she be brought over immediately—a customer psychology especially established since ancient times regarding women of the pleasure quarters.

It had reached the point where not only Kyoto patrons but also those coming from Osaka and Tokyo—people who simply had to see her—would say, “Just come for a bit,” and unless arrangements were made three or four days in advance, they couldn’t get O-Yuki to attend their gatherings.

Even when paying money required such efforts, getting her without payment became an extraordinary affair—throughout the town, during some event where about a hundred geisha walked, when word spread that O-Yuki was among them, a commotion arose of "Which one? Which one?" with people peering at faces—"Is it that one? This one?"—

“At that time, I had such a terrible time of it.”
So said the elderly geisha who remained today.

The wedding attire—

“If the groom is wearing Western clothes, you should wear Western clothes too.”

“Could such an absurd thing even be done?”

Thus, with December having arrived and concerns arising about placing new orders with the year drawing to a close, two kimono shops were suddenly summoned, and it was decided that Morgan too would wear Japanese attire—a haori bearing his family crest—

“What crest shall we use?”

O-Yuki-san, being a daughter of the Heian capital—though not quite reaching back to Heijō-kyō’s Nara—decided upon a crest of a deer encircled within a ring.
The waters of the Kamo River, amidst dyeing various people’s festive garments for the coming spring, had also dyed this bride and groom’s wedding attire.
Along with the year’s end, the river water had been flowing such matters away.

In January of Meiji 37 (1904), at the U.S. Consulate in Yokohama, O-Yuki formally became Mrs. Morgan and an American citizen.

The newspapers reported their wedding ceremony and wrote that Mr. Morgan—son of an American trust magnate—had departed Yokohama with his beloved bride Mrs. O-Yuki on yesterday’s 9:52 a.m. train bound for Shimbashi Station en route to Tokyo; this coincided with their move from Yokohama’s Grand Hotel to Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.

The groom wore a black bowler hat and fur-trimmed overcoat, his face radiant with joy, while the bride stood in stark contrast—clad in a navy azuma coat with white shawl, her hair loosely gathered rather than properly styled, stray strands brushing against her pallid cheeks like rain-laden pear blossoms. Though her leather-soled sandals clattered briskly as she stepped from the train and walked hand-in-hand with her husband, her feet faltered; only her face remained devoid of animation.

the article described.
When they entered the first-class waiting room, even as their male and female attendants fussed over them, the bride remained persistently downcast, causing the groom to fret incessantly; but once the carriage from the Imperial Hotel arrived, the newlyweds rode off together—an event the article likened to Wang Zhaojun being dispatched to the northern barbarians, though this comparison might have carried some exaggeration.

III

In New York society during the horse racing season, whether at dinner parties or theaters—not to mention those who owned horses—all conversation had come to be dominated by talk of that day’s winning horses.

It was precisely during this season that O-Yuki, having arrived in her husband’s homeland, was taken one day to watch the horse races.

The young gentlemen who had spotted Morgan immediately surrounded him, clapping his shoulders and laughing, while politely requesting to shake O-Yuki’s hand.

O-Yuki was treated with the same courtesy as an American lady by those people, but the gathering of curious eyes embarrassed her, and as she could not understand their words well, she had no choice but to discern what was being said through Morgan’s expressions.

The wind blowing through the verdant fields of the outskirts delighted O-Yuki, but the overly animated chatter of men and women keyed up by the horse races soon left her weary.

Morgan was conversing amiably with his friends when

“Shall we go?”

he said, promptly leading her out of the racetrack.

Even here, O-Yuki had felt eyes—eyes everywhere—boring into her; thus, upon returning home, she sighed in relief and asked,

“What were you and your friends talking about?”

she asked.
Morgan replied in an unenthusiastic manner,
“The usual—looking into your background, O-Yuki.”
O-Yuki smiled awkwardly, her laughter soft and hollow.
“And you told them I’m the daughter of a swordsmith again, didn’t you?”
O-Yuki felt uncomfortable with Morgan boasting about her origins as the daughter of a swordsmith who hammers the soul of Japan and claiming that the swordsmith profession belonged to the samurai class when introducing her as a Japanese girl.

No—that man hadn’t actually said so. On the contrary, that fellow had said, “Mr. Morgan, your wife is a geisha girl—a Japanese man who recently arrived has been saying so”—

In such a manner, Morgan tried to conceal having his facade stripped away by his friends,

“He asked why your wife only wears Japanese clothes, so I said it’s because they suit you best, but—”

There was something different in Morgan’s tone from his usual weekday demeanor.

“They really are a bothersome bunch.”

O-Yuki, noticing Morgan’s unsmiling countenance, casually mentioned something she had realized—that it was because they had encountered an old woman at the racetrack who had haughtily turned her face away upon passing them.

“That person—that elderly woman—is that Miss Margaret’s mother?”

“Oh, how did you know?”

Morgan drew the chair closer without reservation.

“As you’ve guessed, that old woman is Mackay’s mother.”
“She’s the lady who disliked me.”

From his days as a Yale student, they had been involved, and his taking a position at the New York Morgan Bank had been rushed almost as if solely to become engaged to Miss Margaret Mackay.

“Strange—so her mother called off the engagement just because you had your fun?”

O-Yuki, a geisha of Japan, could not comprehend whether mothers truly existed who would withhold their beloved daughters from young men of wealthy families merely because those sons had indulged in some frivolity. Even then, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there must still be some other reason she couldn’t assent to.

“Such things are all nothing but excuses.”

Morgan placed his hand on O-Yuki’s shoulder.

“Let’s go live in France. That mansion there is nice—quiet and...”

The grand mansion where Morgan had lived with his parents was in Rex, but he said Paris would be better for living with his new wife.

“In America, Buddhism—the teachings of Lord Shakyamuni—is considered heresy. They make an uproar about a woman in a kimono being a heathen.”

That too was something that O-Yuki half-understood yet couldn’t fully grasp—a bitter pill she struggled to swallow.

Even in open America, there existed bourgeois conventions just like those of old countries’ pedigrees.
The New York Wealthy Families Association, comprising four hundred members, first expelled George Morgan, while the Morgan family council rejected him—now wedded to Mrs. O-Yuki—from the clan.

At O-Yuki’s birth family—treating it as an impossible proposition—they had asked Morgan to become an adopted son into their household, but it was said that the Morgan clan would not even associate with relatives.

“Let’s enjoy ourselves in Japan and go to France.”
“Yes—it would be just like a homecoming.”
O-Yuki felt glad she could return to Japan.

From American high society—ostracized for his nomadic lifestyle and marriage to a non-Christian woman, condemned as ungentlemanly conduct—Morgan was driven out; his sorrowful heart defied comprehension.

It was during that period they had been staying temporarily by the Kusagawa River when—agitated by rumors of Morgan's infidelity—O-Yuki boarded a steamship for the second time, resolved to make France her permanent home.
She thought this might well be her final glimpse of her hometown, not knowing when she might return.

Everyone’s recent impressions of Paris—dark, old-fashioned, damp—this Paris likely gave O-Yuki the same impressions as it did to other Japanese people.

If one stayed there even a little longer, there was no city as fine as that—yet before she could grow accustomed to living in that Paris where everything was said to improve with time, O-Yuki came once more to Kyoto.

“This time, let’s live together with Mother—the three of us. Just so happens there’s a friend’s house available in Suma.”

Morgan was gentle.

In Suma, a carefree, truly relaxed, uninterrupted life was lived.

“What kind of place is this Paris?”

When asked by the birth mother,

“It’s old-fashioned, but there are some good parts too.”

“What’s the rain like?”

“It rains several times a day—no sooner does it start than it clears up.”

“So, do you always carry an umbrella when you walk around?”

“No, no one carries them.
Under the eaves and in front of shops, they all wait patiently.
They don’t dash out like people in Tokyo do.
In France, even when you’re caught in the rain and know it’ll stop soon, they say it’s only the Japanese who dash out—”

“People from Kyoto don’t do such things.
Then Paris as a place must resemble Kyoto, don’t you think?”

“In a damp, moist city—once you live there, they say it becomes an easy place to stay and hard to leave, but—”

While the mother and child were having such a conversation, news arrived that Morgan’s father’s condition had worsened.

Happiness was not eternal.
Morgan had gone on ahead only to be bereaved of his father.
O-Yuki returned to France about a month later.
That became her final parting from her mother.

Morgan inherited his father’s vast estate.
O-Yuki had grown accustomed to life in Paris, but at first—whenever she went to a department store—she would become the talk of the entire establishment, and it proved tiresome how managers attending receptions would offer their observational critiques of O-Yuki-san to friends; still, it differed greatly from American high society.

Straight along the Champs-Élysées, Paris’s famous Arc de Triomphe square was said to have streets radiating in eight directions, but Morgan’s residence stood by Avenue Hoche.

In an area called the forest—a tree-dense hillside behind Boulogne Park, a district filled with luxurious homes of the wealthy where rows of imposing, gated independent structures stood—O-Yuki lived peacefully.
However, once her reputation as a Japan-hater spread, no one associated with her.

On a day when fine sunlight showered through the young leaves of the horse chestnut trees, a young lady and a madame invited a Japanese woman to ride in their light carriage, its wheels clattering over the road.

“Madame Odan.”

“Madame Odan,” said the beautiful madame.

“That mansion is said to be Mr. Morgan’s residence—if you were to pay a visit, how would that be?”

Mr. Odan of France was famous for looking after Japanese art students—there was hardly anyone who hadn’t received his help. His wife was a Japanese woman about the same age as O-Yuki.

“But,”

Madame Odan politely declined the goodwill of her companion.

“It seems she doesn’t wish to meet too often—”

Even with this woman from the same country—of matching age, now French-born yet Kyoto-raised like herself—O-Yuki had no interaction. Even to the family home, after her mother’s death came little correspondence, until that belated inquiry arrived when she heard of the Kamogawa River flooding during last year’s great storm—clumsy kana scrawls claiming they’d forgotten how to write and found recalling too troublesome.

But she had not stopped sending money to her motherless household either.
The property manager had been sending it meticulously.

Did O-Yuki have no children? — Since no one ever mentioned children, she likely never had any from the start.
Morgan passed away at forty-three years old.

That was when World War I began.
Morgan had business requiring him to go to New York, so he left O-Yuki behind and went alone; but concerned about France and thinking that if he lingered, German submarines might grow increasingly ferocious, he hurried back to France after hastily completing his obligations.
The ship Morgan had boarded was that Lusitania, which sank carrying the resentment of many people.
Driven by a premonition that steamship travel was dangerous, he disembarked at Gibraltar and narrowly escaped the submarine mine disaster by a day's margin—yet whether this was death's inevitable path after all—even having reached Seville, Spain along the way—he succumbed to sudden illness.

From then on, O-Yuki was all alone in a foreign land.

She wanted to return home next year or so, but there was word to her hometown that traveling alone with her limited language skills would be difficult.

This was likely the source of the misunderstanding—an old woman who had been in Gion came to a certain place in Tokyo,

“I hear O-Yuki-san is returning.”
“She’s married to a university professor—a friend from her student days who went abroad to study—”

That was a case of misinformation compounding misinformation.
The mistake arose from conflating Nagase Gahaku—who had long been abroad and played Admiral Togo in a film—with a woman said to have married someone believing her to be O-Yuki-san, and her returning home after a long absence.
That woman was said to have been raised in France from around the age of ten, to be the widow of a foreigner, and to be a dark-skinned, stately woman with a daughter.

O-Yuki was all alone—in her Paris home and in Nice.
Well, in Nice there were times when Italians were with her—but O-Yuki on days without Morgan could indeed be called lonely.