by Jina Bacarr
Dusk falls around us as I slide the paper door closed, my fingertips delighting in its silky texture, shutting out the coolness that is like a warning of the colder night to come. Softly, tenderly, the approaching dusk sweeps away the exquisite orange and yellow and red the departing sun has left behind like the swath of color on a kimono. When the sun goes down, the pink and gray sky gives way to twilight shadows and the incessant music of grasshoppers and other insects buzzing around my garden. ’Tis a place for solitude. I often sit there, thinking. More often I find myself thinking about the samurai I met at the Imperial Palace, sinners both of us, possessed of the desire to know each other in an intimate way should we meet by chance. I imagine we’d behave as impassioned lovers do in Kabuki theatre, thrashing about in love play. In my version we shed our layers of kimono and lay naked under the moonlight, touching each other everywhere, breasts, chest, belly, hips, until he slides his cock into me with no one but the gods shaking their heads as we indulge in the sweetest taboo.
I found Mr. Fawkes to be an excellent guide, showing me the sights in Tokio scattered across the city from our central starting point at Nihonbashi, including the tombs of the forty-seven ronin—eighteenth-century samurai who avenged their master’s death then committed ritual suicide—an evening watching the innovative actor Danjuro, at the theatre, as well as visiting the various pavilions of the Citadel where the shoguns lived.
I remember quite vividly the day we saw a woman with her red underslip showing under her kimono, her gigantic sash tied in front, her black-lacquered, foot-high clogs zigzagging down the street in a bizarre pattern, a young girl holding a parasol over the woman’s head with a male servant following them.
A geisha?
No, she was not, dear lady reader. Even I was fooled.
“Who was that woman wearing the vibrant, succulent colors?” I asked Mr. Fawkes later that afternoon while we strolled through the palace gardens with two ladies-in-waiting pointing out the blooms in season to us. Plum, pear, delicate and budlike. “The natives I’ve seen on the street all dress in dreary mauve or muted browns or grays.”
“If I may be so bold as to speak, Lady Carlton…” he began, his eyes searching mine for approval.
“Yes?”
“The women of the pleasure quarters adorn themselves in these silks.”
“She was a geisha,” I said with a knowing smile.
“No, she’s a…what you would call a courtesan.” He cleared his throat and continued with: “The geisha entertains the customer with song and dance and repartee before the courtesan makes an appearance.”
“Where are these pleasure quarters?” I wanted to know, my breath coming faster, wondering if it was the place I’d read about in Lord Penmore’s letters. I ignored his serious expression, delighted with the idea of seeing firsthand this charming decadence of silk and eroticism.
“Yoshiwara,” he said.
“I must go there.”
“You are joking with me, Lady Carlton.”
“No. I want to see these women.” I wouldn’t back down, so intrigued was I by these femmes du monde who extolled their womanly appeal in a floating world, flitting from one man to another in their embroidered silk kimonos. Were they more myth than reality? I wondered, these courtesans who commanded their own destiny, taking full responsibility for their place in society without losing their femininity. I was also curious about the geisha, who inhabited that world on a different plane. I wondered if a westerner like myself could become a geisha.
Imagine the story she could tell, I thought, pulling stray blond hairs off my forehead, laughing at such a notion. Who would believe a story about a blonde geisha? Not an easy task, the telling of such a tale left to a far better writer than I.
“The British Legation doesn’t look kindly at English ladies visiting the pleasure quarters,” Mr. Fawkes said, hoping that would end the conversation. “It can be dangerous, considering that samurai—”
“Samurai?” I asked, but I dared not pursue the subject and let Mr. Fawkes know what was on my mind. A provocative, naughty thought simmered in my head.
I changed the subject and enjoyed viewing the blossoms, though with my limited knowledge of the native language, I couldn’t follow the lively banter of the ladies-in-waiting, frustrating me. If there’s one thing that upsets the natural order of an Irishwoman’s brain, my da always said, it’s not to be minding somebody else’s business.
Which meant over the coming months I worked hard learning phrases, nouns and verbs and how to count. Having grown up in a household where the spoken word fell from an Irish tongue, I spoke with an accent that oft got the better of me when I tried to pronounce the native words. I found my language skills improving when, at the empress’s request, I began instructing the ladies in the mikado’s court in the intricacies of western dress, including close-fitting bodices, full skirts and white gloves. Although I found their slender, tubular look to be elegant (I imagined what it would be like to wear a silken kimono and be unwrapped by my samurai, layer by layer), the empress was openly curious about the rows and rows of lace trimming my flounces and petticoats. I was delighted when she suggested sponsoring a school to make the beautiful fabric. I knew she longed to have a red satin petticoat and white velvet gown set with off-the-shoulder cap sleeves and dotted with pearls like the one I’d brought with me from Paris. Since no dressmaker could touch a royal personage, I suggested the wife of the premier, who was similar in size, be fitted in her place. This idea charmed the empress, who secretly had such a gown made, but to my knowledge she has yet to wear it in public.
My work schedule with the empress changed when in May 1873, a fire erupted in the women’s quarters in the Imperial Palace, completely destroying the old castle and forcing the royal family to relocate to the castle of the empress dowager on the high ground in Akasaka. The trek by kuruma was not only inconvenient for my visits, but also for the officials who had to travel a greater distance to conduct affairs of state. (Fortunately for me, James had left Tokio on a surveying trip with Lord Penmore, compiling detailed renderings of the rivers, mountains and roads on the outskirts of the city. No doubt to further their railroad scheme to import raw materials into the country.)
In my favor, I discovered the empress showed more interest in having me visit her in her temporary quarters, though I wasn’t sure whether it was to display to the British Legation that the mikado’s government was committed to keeping open communication during a difficult time or a genuine show of friendship. I later learned the approachable behavior of the empress extended beyond politics and included the warm heart of one woman reaching out to another.
As she promised, the empress took it upon herself to have several passages of Ihara Saikaku’s demimonde fiction translated for me. I found his renderings of life in the pleasure quarters written nearly two hundred years ago more elegant and sophisticated than the lewd tales I’d read in Lord Penmore’s library. Saikaku’s physical descriptions of the women in the licensed quarters made them seem fascinating and worldly, their charms expressed in great detail, from the shape of their necks, mouths and brows, down to whether or not a single mole could be found on their bodies. I was completely intrigued.
I enjoyed a great rapport with the empress and although some members of the British Legation did not approve of my female intrusion into the workings of the mikado’s government, I believed there was little they could do about it. Unlike the Englishwomen sent to Japan to teach sewing and ordinary household duties to native women (their passage and board paid for by the British government), I believed they had no authority over my comings and goings. I feared that although they stated publicly they wished to elevate the position of women in Japan, their intent was to limit their rights as they had done to the female population of Queen Victoria’s realm.
And what hypocrisy. I often caught hushed whisperings bantered about at the palace from stodgy old men in their black stovepipes about the “whore problem,” meaning Yoshiwara, where
seeking pleasure was as natural to the natives as assuaging hunger. These pompous men insisted they wanted to curtail such goings-on, yet I gathered from eavesdropping on the intimate details of their conversation (“I say, old man, I nearly choked on my cigar when the twit arched her back and her kimono fell open and revealed her breasts.” Or, “The damn girl wouldn’t even look at me when I fucked her.”), they were well acquainted with the women of the licensed quarters. That only made me more determined to see for myself the extent of such pleasures offered there.
Not an easy task, considering James’s man followed me everywhere, except into the empress’s apartments. It became a cat-and-mouse game, with me tipping my parasol to him every morning when I left for the palace, though he pretended not to see me. I brought up the matter to my husband when he returned from his surveying trip and moved out of our house and took up residence with Lord Penmore. He laughed and attributed my suspicions to my female curiosity and assured me I was free to do as I wished as long as I did not sully his reputation. His reputation? I admit I rumbled inside, pushing, posturing to fight back, so angry was I at his impertinence, but I stood firm, as if my feet were encased in sod and mud, and kept my mouth shut. I dared not do anything but comply with his wishes since he had adhered to his end of the bargain, meeting me at the bank to report his business goings-on regarding the railway and showing me the books as I had requested (Da sent me an addendum to his letter of credit as I’d requested, so James needed my signature as a cosigner to approve his expenditures).
I wasn’t fooled. I knew he was using the funds he had pilfered from my father in Yokohama to finance his own interests, but I also knew he was up against the vexing native trait of indecision. Months went by and James became more and more frustrated by the lack of action on his plans. According to Mr. Fawkes, who discreetly inquired about the situation via an old friend seated on the mikado’s council, foreign loans were no longer trusted by the government, which, for the moment, fit perfectly into my plan. Expansion of the railway line from Tokio to Kobé had been halted because of talk about a possible samurai uprising, leaving my dear husband no choice but to go along with my father’s instructions to purchase supplies for the Ōzaka–Kobé railway line, due to open in late spring 1874.
I made certain he did, involving myself in the railway business and raising eyebrows at the bank and at court. What is important for you to know, dear lady reader, is that I was under great duress to make certain my father’s investment in Japan did not lead to his financial ruin. Da had invested heavily in the building of the new Northern Pacific Railroad, which suffered from overspeculation. When the bank financing the railroad failed, a panic followed. While I was sipping tea and eating sweetmeats with the empress or buying silks or going to the Kabuki theatre with Mr. Fawkes, the U.S. stock market rallied then fell into a downward spiral so devastating that by the fall of 1873, thousands of businesses were ruined, unemployment rose and, as I write this memoir, the country has not yet regained any sense of normalcy.
Indeed, I worried over the fortunes of one Thomas O’Roarke and my adored mother, but I knew they were strong Irish and would rebuild whatever they lost. My da is a wise, crafty soul with the vision of Saint Patrick dancing in those steel-blue eyes. Knowing how the devil himself can trick you with his pot o’ gold, he pulled his money out of the stock market before it was too late, then sold the New York brownstone and moved back home before regrouping his company with a smaller workforce. But he didn’t forget the fine men who put their heart and grit into laying the tracks and running the trains.
If I may read to you from a letter he wrote to me:
Me dear Katie, this is your da talking, hoping you’re having a grand time over there, but I must speak of the hardships we’re facing here…[he mentions the unemployment and breadlines]. Aye, I wish you could have seen your mother down at the station the day we had to let the workers go, handing out every single pair of shoes she owns, ’cepting the ones on her feet, to the wives and mothers and daughters of my men. So proud I was of my Ida. She’s good girl, Katie, like you. I miss you, daughter, but I know you’re taking care of your old man’s business investment and I thank the holy saints for your courage and determination to see us through during these troubles. Da.
I was lonely for him and my mother and my little sister, Elva, but how could I not stay in Japan? And if I may bare my soul to you, dear lady reader, I wanted to stay…because of Shintaro. Every time I went to the palace I would look for him, hoping to see him again, this swaggering samurai rebel exuding such dashing energy I gathered up my skirts and followed him, glimpsing his flowing bronze- and gold-colored kimono disappearing behind sliding doors in the palace. Breathless, I stopped, envisioning his chiseled muscles underneath his kimono set with gleaming crests resting like the soft glow of moonlight on his shoulders and broad back. I saw him again and again, convincing myself he possessed both strength and sensitivity and engaged in wild, careening sexual escapades with beautiful courtesans. It was a young girl’s fancy and ne’er but an innocent view of what was a complex man and his paramours, a hidden side of him I’m not yet ready to speak of, but I promise you I shall be bold in all I reveal later in my tale.
I can ne’er forget the time he caught me behind the camellia hedges along the esplanade in the palace park, admiring the sculpture of a man made of white chrysanthemums and carrying on a conversation with him, so romantic was I, so naive, and pining for a lover. Beautiful to look at, his floral scent rich and heady, his petaled robes as sumptuous as those of the emperor, his flower heart was mine for the taking. Even when I discovered my samurai watching me admiring the sculpture, Shintaro never spoke, his face a mask of solitary darkness as if he struggled to let go and give voice to his desire to speak to me, reach out to me, touch me, but his way of the warrior prevented him, so unflinching was he. I shall never forget his eyes. He did so much with those eyes, making me forget he was so damn physically handsome, so explosively charismatic in everything he did, yet I would also discover he possessed great intelligence and enormous sensitivity to the world around him. He loved his people and was especially drawn to the children, taking great care to make certain their rice bowls were full and they received instruction in fencing with bamboo swords—and bamboo spears for the girls.
I digress, but we’ve covered a lot of territory, you and I, since that day I first saw Shintaro at the Imperial Palace in the summer of 1873. I shall now continue my story on a night of nights in the spring of the following year in the jaded brothels of the pleasure quarters in Yoshiwara for an evening of pleasure no Occidental woman before me has known.
If you will remember, dear lady reader, ladies were discouraged from visiting the licensed quarters. Knowing my Irish fancy for daring, no doubt you’ve already guessed how I found my way into this erotic environment, creating a dark alter ego who lived in the shadows and embraced all that she found in her rebellion against society. Lust, hot carnal passions. And sex.
And if you haven’t, the surprise will set your clit atwitter.
11
Her eyes shone dark and luminous from the black-and-white photo hung on the outside of the Yoshiwara brothel, whispering to me in that lovely way Oriental women have of inviting you in, begging you not to resist, then lowering their eyes so you can’t say no.
Disguised as a young English gentleman, I’d been standing outside the brothel on Nako-no-chō Street, a handbill clutched in my fist, trying to get up the courage to go inside this twilight world and involve my libido in the vices offered there. I make no excuse for my conviction to come here, establishing it first in your mind, then shifting to a different reality in upcoming pages where I shall exploit my brazenness to produce a profound sexual disturbance within you. I shall set such unease upon you, dear lady reader, that you will feel your thighs sticking together, but you won’t be able to stop reading, not even to change your damp drawers as you experience with me the sweet ecstasy of what it was like to lose my virginity within the im
passioned walls of these pleasure quarters.
I have your attention, do I not? I’m pleased. I shall fight to hold on to this cavalier attitude, possessed as I am to explore the sexual depths of the native culture with you, and bring you and your callused ideas about respectability with me to this place where I found a timely refuge from my lonely existence with—
Shintaro. Yes, he fucked me. Again I use the vulgar word, for love was not in his heart that first time nor was it in mine. I could paint our first coupling with the romantic trappings of wistful sighs and deep kisses, but I’m being honest with you, dear lady reader, the reality being that it was raw and lustful, two people both deeply hurt, trying to find a way to ease their pain through sex. Oh, but what sex. I feel my heart racing as I recall the exquisite tremors and burning fever of that night. Be patient, for I shall reveal to you the intimacy and legendary debauches of a society ever in heat, where such pleasures are neither morally nor socially condemned.
