The Land od the Rising Yen

and then her consent will be asked for. She is
absolutely free to say no. If she says yes, she will move into the house her
patron buys for her. The house is hers and remains hers whatever happens.
    ‘Would the patron’s wife know?’ I
asked a very knowledgeable gentleman who was an expert on the subject. He
shrugged his shoulders.
    ‘Sometimes she knows and approves: to
have a geisha confers status. Sometimes she knows and disapproves but this
makes very little difference. A woman can divorce a man in Japan but his adultery is not one of the reasons for divorce. Sometimes she prefers not to
know — and then she doesn’t.’
    The details of the actual financial
arrangement are always most discreetly handled and never revealed to anyone. As
a rule the patron simply pays all the geisha’s bills and, when the original
arrangement is made, he also pays a handsome commission to Mamasan.
    The association between the geisha
and her first patron is often lifelong. She is, in fact, a second wife, in some
cases more faithful, more loyal and more of a real partner than the first.
Marriage in many cases is nothing more than legalized prostitution; the
geisha-patron relationship, on the other hand, is often a non-legalized
marriage. Sometimes the association lasts for a few years only and the geisha
is as free to terminate it as her patron. Even if she does so the house remains
hers. The geishas are proud girls, tend to be faithful to their patrons and few
have more than two or three patrons during a lifetime. Their houses are usually
beautiful and elegant and they are, I repeat, truly respected members of
society; they are also a dying-out species.
    Having found their patrons, they go
on working as geishas, i.e. they go out to entertain at parties, to sing and
dance for other men, but they are strictly monogamous — if this be the right
word — and remain faithful to their patrons. One cannot and one does not make
an indecent offer to a proper geisha-girl any more than one does to one’s
friend’s wife.
    Which means that occasionally one
does. And it also means — as geishas are only virtuous human beings, not angels
— that such offers are occasionally accepted. The girl may then bid farewell to
her patron and accept a new one; or she may carry on a secret love-affair with
the choice of her heart, on the side.
    ‘Does the patron, as a rule, find
out?’ I asked.
    ‘Sometimes he does, sometimes he
doesn’t,’ my philosophical friend replied. ‘Sometimes he pretends not to know,
sometimes not to care, and in some cases he makes a fuss and breaks off the
relationship. He behaves foolishly or wisely, as other husbands behave the
world over. This is a marriage after all. In the West the average male has two
wives — consecutively, one after the other; in Japan — in the class which can
afford geishas at all — he has two wives simultaneously. That’s the only
difference. The superiority of one system over the other is open to debate.’

3. PLAGES
     

TOKYO
     
    Many Japanese will tell you that Tokyo is an ugly city. You must not disagree with them because that would be discourteous;
you must not agree with them either, because that would be even more
discourteous. You say: ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ or quote Wilde
or Kant on beauty in general. But whatever you may say and whomever you may
quote, Tokyo remains an ugly city. There are hardly any beautiful or even good
buildings (one I liked, Frank Lloyd Wright’s old Imperial Hotel, was pulled
down between my two visits); there are very few parks; there are no mountains
or even hills inside or outside the city; there is no green belt; there are few
monuments worth looking at; the air pollution is terrifying; the perpetual
noise deafening; the traffic murderous. Go to Rio de Janeiro, Hong Kong or Istanbul if you want to admire natural beauty in a city, of if you want to see buildings
go to Paris, Rome or Venice.
    Some people compare Tokyo’s vastness
to that of London. The two towns are very different and even their vastness
cannot be compared: London is a galaxy of countless villages, Tokyo is an
overgrown small town. Tokyo reminds you, perhaps, of Los Angeles, a dreary
conglomeration of houses without a real centre but, once again, with a great
difference. Los Angeles has a rich population who live in excellent, spacious
houses; Tokyo’s population is growing richer and richer, but housing conditions
are appalling.
    Foreigners often