OBSERVANCES AND PASTIMES
becomes what is technically called ippon, a term literally meaning "one stick." The reference here is to the fact that the geisha's honorarium is euphemistically measured, not by the flight of vulgar hours, but by the burning of fragrant incense. For the time occupied in burning one stick of incense she receives twenty-five sen, whereas the o-shaku receives only one-half of that amount. The fact is, twenty-five sen an hour, but the fashion of the incense fiction is scrupulously observed. It is chiefly during the "cup-bearer" period of her career that the geisha dances. When she reaches the ippon stage, she makes music for her little successors of the o-shaku rank; plays accompaniments for the songs of the convives; sings to them herself; becomes their vis-a-vis in the game of ken, or nanko,[1] or some other pastime; laughs merrily at their slenderest joke, and caps it with some bright conceit of her own; dances, if required, with a certain display of pretty protest; carries in and out the lacquered trays of edibles, and throws over the whole entertainment a glamour of grace, sunshine, and maiden mystery, without the least soupçon of indelicacy so far as her own initiative is concerned. It must be plainly recorded, indeed, that in purely Japanese circles the geisha is essentially a refining influence, and that if she errs and leads others into error—as she undoubtedly does—her trespasses are carefully concealed from public gaze.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 30.
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