"Oh, yes," he answered. "They are beginning to, more and more."
"Well," I ventured, "do they ever bring girls up to their rooms, at their boarding house?"
"No, they don't. It wouldn’t be allowed," he assured me.
The general tone of conversation with these young men was always restrained and decent. They spoke with a gentility which is the way of the thoughtful and educated young Japanese. Notwithstanding that drinking is nowhere taboo, neither of these two, on my floor, drank. They were not Christian, and even for Buddhism they had little regard, as is the case with most educated Japanese. Still, they intimated that they did not look with favor upon licentiousness, and were chauvinistically ashamed of their restricted districts— the cages.
"Foreigners," said one of them, in answer to my question, "are perhaps on the average more moral than Japanese; but in principle our ways are just as good as yours. Foreigners, however, seem to us too proud." It was curious, for to my way of thinking, he had completely reversed it. To me foreigners are by no means more moral. Some are too proud; but it is a different pride from that of the Japanese. They (the foreigners) are more used to being proud, but the Japanese stamps and swaggers because he does not know how to be proud with dignity. He simulates or emulates too much the old time samurai officiousness.
I found it impossible to be pals with Japanese. Either the man is a narikin in the making and takes it upon himself to entertain you on behalf of his country, never letting you pay; or else he is poor and unashamed of his poverty, and always lets you pay. And in both cases it is pride. Yet, he is overawed by any foreigner, and when he is poor, he makes no pretensions.
One day my friend, Mr. Suzuki, brought his "best of friend" Hayashi, a Hyogo exporter, with him to my place. We looked across, as one could not help doing, to the Tokiwa. We chatted about it. "Have you ever been there?" he asked. I confessed. "Well, I will take you." And he was as good as his word. The entrance down below was as attractive in its simplicity as a mere entrance could be. The waitresses knelt upon the mats at the door to receive their guests. The smooth, unpainted woodwork, the expensive screens, the spacious rooms—one felt he had come into a great temple turned pagan. Half a dozen geisha had been ordered, and
