I was not surprised when she did not return until the middle of the night. Only a few ladies were still awake and watched as she went to her bedding and lay down as she was, pulling the covers over herself.
We live in a degenerate age.
A Degenerate Age
Even a man who feels his life slipping through his fingers may have a moment of pure delight. In the midst of his disillusionment, mourning all the things that could never be, the retired Emperor had found enchantment.
It left him deeply troubled and confused.
For one thing, the girl who had been pawned off on him was not quite a child after all. This he saw the moment she began to dance. It was not just that the thin gauze of her white undergarment revealed that she had a woman’s body, hitherto hidden by voluminous layers of silk, but even his jaded eyes recognized in her movements the studied seduction practiced by the most adept performers of imayo, by women who sell their bodies to the men they entertain.
For a moment, he had stared in disbelief. The girl’s face, bare of make-up, was as innocent as a child’s, the face of a young girl before she puts on the train of womanhood and applies the paints that hide her features and give her the appearance of a doll. But this girl’s gestures were those of a practiced harlot.
In his first astonishment, he had almost thanked Lady Sanjo -- not only because she informed him of the girl’s singing talents, but because she brought her to him in a state of undress that awakened fires he had thought long since dead. His blood warmed — no, boiled — as he watched that young body gyrate, those small hands inviting him to touch, to take, to ravish. He felt such a surge of lust that he hardly heard her song. Instead his eyes searched those smooth limbs, tantalizingly revealed and hidden as she swayed and bent. Her hair, heavy with moisture, clung to her white neck but swung free below and scented the air with perfume. Alas, he thought, it was a wise man who said that even a mighty elephant may be tethered with the twist of a woman’s hair.
But Lady Sanjo had not planned this at all and broke the spell by hissing a reproof that caused the girl to collapse with a cry -- like an empty doll that has been dropped.
Instantly, the dream dissolved. Toshiko sobbed on the floor before him as only a young child sobs, inconsolably. Lady Sanjo seemed like a serpent to him then, poisonous and always underfoot, ready to strike at his joy.
And he was again himself, a man well past his youth and weary of the world. A father with daughters older than this girl. A man who had done his duty, played the bedchamber games with wives and concubines, fathered his children, and rewarded their mothers with income, rank, and titles. An evil karma had brought him war, rebellion, and the deaths of brothers, sons, and friends. He yearned for serenity now, hoped to lose himself and his memories in prayer and meditation. He wanted to shave his head and put on the stole of priesthood so that the weight of this world would fall away from him. He wanted to pray for the dead and the living and be at peace.
And this young woman was an obstacle in his path.
He was angry – mostly at himself. He pitied the girl as one pities a child who has been punished for a mistake in her calligraphy exercise.
But the flush of guilty pleasure was still on his face when he glanced at Otomae and saw that she was amused by his arousal. She had nodded to him and then gone to the weeping child, taking her in her arms, murmuring consoling words. And she had asked her where she learned the song.
The girl clutched her jacket to her body and, in her shame, would not look at him, but her halting answers explained much.
Oba noToshiko had been taught both song and dance, those lewd gestures and alluring poses, by a trained kugutsu, one of the traveling women of pleasure who perform for men of wealth and power in hopes of seducing the master or heir into a torrid affair or one-night stand. And that woman had been Akomaro, one of the greatest artists of imayo and a famous harlot.
He wondered at first why the young daughter of a noble house had been allowed to watch and imitate such performances but decided that it had all been part of Oba’s plot to seduce him. It was well-known that he invited talented shirabyoshi to perform for him, and so Oba had turned his daughter into one. The thought was sickening – all the more so because, the longer he listened and watched Otomae and the girl, the more convinced he became that the child had little or no idea of what her words and gestures meant.
What had the world come to?
He remembered that tear-stained face with its downcast eyes, those small, childish hands clutched in her lap. Was she still a virgin or had her training included instruction in sexual matters?
What would Shinzei say now? But Shinzei did not appear. Otomae was chatting lightly about imayo songs and about the girl’s home, and the Emperor withdrew into himself. Only when the guard called out the hour of the boar, did he stir again. He dismissed the girl with a peremptory word.
“What do you think?” he asked Otomae when the great doors had closed behind her.
“I think she’s a rare treasure, sire,” said the nun with a smile. “She probably knows all of Akomaro’s songs.”
He frowned. “That is not what I meant. She disturbs me.”
“That, too. Is it such a bad thing?”
“How can you ask? And you a nun!”
Otomae laughed. “I was a woman once, even a very young one like your pretty little lady. She will give you pleasure, sire.”
“What? You approve?”
“Of course.”
He looked at her, saw the twinkle in her eyes, and traced remembered beauty in the lines of her face. There had been a time when he was very young that Otomae had set his blood on fire. Age had nothing to do with that. She always made him feel younger than his years. His mood lifted. “Are you not jealous?” he asked with a smile. “How mortifying for me.”
She put a hand on his. “You are the Emperor, but also my very dear friend. I take joy in your joy.”
He snatched up her hand and held it to his cheek. “You know I have no joy except when I am with you. But you are an infrequent visitor. I have been seeking peace from the affairs of the world. Now this girl is getting in the way.”
She touched his face with her other hand. “Oh, my dear,” she said lovingly. It took great temerity to touch a son of heaven so familiarly – and it gave him such comfort that tears rose to his eyes. “You are not old in years and body,” she told him. “And both men and women may find peace in each other’s arms. The Buddha does not forbid it.”
“‘All attachment to another is impurity of the heart, and all our difficulties spring from it,’” he quoted back.
She sighed. “Then I am a very sinful woman.”
He wanted to bury his face in her shoulder and be held by her the way she had held the weeping child, but he only took her hands into both of his and said, “Oh, Otomae, she is too young for me. What does she know of the world?”
Otomae gently freed her hands. “Then teach her, sire,” she said firmly. Rising to her feet, she bowed and walked away on silent feet.
“When will I see you again?” he called after her.
She did not answer. The door closed softly behind her.
The Man of Learning
Doctor Yamada lived in the Tokwa Quarter, not far from where the Rashomon gate had once stood and near To-ji temple. His house was the largest in a quarter where most homes were small, one-storied affairs, roofed with boards that were weighted down by stones. It had once been a cloth merchant’s house, but the man and most of his children had died in the last smallpox epidemic, and his widow had sold the property and returned to her family.