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THE CHINA MAIL SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1961,
Roderick Mann
Continuing his world trip, a top Sunday Express columnist reaches a city of bath houses, bustle, and beautiful girls. The dateline, Tokyo, Saturday
I GO GAY-WITH THE GEISHA GIRLS
Even with a chaperon
around, the evening came
to an end all too soon
Party night in Tokyo. With writer
MY bedside phone rang again and i stared at it balefully. Three times already it had rung, and soft, pleading, exotic little voices had asked for Shigeo. I was get- ting a little fed up with Shigeo who had apparently been the lost occupant of the room. A little jealous great day. too.
But this time it was my hog in Tokyo valling Grave anti
courteous. "Did you have pleasant day"
A pleasant day" I toti ir exactly what kind of a day 1 had had.
a
I had spent a large part of it Bonding to a frigid's house O1 for the rain.
in Tokyo the sheets have names and the houses are man-bered consecutively-bur in the order that they were buil Tremendously helpful
1 had been nearly run over a dozen times by taxis,
الأمة
apparently driven by former Kamikaze pilots bent on Be.f destruction
had been given lunch by a manlac who insisted I'sample jugu, or blowfish-simply de- licious when eaten 'AW.
Half-way through the meal he had explained that the bite fi the blowish
Oh, yes, I said, 1 had had a Now I fully under- stood why Japan had the highest suicide rate in the world--24 out of every 100,000. Probably most of the threw after unsuccessfully trying to find their way back to their james
MY
*
Mann (centre) are his host, three geisha girls - and the chaperon
Yoshie Akimoto. I never gave Mr Wayne another thought.
Yushic who was clad only in while shorts
and
a while brassiere led me along a corri- dor
what looked like torture chamber, bade me strip completely and then thrust me with much merriment into a square sweat-box-so that only niy head was visible. fen minutes with Yoshie placing ice- rold towels rouud my head, and I was ready for stage two.
the Lowel
Amusing
host listened politely fo us outburst of Western spleen. Then he said: "I have arranged what I hope will be an amusing evening for you Japanese bath, then an evening with the geishast Bnally, a tour of our night clubs.
First. 12
were eu
نعمة
Massage
B
Again, with much giggling. Yoshie took me out of the box, saline on a fool-high stool, and then-as casually as if we were chance
acquaintances
in my Marylebone supermarket--began to lather me energetically with
a giant loofah
"I have just had a bath." I said ungraciously,
"No matter," he murmurec. "This will Le quite different."
An hour later we Yuur 10 Tokyo's largest bath. house,
"Japan," the Rakutenchi Onsen
she said, Hall. and the first part of u
place. Not like West. deadly memorable evening. was
first, then get in bath. poison, and that unless the fish
in suds." had been properly cleaned one was able 1 drop dead En matter of seconds Every year a score or more Jaguause are carried out of carelessly restaurants
Eventually. exhausted and Infuriated. I had retreated the old Imperial Hotel, the afy place I had been able to find twice in this monstrous city
My heart sank for a moment when We entered the bath- house, for there on the wall was อ giant picture of actor John Woyee, surrounded by giggling giris, with caption 110
reading:
John Wayne washed here."
But I need not have worried. After paying my £1 at the door, I was handed er to sloe eyed girl with amber skin and
exotic little face
an
mare speed through the city, was a professional entertainer. She lived in a special geisha house, to which she was appren- ticed at an early age, and was very carefully looked after.
Turning out q fully-fledged geisha was an expensive busi- ness. The geisha house trained her; housed her, fed her, and clothed her and then, when she was ready, bought her a of exquisite and
expensive kinonos. For inany years after words the geisha was thus bound to the house, paying back her debts.
"The best geishas," said my host, "are real beauties and
AD
splendid conversationalists They can talk about anything. But they are very expensive. evening with three geishas can easily cost more than £50."
Despite this, he said, no Japanese business man would "clean dream 01 concluding 8 deal Wash except at a geisha party, where Not sit the atmosphere was convivial
and the sake flowed freely.
As she spoke she emptied t wooden pitcher of water over me to wash away the soap. Next she pointed to a sunken bath led to the brim with scalding water.
in," she commanded.
I got in. Then Ave minutes later she helped me out and led me to the massage table where she proceeded to pound me. called
"Only way
to relax," said Yoshie cheerfully, climbing up un the table and walking care- fully up and down my spine. "In Japanese houses, no baths, see. So people come here. Relax. Feel good. Get warm. Bath big ritual in Japan."
BY. THE WAY.
•
by Beachcomber
less
tove
Promising
QELDOM, if ever, and, speaking Not particularly nautical
withou prejudice, Seldom if never, has an exhib NE who lives in a house-boat has said that it is more tlon aroused so much interest house than boat. Emma Wither- as the one organised by the edge, caretaker on the Water She pummeiled and belted me Sheffield branch of the Institute Nymph. put it more forcibly. for a full half-hour, all the time of Chartered Accountants.
Suid she: "It's not a reef nauti-keeping up a cheerful running Under glass cases are shown gal life, no roundin' the 'Orn or commentary. Yes. she liked samples of almost every king of hound for the Rio Grande stuff. working in the bath-house. 10 soil found in the neighbourland. We 'ad a
aboard for a
was hard work, but she inade It is delightful to know that weekend, and 'e got plastered,
Ca day, which was better accountants, even when fully and roared Land ho on the port
thun working in a factory where chartered. have their roots in beam! It was land ho all right,
the girl gol only £10 a month. the earth.
two foot away and us fastened
What was the first thing she to the shore snug as a field did when she got through each mouse in a 'aystack. Talk about day? Why, take bath. the tang o' the salt!
By the tine Yoshie Smell o'
got the mais more like it, and no
through with me," I was, I con ruddy ornpipe to Itven things fess, feeling rimarkably in- vigorated. We parted with similes and bows, amid a small snowstorm uf hundred-yen
The horse core
M
Cocklecarrot: 1 passer understanding how a respectable and educated lady, used 12 horses, ever come to extend the up. hospitality of her stables [
A
Superelectronicalism T is consoling to find that even
these two men.
Stapdriver: They arrived by electronic brains can make night, m'lud, and neighed, whin- mistake-and usually on an aled,
and pawed the ground enormous scale, as when one of most realistically. The lady is them announced that 14.376.281 member of the Homeless of the inhabitants of Manchester Horse League.
rode bicycle. What is wanted is a superelectronic brain to control the other brains, and to prevent computers, fod with too many idiotic facts, from suffering from indigestion.
Gooseboote: The boy Charlie Towie will testify that the front part of the horse yawned at him, and
the other
part hissed, "Steady, Harry!"
Cocklecarrot: A remarkably unequine reprimand, surely.
(Interval for nausea) -Landon Express Service).
notes.
Well, the evening had got off to a promising start. And as we set out for nearby restaurant for our evening with the geishas I realised that the rest of the night was going to prove equally intriguing.
I confess that, in
common with most people in the West, I had a very confused idea of the geisha's true function.
The real geistin, my bost explained as we rode at night-
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The Japanese spend hundreds of thousands every year on such parties. And when the geishas in one province went on strike recently against their houses to get a bigger share of their ean- ings, it just about paralysed the business life of the place.
At length we arrived at the restaurant and a fock of bow- ing and lissing women rushed and knelt in front of us, re- moving our shoes and replacing them with slippers.
Captivated
accompanied by a chaperon came in and I was immediately captivated. In turn, they knell on the floor before us: Miyosaku, Ichikyo, and Umeyu, all 18.
"Watch how they operate," said- my host. "Their job is to make you feel good to take your mind off your worries. By the time they are through with you, you will feel like a king."
How right he was. Gaily they served us our dinner, filling our cups with hot sake whenever we
put them down
They complimented ነቲ in turn on
iny appearance, my bearing, my handling of chop- greying hair. What a wit 1 was sticks, my conversation, my What a ane fellow indeed. How well I carried my wine. Then, all too soon, their time was up.
Falling
their knees, upon chirruping ke sparrows, they bade us sayonara and were gone,
"Bru we didn's pay," I said. "Ah, no," said my host. "It is not done so crudely. I will get the bill at the end of the month, Most geisha partles are held through charge accounts."
And BD, beaming beautiful thoughts all
about અઠ we wafted out of the restaurant on a cloud of hot sake and plunged into the jungle of neon that is Tokyo by night.
returned from a trip round the world, where she had pigged li at such fashionable spots as the Savoy
in London and the Georges Cing in Paris. She agreed that after pulsating Tokyo the night life in London, Paris, and New York was tame indeed.
Changing
the early hours of the morning we drove back to my hotel.
"Tokyo," said my host, "is changing all the time. After the war it was a charred ruin from the air raids and we had to rebuild 1 completely.
"But the Japanese are chang- ing too. They are becoming more and more Westernised.
"Kimonos are being worn less and less. They are expensive but also cumbersome not only
And, of course, they are he longer so necessary."
-
9201
"In the old days, you know, they were designed to bide, the bow legs of Japanese women The women became bow legsed because as bables"
they were carried
to strapped mothers' backs. That is at bo But now that the girls have now, except in country distric straight legs they prefer to what Western
dresses to show them There are, I was to discover, off”nun ta .: some 50,000 bars, cabarets, and He dropped me "oteläine night clubs in Tokyo-and-it-hotel-Now you have seen both seems to me we must hove sides of Tokyo," he said. visited more than half of them "After this" I said, "I shall that night.
venture forth only at night. See
I have never seen anything you at sle tomorrow." like it. Not only are the night
He chuckled and waved good- clubs all the size of airplane bye and sped away. I tottered Then we were ushered into a hangers, but they are stocked Up to
room. my square room which appeared to to the roof with the most beautiwas three in the morning, be made entirely of rice-paper ful girls you have ever seen, alt but when i got there the phone and plywood. it was almost there to sit at your lable for cajoling voices were still
was still ringing; pleading, bare, save for a 12in-high table the regulation £1 an hour. in the middle, a Japanese scroll And they do all right, these quiring for Shigeo on the wall, and a small flower girta. During the course of the
Frankly, I am sorry not to arrangement to one side.
evening I was introduced to one
have met the fellow. He must I squatted down with my host at the Latin Quarter, a Miss have been quite a man. at time table and then the geishas Mako Kitada, who had just
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