“Oh yes,” said their guide, “Japanese crowds are very orderly.”

Indeed they suffered no inconvenience from the crowd beyond much staring, an ordeal which awaits the foreigner in all corners of Tokyo.

They had reached a very narrow street, where raffish beer-shops were doing a roaring trade.  They caught a glimpse of dirty tablecloths and powdered waitresses wearing skirts, aprons and lumpy shoes—­all very haikara.  On the right hand they passed a little temple from whose exiguous courtyard two stone foxes grinned maliciously, the temple of the god Inari, who brings rich lovers to the girls who pray to him.

They passed through iron gates, like the gates of a park, where two policemen were posted to regulate the traffic.  Beyond was a single line of cherry-trees in full bloom, a single wave of pinkish spray, a hanging curtain of vapourous beauty, the subject of a thousand poems, of a thousand allusions, licentious, delicate and trite,—­the cherry-blossoms of the Yoshiwara.

At a street corner stood a high white building plastered with golden letters in Japanese and English—­“Asahi Beer Hall.”

“That is the place,” said Yae, “let us get out of this crowd.”

They found refuge among more dirty tablecloths, Europeanised mousmes, and gaping guests.  When Yae spoke to the girls in Japanese, there was much bowing and hissing of the breath; and they were invited upstairs on to the first floor where was another beer-hall, slightly more exclusive-looking than the downstair Gambrinus.  Here a table and chairs were set for them in the embrasure of a bow-window, which, protruding over the cross-roads, commanded an admirable view of the converging streets.

“The procession won’t be here for two hours more,” said Yae, pouting her displeasure.

“One always has to wait in Japan,” said Reggie.  “Nobody ever knows exactly when anything is going to happen; and so the Japanese just wait and wait.  They seem to like it rather.  Anyhow they don’t get impatient.  Life is so uneventful here that I think they must like prolonging an incident as much as possible, like sucking a sweet slowly.”

Meanwhile there was plenty to look at.  Asako could not get over her shock at the sea of wicked faces which surged below.

“What class of people are these?” Geoffrey asked.

“Oh, shop-people, I think, most of them,” said Yae, “and people who work in factories.”

“Good class Japanese don’t come here, then?” Geoffrey asked again.

“Oh no, only low class people and students.  Japanese people say it is a shameful thing to go to the Yoshiwara.  And, if they go, they go very secretly.”

“Do you know any one who goes?” asked Reggie, with a directness which shocked his friend’s sense of Good Form.

“Oh, my brothers,” said Yae, “but they go everywhere; or they say they do.”

* * * * *