The Voyage down the Inland Sea was smooth and pleasant. It was the sixth month, warm and rippling and green. Yonosuke and his two companions Kanrolu and Kinzaemon, together with his manservant Katsu-no-Jo, debarked at Miyajima with considerable luggage. A huge crowd had assembled from nearby towns and villages.
"What is the exitement about?" Yonosuke asked a passer-by.
"Excitement? Oh, you mean this crowd. I believe they ccame for the country fair."
It was a motley crowd smitten by the holiday spirit, noisy, reckless, hungry for amusement. Groups of young townsmen were flirting with peasant girls sheltered in the enormous hall in front of the Miyajima Shrine. Country youths were admiring good-looking actors or were being led away. Still others were arguing about the best way to handle prostitutes.
Some of the inns of Miyajma had shallow fronts, and a passer-by could see pretty nearly everything that harlots waiting for trade inside were doing. They wore summer yukata and exposed parts of their innermost garments in very indelicate fashion. Yonosuke decided they were fly-by-night amateurs. He heard them twanging samisen noisly and singing clumsily a popular song, "Okazaki Joro Shu," and a local Arima ditty about a bored look of a brothel's front. They twanged and sang as thought they had just learned those pieces. It was all very disgustingly gay. Yonosuke and his companions decided to lodge in one of those establishments, however unprepossessing it seemed.
"Introduce us," Yonosuke told the innkeeper, "to a snappy, smart-looking woman who appears to have enough guts to thrash a man."
That was meant to be mere blandishment, a commentary, as it were, on the courseness on these provincial women. Imagine his chagrin, however, when just such a prostitute did presently appear at their table, flanked by two female attendants. She looked superior enough, at least in size and bearing.
Yonosuke whispered embarrassingly to his companions: "We should have changed our robes."
The prostitude looked disdainfully at them and refused to serve drinks. She gave her attendants a knowing confidential look. "They are probably poor slum menials," she said, sniffing.
At this point a hawker on the street outside came crying his wares: "Apples... apples for sale!"
Yonosuke, quick to establish his own sense of dignity, threw a piece of copper at the prostitude. "Go outside,," he ordered, "and buy some apples for us."
The prostitude refused to budge from the comfortable position on her cushion. With a superior-sounding laugh, she said with mild contempt: "Is that the way you tried a woman here last evening?"
"All right," thought Yonosuke., "so this is going to be a battle of wits." Aloud he said, "What do you think we look like?"
"Human beings."
"That is old stuff. What would you say our occupations were-our social rank?"
The prostitute smiled condenscendingly. " I would have to judge you men as patrons of this establishment. Let me see. I would say" -- she decided to be tactful and charitable for the sake of business-- "yes, I would say you were all common sedentary men from big city brought up on the tatami floor mats. That man there," pointing at Kinzaemon, "is probably a shop hireling who sells writing brushes. And you," gazing straight at Kanroku, "you are, I think a peddler of sewing kits whose boss is an exacting taskmaster. But you," and he looked disdainfully at Yonosuke, "you no doubt wait on old women to sell gaudy-looking obi."
Kanraku and Kinzaemon looked somewhat surprised, for the prostitute had guessed right, at least in the type of goods their huge -self-owned whosale houses dealt in. But Yonosuke did not take kindly to the prostitute's low estimation of himself. She should judge, he thought, by visible evidence. Anyone could tell a man's occupation and place in society by the kind and size of inro medicine case he carried with him on his sash, or by the shape and condition of his hands and feet, no matter misleading the garments he happened to be wearing might be. She had also ignored the fact that he had brought with him his manservant Katsu-no-Jo, one of the most correct and fastidious of his kind in Kyoto. Katsu-no-Jo was sitting sedately and respectfully in the background. No one boasting such a manservant could conceivably be a mere shop menial.
Ignoring the laughing prostitute for the moment, he told his two companions in an apparently extraneous fashion: "Let's put on a puppet show here. Katsu-no-Jo," and he turned to his manservant, "fetch the dolls. We'll show this woman what a high-class amusement is like."
The dolls were removed from Yonosuke's mass of luggage and displayed on the mats. And as the comic play progressed, with Yonosuke singing the joruri accompaniment, the entrance of the doll portraying Shinta's wife drew a surprised comment from one of the prostitute's attendants. "That doll is an eexact image of Komurasaki, a noted courtesan in Yoshiwara!"
"At least you have a discerning mind, or memory, as the case may be," Yonosuke praised her. "Yes, I had it made in the image of that charming courtesan."
Then he smiled suavely: "That reminds me. Komurasaki is an example of how bright a true courtesan can be. Let this be a lesson to you prostitutes in Miyajima. Once a young lord went with two of his servants- all three disguised but dressed alike yto hide the lord's identity-- to seek clandestine amusement at Komurasaki's table in the house of Ichizaemon in Yoshiwara.
"The Lord asked the courtesan: 'Can you guess who among the three of us is the master? Pass the wine cup to him first.'
"The courtesan replied: 'I would not know offhand because I am not a god. Just a moment, please.'
"And she went into the kitchen, whhispered instructions to a little girl attendant. The girl released a pair of caged nightingales, went out into the garden, and yelled excitedly: 'Look, the nightingales are here!"
"The young lord and his two servants rushed to the side porch, slipped their feet hurriedly into wooden clogs, and went out into the garden to look at the birds.
"When all three returned to the drinking table, the courtesan passed the wine cup to the young lord.
"'How did you find out?" the lord asked, amazed.
"The courtesan smiled and replied demurely: "You alone among the three fidgeted longer than usual with your footgear. You are not used to action in a hurry, or undue excitement. You have poise. You must be the master.'
"And that is showing good judgment, good taste, and respect for a worthy patron. You country prostitutes have a lot to learn."