Between the hard work of hand and brain Ginza and Nihon-bashi shop, and at night the wire-drawn twang of the _samisen_ comes from the lighted restaurants. Restaurants where each diner or each party occupies a separate room, and _geisha_ girls are sent for to entertain the guests, with puns and games, with polite conversations and endless repartee. They sit on the kneeling cushions throughout the meal pouring _saké_--and amuse. Then they dance. Posturing and swaying to an accompaniment of _samisen_ and song they glide over the matting always graceful, always reserved. The quality of their dancing rings passionless, dainty, graceful, not cold but controlled. An air of serenity surrounds them. They are not trained to the duties of womanhood, but to its heaviest burden--pleasing. The licensed playthings of the nation, toys to amuse, they reach up to their limited, low-scaled destiny, through the perpetual sacrifice of self; and the national self-control encases them, so much their very own that few perceive it. With very different fates and from very different motives there is about them, as they dance, something of the charm and of the aloofness of Andersen’s mermaiden; and if their steps too are as steps upon a sword, they, too, will smile untroubled. * * * * * So the city strives and pleasures, so the city learns and toils. Full and full of life the streets, quiet and very still the heart. The nine tall hills from Shiba to Ueno make a crescent round the moat, the brown streets lie without, the Mikado dwells within. Born as a camp Yedo made its ruler’s seat its centre, its nobles’ _yashiki_ an enclosing wall; and then beyond, out of sight and sound, the necessary, unimportant commonfolk had leave to work and sell. Tokyo to-day is still as Yedo was. _Yashiki_ are pulled down, their ground is sold, but parliaments and embassies, nobles’ houses and their gardens, still make a circle round the palace, a space of suburb and of peace between the city and its centre. Over the streets and the roadways, through parks and gardens, the black-winged crows sail past cynical, unbelieving. The web of brown canals beneath their high-arched bridges, the broad uncertain river sometimes slowly, sometimes fiercely, all flow towards the sea. The land-locked ocean, and the pale green rice-fields ripple round the streets. From sixty miles across the plain great Fuji looks towards the capital. And here in Tokyo’s heart, in _Dai Nippon’s_ heart of hearts, not the usurping _shōgun_ or general in his camp, but _Tenshisama_, Son of Heaven, bestower of a western constitution, augustly dwells. II EAST AND WEST EAST