But Chizuru would end up going elsewhere.
There was someone at the door. The maid, who had gone to answer, came back hastily, and said, “Minister Inoue has sent a carriage for you. He also sent word that everything has been arranged.”
Chizuru was stunned. She had indeed received an invitation from Minister Inoue Kaoru for tonight’s ball. Although she had declined the invitation because her father was still indisposed, the messenger had stonily replied that they already gotten permission from her father. A carriage would be here at six o’clock to pick her up, her dress and accessories would be at Rokumeikan, and a personal assistant would be there to help her get ready, so she need not worry. He had said it all mechanically and left. And now everything he had told her was becoming reality.
What shall I do?
Chizuru hesitated, but not over going to Rokumeikan. She had been resigned to the fact that she could not refuse to attend. An invitation from Minister Inoue might as well have been a government order. Even Isanosuke could not have refused. There was a more personal reason for her reluctance.
She had heard that only aristocrats and nobility from the financial and political worlds frequented Rokumeikan. Why was she being allowed to go to such a place? Not only that, it was going to be a ball, for which she would be required to wear a Western-style gown and dance, when she had never been dancing in her life.
“Akane,” she whispered. If her cheerful little sister had been in her place, she would be sure to acquit herself gracefully.
Where are you?
She felt herself sinking ever deeper into misery and tried to lift her spirits.
Twenty minutes passed, and soon after Chizuru had left in the carriage, an old helper left Renbei-jyuku to deliver Chizuru’s letter to Kanô Jigorô. By the early afternoon the next day, however, the messenger’s body would be discovered, his throat torn open, at a nearby shrine.
In what is now Hibiya, inside the Yamato Life Insurance building, next to the Imperial Hotel, there once stood the most famous building of the Meiji era.
It was built at Uchiyamashita-chô, Kôjimachi Ward, Tokyo, where the Satsuma clan clothier’s mansion had used to be. The property had spread over 8,532 tsubo, and the Renaissance-style building had stood on 467 tsubo.
From its opening on November 28, 1883, to Minister Inoue Kaoru’s resignation on September 16, 1887, night after night it had been the site of extravagant parties. Foreign and Japanese nobles and people of distinction in formal attire had danced the night away in the grand ballroom.
The building was called the Rokumeikan.
Although it had been harshly criticized as a symbol of Minister Inoue Kaoru’s extreme Europhilia, it had also been an object of fascination to people who longed to know what a sophisticated party in Europe might be like. Commoners could only gaze from afar when the chandeliers lit up the second floor party room and salon, and men in tailcoats and women in evening gowns danced the waltz.
Past the black gate, which had once marked the entrance of the Satsuma clan clothier’s property, there was a garden with a pond. Chinese lanterns floated in the water.
The driver got off the coach first to hold open the entrance door.
As soon as she entered, formally attired men and women focused their angry and contemptuous eyes on her.
Even the servants in formal dress did not hide their scornful looks at the arrival of this miserably unsophisticated girl.
After a messenger whispered something in one of the servants’ ears, the servant approached Chizuru and said politely, “Minister Inoue told us to expect you. A maidservant is waiting for you upstairs to assist you. Please leave everything to her.”
He led her upstairs to the second floor. The halls were overflowing with people.
“Please wait here.” The servant disappeared into the crowd.
The elegantly dressed people stared at her openly, while others passed by and ignored her.
Amid the crowd, Chizuru could only tremble.
They don’t look right.
This was what she thought of the women. Some of the Japanese women were dressed in European gowns, but they simply could not compare to the wives of the foreign ambassadors and diplomats. Their dresses did not fit right, the skirts of the gowns too long or too short. Why was that woman dragging the bottom of her gown? She should have taken up the hem a little more. Oh, she tripped. And that makeup: why had she put on so much powder? And those red lips! She looks like a dead person…
The image of Akane sick in bed flashed through her mind.
“No,” she whispered, and closed her eyes.
Foreigners did not look right in kimonos. That was because the kimono represented the history and tradition of Japan, just as the gown was a reflection of European history and tradition.
If the women who had imitated the European style turned out looking like the dead, perhaps it was just that Europe was a land filled with dead people. Perhaps the people gathered here tonight were all dead.
Japan was still innocent and immature, but maybe it was trying to imitate a culture that was already dead.
No, it must not be. Chizuru shook her head with her eyes still closed.
A hand gently touched her shoulder.
When she opened her eyes and turned around, she found a European man in a military uniform standing before her. The gold epaulets on his shoulders burned into Chizuru’s eyes. He looked to be an officer in his mid-thirties.