JAPAN: Butterfly Redeemed

Great though the efforts of diplomats to conciliate Japan and the West have been during the past year, no act of a foreigner has more deeply touched the Japanese people than that of a young Western businessman, Yan C. Hock, 28, who passed an evening last winter with the courtesan, Izayoi, returned to pass another evening, ended by working out the theme of the opera Madame Butterfly in unexpected real-life fashion. As told by a Japanese reporter, events proceeded thus:

“At 1130 a. m. the foreigner required an interview with the proprietor of the house through his interpreter and, when the proprietor saw him, the foreigner asked how much debt the girl owed him.

“It is not seldom that foreign guests say such things but never do they return with the money. But the particular foreigner returned at 3 o’clock on the afternoon of December 7 with a bundle of bank notes.

” ‘I will redeem her immediately,’ he said, and produced the bank notes before the proprietor. The proprietor called for the girl’s mother. Girl and mother burst into tears. The foreigner was watching the touching scene for some time and then ordered 13 other girls in the house and all the other employes to assemble . . . and gave them 5 yen each for a tip.

” ‘At 10 o’clock tonight I am leaving Yokohama for the United States,’ he said, ‘And probably I shall never see you again. You get married and enter a happy life. If you have a baby, send me a photograph of the baby.’ Addressing the girl’s mates, the foreigner said: ‘If I had more money, I would have redeemed you all. But I have no more money. I had intended to travel first class but I have now to travel second class. Good-by to all of you. . . .’

“Mr. Hock is a young businessman of Amsterdam. Mr. Hock went to the Yoshiwara. Izayoi happened to serve him. The next day he went to Nikko but he kept sighing. . . .

“Mr. Hock sent a cable home and got 2,000 yen on the day he sailed for the U. S. Although young, Mr. Hock has a wife and children in Amsterdam where he manages a newspaper. If he had been unmarried, he would have taken her to his country, Mr. Hock told the interpreter.

“The girl thus saved had suffered a very unfortunate career. In the earthquake-fire of 1923 her father, a manual laborer, became missing. Her mother had to care for eight children as a girl laborer. The strain was too great for her. The eldest daughter had to be sent to Tochigi Prefecture as a woman of ill fame. She had to become a geisha last year and in May last spring she had to serve on a 4-year contract for a loan on 1,500 yen. At that time only 1 yen remained in her mother’s hands.”