Suddenly some one stood before him, bowing deeply. It was Ishii, his clerk.
"Good evening, Mr. Kent." He was evidently pleased to show the others that he knew this foreign gentleman. Kent invited him to sit down. As they chatted over their beer, he told him of his rebuff. What was the reason?
"Well, you see, it is, in a way, a sort of a private place, kind of a club." He was oddly evasive, ill at ease. "Just wait a moment, please."
He scrambled upstairs and disappeared. Presently he returned. "You can come, if you like. They are my friends upstairs there. We meet here sometimes. You know," he lowered his voice, "it's politics."
So that was it. Immediately Kent was eager to go. These were the hotbeds of the new thought, the "dangerous thoughts," as the police called them, half-baked Socialism, Communism, Sovietism, fortuitously mixed with Cubist art, literature after the fashion of Dostoievsky, crude passion for mass sculpture à la Rodin, anything that was thought to be ultra-modern or outré, beyond the minds of the _hoi polloi_, _haikara_, the latest in modern culture. It was an opportunity to learn for himself what they really thought, these youths, how much of it was real, and how much only pose; to see how deeply it all went, whether it was merely the usual ebullience of youth, such as one might see in the European universities, even in America, which usually spent itself quite safely with passage into maturer years, or whether this was really more definite, more likely to have direct, positive influence on the life of the nation, the development of the government of Japan.
They were extremely courteous, quite friendly, though a little self-conscious, ill at ease, evidently diffident as to whether they had been wise in admitting this stranger. He was invited to sit at the table with two men older than the others; he was told that they were professors. Scattered at other tables were some ten or twelve students, much of a type, the ungainly age of adolescence. It was awkward in the beginning. He had the uncomfortable feeling that they were taking his measure, deciding whether he was quite safe. He would like to reassure them; still, it was probably better to let the situation develop spontaneously, to let them take the initiative. He drank with the two professors; he judged them to be about thirty-five or forty, thin, nervous men with the pale, somewhat ascetic faces of enthusiasts. They opened with the questions usual in Japan; what was his nationality, how long had he been in Japan?