It was an early Spring morning in the following year after the Sino-Japanese war. In a room of the Japanese Embassy in Peking a Japanese military attaché, Major Kimura by name, was chatting over coffee and cigars with a certain Mr. Yamakawa, a Bachelor of Science, and a civil engineer of the Japanese Agricultural Department, who had just been sent to China on some official business. These two men were talking in a very leisurely way, and had forgotten all the business which they had in hand. Though it was still early spring, a hot stove in the room made the atmosphere comfortably warm. On the table a potted plum-tree, already in bloom, gave off a faint fragrance.
For a while their conversation turned on the Chinese Empress Dowager, and then it drifted to stories and incidents of the Sino-Japanese war. Suddenly Major Kimura stood up, and fetching a file of Peking daily papers from a nearby table, selected one of the numerous sheets from the pile and spread it before Mr. Yamakawa. Pointing to a certain paragraph, he asked his friend to read it. His suggestion was so abrupt that Mr. Yamakawa was a little surprised, but knowing the Major’s peculiar manner rather well, he took the paper and read what was pointed out to him, naturally expecting to find there some extraordinary anecdote of the war. His supposition was right, for in the paper he found a paragraph printed in rather square and elaborate Chinese characters, which read as follows:
“Khashoji, the master of a certain barber’s shop, and a hero of the Sino-Japanese war, who rendered great services to his country, has, since his return home, become a man of very loose morals, indulging rather freely in wine and women.