This is a genuinely emotional moment. The little Japanese woman disguises herself as a samurai to perform at the circus. Toulouse-Lautrec (who suffers from his own height afflictions) comes to visit her and there is a panel where they look at each other without exchanging words. But then he is called away by the two prostitutes he brought with him to the circus. And the little Japanese woman is left on her own.

The figures she keeps by her bonsai partially explains the extended wordless samurai sequence at the beginning of the story that doesn’t seem to fit with the French debauchery of everything else. It seems that was her playing with her dolls. Which made this reader go “huh?” instead of “oh.” Not uncommon for this publication.

(Heavy Metal issue #138, May 1992 – Page 106 The Five Seasons: Autumn by Kordey and Django)