Girdles are worn by men and women for two purposes—first, to keep their clothes together; next, to support the large knives which the Ainu always carry with them.
The Ishikari Ainu who lived formerly in Sakhalin wear leather belts, and the women wear besides a peculiar cloth headgear. Both these articles are ornamented with drops of melted lead and Chinese cash sewn on to the cloth.
These are all the articles of clothing and ornament which are in common use among the Ainu. None of them are worn as symbols of rank, or to denote virginity. No Ainu can explain why he or she wears one thing more than another, except for the reason that he or she likes it. There are no Ainu laws as regards clothing, and with the exception of the "chief," who on special occasions dresses more gaudily, and wears a crown made either of willow-tree shavings or dried sea-weed, with a small carved-wood bear head in front, they all dress pretty much alike. A chief could not be distinguished from a commoner by his everyday clothing.
Speaking of personal ornamentation, I may as well describe the way in which the hair is dressed, and also the tattoo-marks.
Little care is taken of the long hair, which reaches down to the shoulders. It is never washed, nor brushed, nor combed. At the back it is cut in a semicircle round the neck. Over the forehead the men shave a small part of the long hair, which, falling over their eyes, is uncomfortable to them; but women do not. Until lately this shaving was done with sharp shells, and wives shaved their husbands. The process was said to be rather painful, and the thoughtful women have now adopted knives for that purpose, to the great delight of the stronger sex. The part shaved is in the shape of a lozenge two and a half inches by two inches respectively from angle to angle. This open space causes the hair to part in two different directions and hang down in large wavy curls. The fingers are occasionally passed through it, and then with the palms of the hands it is plastered down on both sides.
A characteristic Ainu method of making the morning "toilette" is to bend the head low and let the long hair fall over the forehead. The two hands are then placed under it on the temples, and suddenly and violently the head is shaken and thrown back, the hair being pressed down by the hands at the same time. If the first attempt at neatness is not approved of, the process is repeated two or more times. I must confess that personally I could seldom see any marked difference between a head of hair "dressed" and one "not dressed"; but it must be remembered that the Ainu have no looking-glasses, and what they think is right is of course right for them.
Formerly, when an old woman lost her husband she had her head entirely shaved, and when the hair had grown long again she repeated the process as a proof of fidelity and affection to her deceased spouse. It is very rarely done now. She used to wear a sort of cap, with an aperture at the top, round the crown of the head during the time that her hair was short; and it was incumbent on the widow to wear a look of sorrow and pain till her hair grew long again.
The Ainu men have long beards and moustaches, which are never trimmed, with the exception of the Kurilsky Ainu, who trim theirs. The beard begins to grow when they are very young, but it is shaved till they reach manhood. It is then left to grow naturally, and never touched again as long as they live. Ainu women, whom nature has not favoured with such a manly ornament, supplement their deficiency by having a long moustache tattooed on their lips. Their hands and arms are also tattooed.
The tattooing among the Ainu is limited to the fair sex, and it is confined to the head and arms. Why and when the fashion was adopted is not known, and the semi-Ainu legends on the subject are very vague. One legend says that when the Ainu conquered Yezo, which was then inhabited by a race of dwarfs—"the Koro-pok-kuru"—some Koro-pok-kuru women came to the Ainu camp to beg food from them, and they did so by passing their arms through the reed walls of the Ainu huts. One day an Ainu clutched one of these arms and pulled it in, when a tattooed pattern on the tiny arm was greatly admired by the hairy conquerors, who adopted the practice from that day.
A simpler reason is that the women, not being so hairy as the men, are humiliated by their inferiority in that respect, and try to make up for it by tattooing themselves. In support of this theory may be quoted the fact that women are only tattooed in parts which are left uncovered when clad in their long atzis gowns.