"A LITTLE MOTHER."
And what a medley of scenes there are, and what a flow of life confined in these narrow streets with their one-storeyed houses. Coolies harnessed by ropes to drays full of rice, answering one another with their musical patient cry of Huydah-Houdah; itinerant vendors with bamboo poles slung across the shoulder, and suspended trays filled with every imaginable variety of article; Buddhist priests with their shaven heads, and white dresses with flowing sleeves, covered with black crêpe.
Mingling with the crowd of dear little men and women in their graceful flapping kimonos, are the little girl "mothers," who at the age of ten bend their backs and have a baby brother or sister tied on. Happy babies they are, brown and contented, as are their scantily-clothed kindred, who obey an instinct of nature in making mud pies and dust castles by the roadside. Here is a closed van on wheels, painted black, being drawn by policemen. It is a "Maria" with a prisoner peering out between the bars.
Every now and again we meet a funeral. The coffin is a square deal box, slung on bamboo poles, for the deceased has been placed in it in a sitting posture with the knees up to the chin. It is only another form of the economy of material, that forms such an especial feature in all things Japanese. However, this people understood long before we did, the use of lovely wreaths of coloured flowers, to mitigate the gloom of mourning, and the coffin is hung with them. Ancestor-worship takes a prominent part in Japanese religion, and now we understand at last the use of those elaborate gold and lacquer cabinets, with outer and inner folding doors, that you so often see in England. These cabinets are intended as the shrines where the little golden memorial tablets, in the form of small gravestones, and engraved with the name of the deceased, are kept at home. The deceased is always given a posthumous name, as, not believing in the immortality of the soul, but rather in its transmigration into an animal, they say that he has ceased to exist altogether, and has changed his state and lives under a new name. These memorial cabinets are found in all the houses of the upper classes.
The pictures that we know of these little Japanese ladies are the most faithful reproductions. Wrapped tightly round in their kimonos, with the bunch of the obi formed by its folding over at the back, their figures take the graceful bend and curve we see pourtrayed. The loose flowing sleeves, and the soft folds around the neck, and open at the throat, are so pretty. Their underclothing consists of several loose garments of crêpe, which is the material exclusively used by the upper classes, and their hips are so tightly bound that no European woman could stand it. They treat their hips as we do our waists, their object being to be perfectly straight. When this was explained to me, I understood how it was that an extra breadth is put into the kimonos bought by Europeans. It is curious that, though the Japanese bathe so frequently, they are not particular as to changing their underclothing. The women wear white stockings with a pocket for the great toe, and "getas" formed of a sole of wood, perched on two high clogs of the same, and kept on by a leash. Thus, when they enter a house, they leave their clogs at the door, and go about on the spotless matting in their stockings. As they sit and eat off the floors, they cannot allow the dirt of outside boots to be brought in, and all Japanese houses are scrupulously clean.
The kimonos of ladies are made in delicate quiet-toned stuffs of pale grey or fawn colour; but simple as some of them appear, the stuffs of which they are made are so costly that, even unembroidered, they will cost as much as 300 dollars. And then their obis, those broad sashes of the richest brocades and satins—on them they lavish all their pride and money, and they often descend as heirlooms in a family. The dressing of their hair is one long-continued source of admiration; it is such black glossy hair, and the coils are so immaculately smooth. There are but two styles of headdress for the whole country—one for the married ladies, and one for the single; and so you can always distinguish their state in life at a glance. The married women have it dressed in a single extended roll, with inlaid combs and coral-headed pins placed round; whilst the unmarried ladies wear their hair divided by a silk or gauze ribbon into two flat coils placed on either side of the head, and have still more decoration in the way of glass bead pins. And as to the little girls, they are the counterpart of their mothers, and from the earliest ages wear theirs in a similar manner. It used to be the custom for married women to have their teeth blackened, to prevent their receiving admiration from men other than their husbands; but this is dying out, and you now only see old married women in country districts following this obsolete fashion. No Japanese woman ever walks. She shuffles, she scuffles, she tippets along, balancing on her high-heeled getas; but step out the necessary stride for a walk, no, they cannot do that, for their kimonos are so narrow that they cannot move otherwise than with their knees knocking together. They are not pretty, these meek, gentle-looking, brown-skinned creatures, yet their sweet deprecating manners are very attractive. They are excellent mothers; more excellent wives, in their complete subjection and utter want of initiative. The sum total of their education is implicit reverence and obedience, first to parents, subsequently to husbands; and at the Peeress' school at Tokio, we are told that they are so afraid that the modern education given there to the daughters of the nobles will militate against this ideal, that particular lectures are given on the subject.
The men, so long as they wear the native dress, are dark, pleasant-looking little men; but when you see them, as you frequently do now, with a kimono surmounted by a brown or black pot-hat, a solar topee, or even a tweed stalking-cap, they are positively evil and unpleasant to look at.
Viscount Okabé, so long Minister in London, took us for a drive in the afternoon, and then we had time, before a pleasant dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Fraser at the British Legation, to go to the Theatre.
The corridor is covered with piles of sandles and umbrellas, whilst from the adjoining kitchens come savoury and nauseous smells. The floor of the Theatre slopes upwards from the stage, and is divided into square compartments, neatly matted, and intended for family boxes. The galleries are divided in the same way. And here groups of ladies and gentlemen are encamped for the whole day, for a Japanese theatre begins at 9 a.m. and lasts for ten hours; nor is this all, for the same piece may be continued from day to day, and last for six weeks. It is now five in the afternoon, and yet the audience maintain a deep interest and breathless gaze on the stage.