Having pleasing features by nature, it may be expected that the women do their best to disfigure them by art. The soft pale brown of their complexions is made ghastly and hideous by white paint, with which the face, neck, and bust are thickly covered. The natural pink of the lips is rendered disgusting by a layer of red paint, the white teeth are blackened, and the eyebrows are pulled out. This style of adornment belongs only to the married women, so that a really pretty girl will in a few hours transform herself into a repulsive hag.
Mr. Oliphant, in the work which has already been mentioned, gives rather a humorous reason for this strange custom. “The first impression of the fair sex which the traveller receives in a Japanese crowd is in the highest degree unfavorable; the ghastly appearance of the faces and bosoms, thickly coated with powder, the absence of eyebrows, and the blackened teeth, produce a most painful and disagreeable effect. Were it not for this abominable custom, Japanese women would probably rank high among Eastern beauties, certainly far before Chinese.
“All Japanese writers whom I have read upon the subject affirm that to have no eyebrows and black teeth is considered a beauty in Japan, and that the object of the process is to add to the charms of the fair one. The result of my inquiry and observation, however, rather led me to form an opposite conclusion.
“In the first place, young ladies do not, as a rule, neglect any opportunity of improving their looks; but no Japanese young ladies, even after they are ‘out,’ think of taking this method of increasing their powers of fascination; they color their lips and cheeks, and deck their hair, but it is not until they have made a conquest of some lucky swain, that, to prove their devotion to him, they begin to blacken their teeth and pull out their eyebrows.
“He, privileged being, is called upon to exhibit no such test of his affection: on the contrary, his lawful wife having so far disfigured herself as to render it impossible that she should be attractive to any one else, seems to lose her charms for her husband as well. So he places her at the head of his establishment; and adds to it an indefinite number of handmaidens, who neither pull out their eyebrows nor blacken their teeth. Hence it seems not difficult to account for the phenomenon which is universally admitted, that while Japanese wives are celebrated for their virtue, their husbands are no less notorious for their licentiousness.”
While upon the subject of dress, we must not pass unnoticed the extraordinary ideas which the Japanese have on the subject. Possessed as they are of much taste in dress, and having certain complete costumes for various ranks, it seems very remarkable that they are utterly indifferent to clothing considered in the light of covering. They attach no sense of indelicacy to exposure of the person, and men, women, and children may be seen bathing exposed to the sight of every passer-by.
Even their public baths, though some of them have two doors, one for men and one for women, are common to both sexes, and in those baths which are specially set apart for women the attendant is often a man. Sometimes there is a partition, about breast high, to separate the sexes, but the usual baths have no such refinement. The baths are merely shallow pans or depressions in the floor, in which the bathers sit while they pour over themselves abundant supplies of hot and cold water. Baths of this nature are attached to all the “tea-houses,” so that travellers can refresh themselves with a bath, in true Homeric style, before they take their meals. And, in Homeric style also, the attendants are women. The baths are known by a dark blue strip of cloth which hangs like a banner over the doorway. Europeans, when they first visit the country, are rather surprised when they pass along the streets to see a whole family “tubbing” in front of their houses, or, when they pass a public bath, to see the inmates run out to look at the strangers; but they very soon become used to such spectacles, and think no more of them than do the Japanese themselves.
Sir Rutherford Alcock, in dealing with this subject, and illustrating it by a Japanese drawing representing a bath tenanted by a man, a boy, and five women, makes the following remarks: “Men and women steaming in the bathing-houses raise themselves to the open bars of the lattice fronts to look out, the interior behind them presenting a view very faithfully represented in the following sketch by a native artist.
“In reference to which, I cannot help feeling there is some danger of doing injustice to the womanhood of Japan if we judge them by our rules of decency and modesty. Where there is no sense of immodesty, no consciousness of wrong-doing, there is, or may be, a like absence of any sinful or depraving feeling. It is a custom of the country. Fathers, brothers, and husbands all sanction it; and from childhood the feeling must grow up as effectually shielding them from self-reproach or shame, as their sisters in Europe in adopting low dresses in the ball-room, or any other generally adopted fashion of garments or amusements. There is much in the usual appearance and expression of Japanese women to lead to this conclusion. Any one of the real performers in the above scene,—a bathing saturnalia as it may appear to us,—when all is over, and the toilet completed, will leave the bath-door a very picture of womanly reserve and modesty.”
Certainly, no women can be more decently clad than those of Japan, as we may see by any of the multitudinous native drawings; and that they should attach no sense of decency to the dress, or indecency to its absence, is one of the many strange characteristics of this remarkable and enigmatic country.