THE REFORMED DRESS.
There is then very little difference in the dress of a Japanese woman indoors and out, except in the case of the formal dress. Even there the form is the same. This uniformity of cut strikes one everywhere in Japan; the dresses are all cast in the same mould. There may be variations in the length of the sleeves or in the colour and texture of the apparel; but even fickle fashion leaves the shape of the dress unchanged; it only varies the stuff and the pattern.
Children’s clothes differ slightly from their elders’. Up to about ten they often wear at home the tight-sleeved kimono. Boys, indeed, may continue to put them on far into the teens; but girls are soon dressed in kimono of fancifully-figured crêpe or mousseline de laine, the gayest of which are specially made for their wear. Their outdoor kimono have sleeves almost touching the ground, and their formal dress is black with light patterns on the lower part of the sleeves and round the skirt. Their obi is folded almost perpendicularly behind, the folded end coming close up to the shoulders; and over it is tied a plain sash, usually of yellow or red crêpe, the knot being tied at the side with the ends hanging down.
A YOUNG LADY DRESSED FOR A VISIT.
The girl, on reaching her sixteenth or seventeenth year, ceases to be a child and becomes a shinzo, or maiden; she no longer puts on gaily-coloured kimono, though she still retains the hip-wrap, underwear sleeves, and band of crimson. At twenty-four, at which she becomes a toshima, when she is supposed to be married, the colour of her dress becomes more sober; the hip-wrap is white, the sleeves of her underwear, though sometimes still red for a little while longer, are oftener of a less conspicuous tint, and the band of blue, purple, black, or other dark hues. For the first few years she may, in her desire to conceal her age, affect the shinzo’s costume; but when she reaches thirty, she is an unmistakable toshima. This stage terminates at forty, when she comes to be spoken of as approaching old age. She is dressed soberly as if to avoid notice. Forty is pretty early for a woman to be classified as old; but in former days old age began at fifty when a man was considered unfit for business and made over his name and property to his heir. We mature early and decline at the same rate. Indeed, man, says a Japanese proverb, lives but for fifty years and rarely does his span extend to seventy years. Our expectation of life is, then, two decades less than the Psalmist’s. Impressed by its brevity, the Japanese woman knows that she ceases to please after two score and unmurmuringly gives up hope. She does not allow herself to be deceived when silver locks begin to appear among the raven; and by her dress and coiffure she frankly confesses the stage she has reached in the journey of life.
CHAPTER IX.
TOILET.
Queues—Hair-cutting—Moustaches and beards—Shaving—Women’s coiffure—Children’s hair—“Inverted maidenhair”—Shimada—“Rounded chignon”—Other forms—The lightest coiffure—Bars—Combs—Ornaments round the chignon—Hair-pins—The hair-dresser—The kind of hair esteemed—Lots of complexion—Girls painted—Women’s paint—Blackening of teeth—Shaving of eyebrows—Washing the face—Looking-glasses.