Our women, squatting as they do at their toilet, do not need a dressing-table, instead of which they set before them a small wooden box with three or four drawers and surmounted with a square looking-glass hinged on two supports which stand on the box. In the old days when glass was unknown or at least very rare, a metal disk highly polished on one face and with a handle was set on a stand. Now, however, sheet-glass mirrors are very common, though those of plate-glass are less used owing to their higher prices as they have, unlike the sheet-glass, to be imported from abroad.
CHAPTER X.
OUTDOOR GEAR.
Boots and shoes versus clogs and sandals—Inconvenience of foreign footgear—Shoes and boots at private houses—Clogs and sandals able to hold their own—How clogs are made—Plain clogs—Matted clogs—Sandals—Straw sandals—Headgear—Woman’s hood—Overcoats and overdresses—Common umbrellas—Better descriptions of umbrellas—Lanterns—Better kinds of lanterns.
EUROPEAN clothes are, as we have seen, replacing the Japanese male dress in schools, public offices, and other quarters, and are checked in their advance only by the unaltered state of Japanese homes. In the matter of footgear the case is almost similar, only that boots and shoes have superseded clogs and sandals to a far greater extent than coats and trousers have the kimono. For people in foreign clothes almost invariably wear foreign footgear; it is only in wet weather that one sees sometimes a Japanese in European clothes walking through the mud in clogs instead of boots; and a great many in native clothes wear boots and shoes. There are plenty of people who go in hakama to schools and public and private offices; but where these buildings are in foreign style as most of them are, people are not allowed to enter with their clogs, and the only alternative is that they must wear sandals or boots. But as the sandals cover the feet with dust in dry weather and with mud in wet, many persons prefer to walk in clogs and change them for sandals at the school or office; but as this means that they must leave at the entrance their sandals at night and their clogs in the daytime, they run the risk of losing them. Hence, there is a steady increase in the number of those who wear boots or shoes, which if one gets used to them, are easier to walk in than clogs or sandals.
Boots and shoes go very well with the hakama, which, being loose and wide, does not rub against them; but they are not so convenient when we are in kimono only. The leather, by rubbing against the kimono, wears it, especially if silk-lined, much more quickly than do clogs; for in a Japanese dress it is not the thongs of the clogs so much as the socks that rub against the lining of the kimono. And these socks naturally wear it out more slowly if they are of calico, and not of cotton.
In going into a Japanese house, one has to take off the clogs, sandals, boots, or shoes; and consequently it is more convenient to go in either of the former two as they can be slipped off without the least trouble. And also, as the socks are visible in wearing clogs, we seldom go out in shabby ones; but when we put on boots or shoes, we not unfrequently forget there is a hole in the sole of a sock, or it may be that we put up with worn-out socks believing there would be no need to take off our boots until we come home, and then, being suddenly called by business to a private house, we repair thither and on pulling off our boots, see with dismay the toes peeping out of the socks. Another disadvantage of boots when we visit a private house is that felt in winter, which has already been referred to in a former chapter; that is, though there are braziers for the hands, no provisions are made for the feet which are soon benumbed through the socks, which however thick they may be, are not so warm as the Japanese socks, especially when the latter are under cover of the haori. Still, boots and shoes are often unavoidable when we pay a chance visit; but then the boots should be elastic-webbed, for if we call with laced boots on, the servant who answers the door has to wait patiently in the draught until we take them off. The situation is aggravated when the visitor leaves; for then the host and his servant, and if he is a friend of the family, the wife and the children, will come to the porch to see him off and remain there until he leaves the house. If the caller has any tact, he will merely tuck in the laces and walk out with his boots flopping and tie them when he is out of the premises. Many visitors, however, think nothing of keeping the whole family shivering in the cold while they leisurely lace their boots, for probably they too are put to the same ordeal when they have visitors in laced boots. For their greater handiness in this respect shoes were at first almost exclusively worn; but now boots are supplanting them to a large extent on account of their superior ease in walking.
As these disadvantages, then, attach to boots and shoes when we wear a kimono or visit a Japanese house, clogs and sandals are able to hold their own against the invasion of foreign footgear, and are likely to continue in favour so long as we are obliged to go indoors barefooted or in socks only, which means, while the interior of Japanese houses is unchanged and people squat on mats instead of sitting in chairs. As it will be a long time before the interior can be Europeanised, the clogs and sandals will for many a year to come remain the national footgear of the Japanese. Our description of the Japanese dress would therefore be incomplete without a reference to the clogs and sandals.
To begin with the clogs, they are either plain or matted. A plain clog consists essentially of a piece of wood, oblong or with rounded ends, just large enough to cover the sole of the foot, and supported by two flat, oblong pieces of wood, running from side to side and one behind the other. The sole-piece has three holes, one on each side just in front of the hind support and one in the middle in front of the forward support. A thick thong of hemp is passed through the side-holes from above and the ends are tied together under the sole-piece; the part on the upper face of the sole-piece, which is covered with cloth or leather, is just long enough to be stretched out to the third hole; a similarly-covered thong is passed through a hole pierced in the top of the first thong and its ends are pushed through the hole in the sole-piece and tied in a knot on the nether side. The second thong thus holds down the first, which is separated from the sole-piece by a distance just enough to pass the toes between them. In wearing a clog the toes are slipped in under the side-thong and the top-thong is held tightly between the big and the second toe. The side-thong presses on the joints of the toes and prevents the clog from slipping off. If the top-thong is gripped tightly, the toes will naturally be bent and press down the fore-end of the clog and, the top-thong acting as a fulcrum, the hind-end will press against the heel. Thus, there will be little difficulty in walking in clogs. But if the grip be relaxed, the hind-end will drop and, in walking, be dragged on the ground; and as it will hurt the toes to be always in tight grip, the clogs are very often merely hanging on to the toes and are consequently dragged along. It is this dropping and dragging of the hind-end which makes the clogs clatter so noisily on the stone pavement and wooden flooring.