NEEDLEWORK.
After a cloth has been sewn, it is ironed. The iron is a deep metal pan with a flat, smooth bottom and a long handle. Into it red-hot charcoal is put and the pan is heated enough to blacken any paper that it is laid on for a minute or less. It is then moved rapidly over the cloth to be smoothed; sometimes when there is some danger of the cloth being burnt, a piece of paper is put over it before ironing. For ironing edges and corners, a small thick trowel with a long handle is used. The end is put into a brazier under the charcoal, and when it is hot, it is wiped and pressed over the part to be smoothed. The degree of heat is judged by holding it close to the cheek; and the beginner often burns her cheek by bringing it too close.
The housewife, therefore, who is an adept in needlework, has plenty of work before her. The clothes and underwear for herself and her husband and children require making and unmaking. Those for holiday wear do not need remaking every season; but everyday clothes have to be taken to pieces, washed, and remade, For the children she would want two or three suits for each season, as the Japanese children have, notwithstanding their proverbial gentleness and tractability, as great a capacity for soiling and tearing their clothes as the little folks of any other country; besides, Japanese clothes are more readily soiled than European. The wife has also the bed-clothes to make. These, when they are soiled, are taken to pieces, washed, and remade with fresh layers of cotton wadding. Cushions for squatting upon are also remade when they are soiled, which may be once in one or two years. In the matter of sewing, then, woman’s work is never done in Japan any more than elsewhere.
Of course a lady who employs servants does not undertake all the sewing herself. She sets the servants between hours to work on clothing and bedding that do not require skill or delicate handling; but she has to assist in putting in the wadding and probably gives the finishing touches to the clothes. In the same way she superintends the kitchen and may at times help in cooking. And with one thing or another she is fairly well occupied all day. A wife, especially a young one, has not unfrequently a middle-aged woman who has come with her as a sort of duenna from her father’s family or has otherwise become a permanent member of her husband’s household; such a woman would take a great deal of work off her hands and superintend the other servants. But even when they have not a housekeeper of that description at home, many ladies manage to amuse themselves by paying and receiving visits, going to theatres, or occupying themselves in some favourite accomplishments, such as tea-ceremony, flower arrangement, or playing on the koto or samisen. But a mother with little children cannot as a rule gad about or be absorbed in her own amusements like one who is childless or whose children are all grown up. The Japanese mother does not, if she can help it, delegate her maternal duties to a nurse, and an infant in arms she seldom cares to give in charge entirely to a servant. She would of course have more time to herself if her mother or mother-in-law is living with her.
Towards the evening, the husband comes home and the children are back from school. It is the custom to take a bath every day in summer and perhaps once in two or three days in winter. If there is a bath-room in the house, the inmates take a bath one after another, the master of the house leading. If there is not a bath-room in it, then they go to the public bath-house; the wife and the children who are with her would take the bath in the daytime before the others have come home. In the public bath-house there are baths for the two sexes divided by a wooden partition, at the end of which the bathkeeper or his wife sits on a high platform so that both sections can be watched at the same time. There is in each section a single large bath, eight feet or more long by about four feet wide. Into this all the bathers dip up to their necks. In front of the bath is a large slanting floor, on which they sit and wash themselves. Under the partition between the male and female baths is a square wooden tank each for hot and cold water. The water is ladled in little wooden pails. When we undress, we first wash ourselves on the inclined floor and then get into the bath; and when we have warmed ourselves, we come out and wash more carefully with soap and, in the case of women, with rice-bran powder as well. When we have done washing, we get into the bath again, and finally, before we wipe ourselves on coming out of the bath, we pour again upon our bodies the hot water from the tank. We are then supposed to be always clean when we get into the bath; and as we do not wash in the bath itself, its water should always remain clear. But as a matter of fact, the water grows turbid as the day wears; happily, the lights are dim when the bath-house closes an hour or so before midnight. In the daytime it is pretty clean; and bathing in the forenoon is very pleasant as only a few bathers have been before us, except in the lower town where it is the custom for workmen to take an early morning bath.
When we have had a bath, we sit down to supper. The master perhaps drinks sake with it, in which case it will take some time as we always finish drinking before we attack the rice. Women seldom drink. The children sup at the same time. After playing for a while, the youngest are put to bed. The mother gets into the bed without undressing with the infant and gives it milk until it falls asleep, whereupon she gets out. Other young children are put to sleep by other members of the family. Their elder brothers and sisters prepare the next day’s lessons and go to bed about nine o’clock. When the children are thus put to bed, the mother is free for the rest of the evening. But it often happens that she is herself sent dozing while she is trying to make the infant sleep.
As we keep on the whole early hours, the streets are almost deserted at ten or eleven o’clock except on special nights, and most shops are closed by that time. Only in tea-houses are noises to be heard until twelve o’clock when all musical instruments must be put away. In midsummer, however, houses are often kept open till midnight on account of the heat, especially in the lower town where the crowded buildings get very little of a breeze.
CHAPTER XII.
SERVANTS.
The servant question—Holidays—Hours of rest—Incessant work—Servants trusted—Relations with their mistresses—Decrease of mutual confidence—Life in the kitchen—Servants’ character—Whence they are recruited—Register-offices—The cook—The housemaid—The lady’s maid—Other female servants—The jinrikisha-man—The student house-boy.