Two indelible features distinguish the Japanese from the European type. Their half-veiled eyes, and a disfiguring hollow in the breast, which is noticeable in them in the flower of their youth, even in the handsomest figures.
138.—JAPANESE.
Both men and women have black eyes, and white sound teeth. Their countenance is mobile and possesses great variety of expression. It is the custom for their married women to blacken their teeth. The national Japanese costume is a kind of open dressing gown ([fig. 138]), which is made a little wider and a little more flowing for the women than for the men. It is fastened round the waist by a belt. That, worn by the men, is a narrow silk sash, that, by the women, a broad piece of cloth tied in a peculiar knot at the back.
The Japanese wear no linen, but they bathe, as we have said, every other day. The women wear an under-garment of red silk crape.
139.—A JAPANESE FATHER.