Corea is decidedly the land of big hats. From their amplitude these head-coverings might well be called “roofs,” or, at least, “umbrellas.” Their diameter is so great that the human head encased in one of them seems but as a hub in a cart-wheel. They [[272]]would probably serve admirably as parachutes in leaping from a high place. Under his wide-spreading official hat a magistrate can shelter his wife and family. It serves as a numeral, since a company is counted by hats, instead of heads or noses. How the Corean dignitary can weather a gale remains a mystery, and, perhaps, the feat is impossible and rarely attempted. A slim man is evidently at a disadvantage in a “Japanese wind” or typhoon. The personal avoirdupois, which is so much admired in the peninsula, becomes very useful as ballast to the head-sail. Corean magnates, cast away at sea, would not lack material for ship’s canvas. In shape, the gentleman’s hat resembles a flower-pot set on a round table, or a tumbler on a Chinese gong. Two feet is a common diameter, thus making a periphery of six feet. The top or cone, which rises nine inches higher, is only three inches wide. This chimney-like superstructure serves as ornament and ventilator. Its purpose is not to encase the head, for underneath the brim is a tight-fitting skull-cap, which rests on the head and is held on by padded ties under the ears. The average rim for ordinary people, however, is about six inches in radius. The huge umbrella-hat of bleached bamboo is worn by gentlemen in mourning. After death it is solemnly placed on the bier, and forms a conspicuous object at the funeral. The native name for hat is kat or kat-si.
The usual material is bamboo, split to the fineness of a thread, and woven so as to resemble horse-hair. The fabric is then varnished or lacquered, and becomes perfectly weather-proof, resisting sun and rain, but not wind. The prevalence of cotton clothing, easily soaked and rendered uncomfortable, requires the ample protection for the back and shoulders, which these umbrella-like hats furnish. In heavy rain, the kat-no is worn, that is, a cone of oiled paper, fixed on the hat in the shape of a funnel. Indeed, the umbrella in Corea is rather for a symbol of state and dignity than for vulgar use, and is often adorned with knobs and strips. Quelpart Island is the home of the hatters, whose fashionable wares supply the dandies and dignitaries of the capital and of the peninsula. The highest officers of the government have the cone truncated or rounded at the vertex, and surmounted by a little figure of a crane in polished silver, very handsome and durable. This long-legged bird is a symbol of civil office. “To confer the hat,” means as much to an officer high in favor at the court of Seoul as to a cardinal in the Vatican, only the color is black, not [[273]]red. It is Corean etiquette to keep the hat on, and in this respect, as well as in their broad brims, the hermits resemble the Quakers. Marriage and mourning are denoted also by the hat.
A variety of materials is employed by other classes. Soldiers wear large black or brown felt hats, resembling Mexican sombreros, which are adorned with red horse-hair or a peacock’s feather, swung on a swivel button.
Suspended from the sides, over the ears and around the neck, are strings of round balls of blue porcelain, cornelian, amber, or what resembles kauri gum. Sometimes these ornaments are tubular, reminding one of the millinery of a cardinal’s hat.
For the common people, plaited straw or rushes of varied shapes serve for summer, while in winter shaggy caps of lynx, wolf, bear, or deer-skin are common, made into Havelock, Astrachan, Japanese, and other shapes, some resembling wash-bowls, some being fluted or fan-like, winged, sock-shaped, or made like a nightcap. Variety seems to be the fashion.
The head-dress of the court nobles differs from that of the vulgar as much as the Pope’s tiara differs from a cardinal’s rubrum. It is a crown or helmet, which, eschewing brim, rises in altitude to the proportions of a mitre. Without earstrings or necklaces of beads, it is yet highly ornamental. One of these consists of a cap, with a sort of gable at the top. Another has six lofty curving folds or volutes set in it. On another are designs from the pa-kwa, or sixty-four mystic diagrams, which are supposed to be sacred symbols of the Confucian philosophy, and of which fortune-tellers make great use.
The wardrobe of the gentry consists of the ceremonial and the house dress. The former, as a rule, is of fine silk, and the latter of coarser silk or cotton. These “gorgeous Corean dresses” are of pink, blue, and other rich colors. The official robe is a long garment like a wrapper, with loose, baggy sleeves. This is embroidered with the stork or phœnix for civil, and with the kirin, lion, or tiger for military officers. Buttons are unknown and form no part of a Corean’s attire, male or female, thus greatly reducing the labor of the wives and mothers who ply the needle, which in Corea has an “ear” instead of an “eye.” Strings and girdles, and the shifting of the main weight of the clothing to the shoulders, take the place of these convenient, but fugitive, adjuncts to the Western costume. There are few tailors’ shops, the women of each household making the family outfit. [[274]]
Soldiers in full dress wear a sleeveless, open surcoat for display. The under dress of both sexes is a short jacket with tight sleeves, which for men reaches to the thighs, and for women only to the waist, and a pair of drawers reaching from waist to ankle, a little loose all the way down for the men, and tied at the ankles, but for the women made tight and not tied. The females wear a petticoat over this garment, so that the Coreans say they dress like Western women, and foreign-made hosiery and under-garments are in demand. Although they have a variety of articles of apparel easily distinguishable to the native eye, yet their general style of costume is that of the wrapper, stiff, wide, and inflated with abundant starch in summer, but clinging and baggy in winter. The rule is tightness and economy for the working, amplitude and richness of material for the affluent classes. The women having no pockets in their dresses, wear a little bag suspended from their girdle. This is worn on the right side, attached by cords. These contain their bits of jewelry, scissors, knife, a tiger’s claw for luck, perfume-bottle or sachet, a tiny chess-board in gold or silver, etc. Besides the rings on their fingers the ladies wear hair-pins of gold ornamented with bulbs or figures of birds. Many of them dust pun, or white powder, on their faces, and employ various other cosmetics, which are kept in their kiong-tai, or mirror toilet-stands; in which also may be their so-hak, or book containing rules of politeness.
The general type of costume is that of China under the Ming dynasty. To a Chinaman a Corean looks antiquated, a curiosity in old clothes; a Japanese at a little distance, in the twilight, is reminded of ghosts, or the snowy heron of the rice-fields, while to the American the Corean swell seems compounded chiefly of bed-clothes, and in his most elaborate costume to be still in his under-garments.
Plenty of starch in summer, and no stint of cotton in winter, are the needs of the Corean. His white dress makes his complexion look darker than it really is. The monotonous dazzle of bleached garments is relieved by the violet robes of the magistrate, the dark blue for the soldiers, and lighter shades of that color in the garb of the middle class; the blue strip which edges the coat of the literary graduates, and the pink and azure clothes of the children. Less agreeable is the nearness which dispels illusion. The costume, which seemed snowy at a distance, is seen to be dingy and dirty, owing to an entire ignorance of soap. [[275]]