The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1875-12-04
A Japanese ThOrOughfare.

A correspondent of the Troy Times,
writing from Yokohama, says: Here
is a bevy of girls, some very bright
and pretty countenances among them,
with loose gown and low-neck gown,
sort of heavy sash bound three or
four times around the waist, with the
ends falling gracefully behind-the
fashionable panier of the japanese
ladies. They wear no bonnets; their
hair is deliberately dressed and curl
oulsly built up and wound into fam
tastic shapes; it is black as black can
be, in this respect corresponding with
the color of their eyes. Beads, brace
lets, and rings afford the ornamental
ton that gives expression to woman's
pride, which in one form or another is
the same everywhere; white stockings
enclose the feet with place wrought
for the separate fitting of the big toe,
like our mittens for the thumb the
sandals, elevated from an inch to two
inches by two crosspieces near the heel
and toe, are open at the top, with
bands SO arranged as to hold the foot
in its place, and with these the
japanese belle trips along with a sort
of shutting clog movement that would
hardly be deemed graceful in our
ranks of fashion. But their merry
laughter and coquettish ways betoken
the lighsheartedness and mischievOus
tact of exuberant girlhood, illustrating
the same nature of the fairer sex in
various forms of manifestation all over
the world. Here are half a dozen
Buddhist priests, with their solemn
countenances, shaven heads, long robes,
and other decorations, then come a
dozen farmers, with their distinctive
dress and signs of the agricultural
guild Gin Japan the farmers ranks well
up in caste, and far above the mechanic
and tradesman). Here are coolies
with buckets and baskets suspended
from bamboo poles on their shoulders.
There are peddlers noisier than any of
their class l have seen elsewhere.
One screams out with ear-piercing
voice, one, which reduced to English
means bean jelly; another ma-me-I
dough -ma-me- boiled beans in the
pod; third satsun,imo- boiled sweet
potatoes; a fourth saka,ao- fish; a
fifth aeroa-suti liquor and so on
with the cries almost innumerable, and
making up Babel of strange, and
from their shrill and drawing enuncia
ton not very pleasant, sounds. Wives
and mothers are seen with haggard ex
pressions rendered more repulsive by
their blackened teeth-the custom be
ing for married women to blacken
their teeth that they, may be dis
tinguished from the unmarried, and as
a sign of honorable marital relationship
Children six to ten years old appear
with babies strapped to their backs
some children as old as ten to twelve
are often seen in entirely nude condi
ton grown up men only wearing a
loose coat like a cast-off duster; Others
with pantaloons reaching not halfway
down to their knees in blacksmith
shop open to the street are four men
hammering away among the fiery sparks
with only loin cloth about them
some women are seen, young and
beautiful forms, almost naked to the
waist many have no covering on
their feet, some wear sandals of various
patterns, Others queer sort of shoe,
bottoms made of straw braid, and
fastened to the feet with ropes. Here
is an old fellow wearing spectacles OF
immense size with an iron frame that
a blacksmith might have manufac
tured. In short, the varieties of dress
and undress in this chief commercial
town of Japan constitute novelty
that is almost indescribable. The
coolies-these are the laboring classes
don their overcoats with straw when
it rains. The coolie prefers to be
naked or nearly naked as possible
about his work. The eastern p0tentate
with his fashionable attire of spurs and
paper collar can be rivaled here in
Japan, with the spurs and collar left
off and only the loin cloth substituted
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