The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1890-12-14
WOMEN IN THE
MIKADO'S LAND.
That Little Cabinet Curiosity, the
Japanese. Woman.
Pierre Lott Gives His Impressions Relative
to the Female Sex in the Country Where
They Are Small Of Body and Mind.

HrIERRE LOTT. an entertaining writer
- who has been travelling through
AS*N Japan. furnishes to Harper's Maya
zine for the current month a very interest
ing article descriptive of japanese women.
and from 1t the following extracts are
taken.
Personal Appearance of the Women.
Very ugly, those poor little Japanese wo.
men! prefer to make this brutal statement
at once to alternate i later with mincing
prettiness, graceful drohJry, adorable little
hands, ana then rice powder, rose and gold
on the lips, all manner of articles.
Hardly any eyes at all. so little as to be
almost nothing-tw0 narrow Sits, oblique
and diyerging. where roll willy OF cajoling
eyeballs, as between the barely opened lids
Of those cats whom the glare of daylight
makes weary.
Above these little updrawn eyes-but very
far above, worry highly perched-are out
lined the eyebrows, as fine as pencil marks,
and not at all obique, not at all parallel
with the eyes that they accompany so
badly; but straight ON the same line con-
trary to wha. it has been the custom TO
represent in our European pictures when
ever the artist has had TO portray a Japanese
woman.
l believe that the particular strangeness
of those little faces of women is entirely
due to that disposition of the eye, which is
general, and also 10 the development of the
cheek. which is always swollen to round
ness like dolls; moreover, in their pict-
ures, the artists of the country never fail
to reproduce, exaggerating them even to i'm
probability those characteristic signs of
their race.
The other features arc much more change
able, varying with individuals first, and es-
peclally with social conditions. Among the
common people the lips remain thick, the
nose fiat and short; among the nobility the
mouth becomes thinner. the nose longer and
finer, sometimes even curves in the shape OF
a slender eagles beak.
There is no country where the feminine
types are so clearly defined between different
castles. Brown peasant women, bronZed
like Indians. well balanced on their slim
waists. plump and mnscled beneath their
everlasting dresses of blue cottonade :;
etiolated women of the cities, real diminu-
tiyes of women, white and wan like slckly
Europeans, with | know not what of hol-
lowed, OF undermined, beneath the fesh
which is the sign of races that are too old
all these working-wolnen of the great cities
seem to have been worn out, hereditarily
worn out before birth, by too long a continuity
of labor and of tension of mind over minute
tribes; it seems as though upon tfeir frail
constantly produced since centuries those
millions of baubles, those innumerable little
works Of exhausting patience, of which
Japan is full. And among the princeSses
the refining influence of arstocracy. so far
back does it date, has finished by fashioniDg
extraordinary little artificial persons, with
childish hands and busts, whose painted
faces, whittier and pinker than a fresh bon
bon, indicate no age their smile is far away.
like that Of ancient idols; their updrawn
eyes have an expression of both youth and
death.
Peasant Women in Japan.
The peasant woman, clad summer and
winter in the same dress of blue cotton,
and hardly distinguishable afar from her
husband, who wears his hair in knot like
hers, and Is clad in robe of the same
color-the peasant woman who is daily seen
bowling over her toll in the tea fields or in
the liquid mud of the rice swales, protected
by a rough hat on days when the sun
burns, and having her head completely
enveloped when the north wind blows by
dreadful muffler. always blue, that only
leaves the almond eyes to yiew-the small
and funny peasant woman of Japan.
wherever she may be sought for, even in
most remote districts of the interior. is in
coptestably much more refined than our
peasant w oman of the West. She has pretty
hands and pretty, delicate feet; mere touch
would suffice to transform her into one
of those ladies that are painted on vases or
transparent screets, and there would be lit
tie left to teach her OF hammered graceS, of
Alterations of all sorts. She almost always
cultivateS pretty garden around her ancient
cottage of wood, whose interior, garnished
with white mats, is scrupulously clean.
Her household utensils, her little cups,
her little pots. her little dishes, instead
of being, as with us, of common earthen-
Io,,I nod x,,rth txri1i a., e
transparent porcelain decorated with those
light and fine pain tings that bear witness Of
themselves to a long hereditary of art. She
arranges with original taste the altar Of her
humble ancestors. Finally she knows how
to arrange in her own vases, with the last
spray of verdure, slender bouquets that the
most artistic among our women would
hardly BIZ capable of composing
She may possibly be more honest than her
sister of the cities. and her life may be more
regular-frOIn our European point OF view.
of course; she is also more reserved with
strangers, more timid, with a sort of mis-
trust and dislike OF the intruders, notwith-
standing her amiable welcome and her
smiles.
In the villages of the interior, far from the
recent railroads and from ali modern i'm
portations, in places where the millenary
lmmobility Of the land has not been dis
turbed, the peasant woman has probably
changed but little from what must have
been, several centuries ago, her most re-
mote ancestor, whose soul, vanished in
time, has even ceased to hover over the
family altar. At the barbaric periods of
our Western history when our mothers still
preserved something of the grand and wild
rudeneSs of primitive times, there lived
doubtless yonder, in those isles at the east of
the ancient world. these same little peasant
women, so polite and so mincing, and also
these same little ladies of the cities, SO civ
lliyed. with THAR ad nra hla courteSias
Religious Observances.
The religion of the Japanese women must
appear very complicated and confused to
their little giddy brains, when even the most
learned priests of their country lose them
selves in their cosmogonies, their symbols,
their metamorphoses Of gods in that mile
nary chaos upon which the Buddhism Of
India has so strangely foisted itself without
destroying anything. Their most serious
cult seems to be that of their defunct ances-
tors. These shades or familiar gods possess
in each household a perfumed altar, before
which the living pray long at morning and
night without, however, believing absolutely
in the immort ality Of the soul, and in the
persistence Of the human ego, as understood
by our Occidental religions.
To the religious contradictions which
battle us must be added superstitions as old
as the w0rlk. the strangest or the gloomiest,
and fearful to listen to at night Beings
half gods and half ghosts haunt the black
darkness; at crossways in the woods stand
ancient idols gifted with singular powers |;
there are miraculous stones in the depths Of
forests. And to have An approximate idea
of tho faith OF these women with small
0blique eyes, one must reduce to chaos all
that have just said, then try to transpose
into giddy brains that laughter prevents
most of the time from thinking, and that
seem at moments to have the heedlessness
of the brains OF birds.
Withal. they are assiduous in their attend
ance at all the pilgrimages, which are con-
slant at all the ceremonies and festivals in
the temples.