The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1891-02-20
rHE MAIDS AND MOTHERS OF JAPAN
The joys and Grief. ofJapanese Women.

The joys and Griefs ofJapanese Women.
The Japanese woman begins at 4
years OF age, when she assumes the
maternal function of carrying the next
baby but one, swaddled on her back.
She does not, however, cease to be a
child, for she plays at ball bouncing,
battledore, skipping rope, and other
noisy, shaky games, with the baby
sleeping peacefully through it all, nod
ding its head like pendulum. She be-
gins dressing for society about the same
time in the most fantastic colors and
the richest fabrics that her parents can
afford. with everything that grown up
sister would have, in miniature.
have seen a little girl, destined for
the profession of guecha or singing girl,
who might have been anything from
to 10, with quantities of hair worked up
with pOmatum into an elaborate couture
which looked like d great ebony butter
fly, stuck with flowers and coral and
tortoise shell hairpins and high gilt
combs. Her face was powdered, her
lips carmined, her eyebrows shaved in
the most approved mode, and she was
dressed in lowered silk, with ODE OF
stiff and precious brocade. She was
decked like this to be sold for a term of
years. This dressing up was her
mothers final attention.
The lower class Japanese women al
ways interest me most. They wear the
| rtn1 lnth
higher class women, who adhere to the
native custom, dress in neutral colors,
usually parsons wife grays, but some
times in exquisite fawns and doves which
heightened the effect of their delicate
compilations, delicate figures, slender
necks, and thin refined looking
faces. The great ladies are generally
foolish enough to dress like Europeans
Germans for preference. Imagine the
affect of an ill made and totally untilt-
ting gown, of a pattern obsolete in Ger
many, on little pear shaped Japanese.
But the Empress and one or two others
look very well in European dress. The
Japanese always have the the charm OF
looking very young until they are very
old. In connection with a woman's
wearing of European dress 1t must be
remembered that il she does she is &C
corded by her husband the respect paid
to Western women; whereas in native
costume she is little better than kindly
treated slave. But the women OF the
people: What jolly little things they
are, whether in their working dress OF
blue eoolie cotton, with pale blue
towel folded round the heads like sun
bonnet or in holiday bravery, tripping
through q fair at Shiba or jogging
complacently in a jinrikisha with 9
male relative to Asakusa. Then the
musubemes (unm arried girls are very
resplendent in scarlet and fine hair
pins. Japanese women never wear hats
In native dress. The men make up for
it by wearing hats three sizes too large
for them.
THEY KoDAKED THE G.RLS.
The two prettiest little musumes J
ever saw were at the Toshogu festival
at Shisba the June day on which the
adherents of the fallen Sheguns and the
disestablished Buddhist creed meet at
Shiba. Veno and Mike to celebrate the
festival which no longer appears in the
calendars. They were peeping out 0f
the covered gallery between the temple
and the monastery, where the faithful
were throwing offerings OF tenth part
of cent screwed up in curl paper at
the kakemonos (pictures) of their favor |
tie saint. | was with Henry Savage |
Lander, so well known in Chicago, BOs- |
ton and Washington. He has mans
desire and an artists superadded for &
pretty woman. and l have a kodak.
Lander can talk little Japanese.
There are young men, vous OF the
priests, in Japan as there were in Sauna
ria. Half an hour afterwards We were
all in quaint little tea house painted
with cherry blossoms in row OF booths
put up for the fair from the scarlet
Sam-mon (great gate) to the Hondo
main temple). Our charmers were
Young. 10 and IA, but the Japanese grow
up quickly as u ey grow old slowly, and
in the presence OF the white rObed
young priest. who alleged that he was
their uncis Il would swear that the girls
were no relation to each other) they
were not more timid than fawns accus-
toned to eat bread out their keepers
hand. We of course bought their tea
and cakes and candies, and the little
gewgaws they sell round a Japanese
temple at fair time, and kodaked them
and Lander sketched them and stroked
them. Twas merciful enough not to
kodak this part.
1 never saw anything prettier than
these little creatures with their delicate
beauty and clear demaSked olive COM
in their fantastic bright color
ed Oriental dresses, playing about with
the lightneSs and grace of foxes, and
candy and laughing, a musical
treble from a veritable rosebud OF
mouth lined with pretty teeth. Add
that it was a fine June day atsunset In
country, and that we were
in the most beautiful spot in Tokyo, sur
by exquisite trees and temples
and you have the picture.
The Japanese lower class abounds in
pleasing to the European eye.
They are often no dadker than Italians,
and they have the coloring Giorgione
owed, rich blood demasking slear I'm
brown cheek. They have the true rose
bud mouth, small and full, with beauti- 1
ully white teeth, whose smallness Is
N keeping with the general petite effect.
alas, in married women the
,eeth are barbarorsly blackened to
please Jealous husband. Their eyes
ire not so slit and beady az those Of the
upper class. and their magnificent
brown black hair is notorious. The
lressing OF it is work of art. They
will sit the best part of a day in front OF
heir frying pan shaped quicksilvered
oronze mirrors, while the peripatetic {
lair dresser pomatums their hair to the {
of potter's clay, and then s
nolds it into fearful and wonderful ]
sort or cross between butter
ly and a hearse plume. This, on gala '
lays, is stuck all over the combs, gilt,
carlet, iacque, ivory or pearl, and hair {