xvii.] TOILET OF JAPANESE GIRLS. CC7 



a few hours earlier. In s]iending time in long conversations 

 mixed with civilities and bows the Japanese are masters. Of 

 this bad habit, which still often makes the European desperate, 

 it will not perhaps be long necessary to C(jmplain, for everything 

 indicates that the Japanese too will soon be carried along at the 

 endlessly roaring speed of the Steam Age. 



When we had at last got horses we continued our journey, first 

 in a carriage to Tokio, then by rail to Yokohama, arriving there 

 on the afternoon of the 6th October. From this journey I shall 

 only relate an incident which may form a little picture throwing 

 light on life in Japan, 



While we halted for a short time in the morning of the 6th 

 October at a large inn by the roadside, we saw half a dozen 

 young girls finishing their toilets in the inn-yard. In passing 

 we may say, that a Japanese peasant girl, like girls in general, 

 may be pretty or the reverse, but that she generally is, what 

 cannot always be said of the peasant girls at home, cleanly and 

 of attractive manners. They washed themselves at the stream 

 of water in the inn-yard, smoothed their artistically dressed hair, 

 which, however, had been but little disturbed by the cushions on 

 which they had slept, and brushed their dazzlingly white teeth. 

 Soap is not used for washing, but a cotton bag filled with bran. 

 The teeth were brushed with a wooden pin, one end of which 

 was changed by beating into a brush-like collection of wooden 

 cords. The tooth-powder consisted of finely powdered shells and 

 corals, and was kej)t in small, neat wooden boxes, which, along 

 with tooth-brushes and small square bundles of a very strong 

 and cheap paper, all clearly intended for the use of the peasants, 

 were sold for a trifle in most of the innumerable shops along 

 the road. For such stujjid regulations as in former times in 

 Europe rendered trafiic in the country difficult, and often obliged 

 the countryman to betake himself to the nearest town to buy 

 some horse-shoes or a roll of wire, appear not to be found in 

 Japan, on which account most of the peasants living on a 

 country road seek a subsidiary way of making a living by 

 trafficking in small articles in request among the country people. 



Incidents of the sort referred to we had seen so many times 

 before that on this occasion it would not have attracted any 

 further attention on our part, if we had not thereby been 

 reminded that we must look after our own exterior, before we 

 could make our entrance into the capital of Japan. We there- 

 lore took from the carriage our basket with linen, shaving 

 implements, and towels, settled down around the stream of 

 water at which the girls stood, and immediately began to 

 wash and shave ourselves. There was now general excitement. 

 Tlie girls ceased to go on with their own toilet, and cr(jwded 

 round us in a ring m order to see how Europeans behave in 



