1900] "Japanese Dress 



letters or ideographs on the backs of workmen's 

 blouses, mostly red in a white circle, the garment 

 itself being generally blue. 



Dress in Japan, as we afterward discovered, is a 

 matter of status, not of choice. Every man, as a 

 rule, had his clothes shaped for him centuries ago, 

 a matter to which I may again refer. But the more 

 striking types tend to disappear, to be replaced by 

 what men choose for themselves, or care to pay for. 

 In European costume, rare at the time of my first 

 visit, the women look taller, less refined, more compe- 

 tent, more aggressive, and less attractive than in 

 native garb. The man becomes shorter, homelier, 

 and relatively insignificant in European clothes. 



Among the remarkable costumes are those of men- 

 dicant musicians who bear on the head a tall or broad 

 basket with slits in front of the face, and go piping 

 from house to house. One pilgrim girl we saw at 

 Nagasaki had a huge hat two feet or more across and 

 trimmed with green cloth. 



After a few hours in Yokohama we went on to 

 Tokyo for a very brief stay before setting out on our 

 mission. But certain matters detained us there un- 

 expectedly long. Our first necessity was to find Stanford 

 among the Stanford group some one who could go helpfrs 

 about with us as secretary-interpreter. In this we 

 were especially fortunate, securing for the first half 

 of the summer Keidichi Abe, a native of Sendai, and 

 for the second half, Keinosuke Otaki, one of my 

 students in Zoology. 1 



Japanese youths at Stanford for the first sixteen 

 years were nearly all of the impoverished samurai 

 (feudal retainer) class who had worked their way 



J See page 17 for note on pronunciation of Japanese. 



