468 MODESTY 



families who now consider their blood pure ichor ? How 

 long ago did the delightful old system of "bundling" 

 obtain in our own midst ? What we choose to call female 

 modesty is a subservience to a certain code of convention- 

 alism. The Japanese woman has one of her own. So 

 long as she walks pigeon-toed as an outward symbol of 

 correct morals, she may tear all our ordinary rules of 

 modesty to shreds. But the Japanese woman is none the 

 less truly modest. The country girl will enter a common 

 public bath with men, clad solely in her own ideas of de- 

 cency, because she has no private bath at home, and to 

 bathe is a perfectly natural thing to do ; but she will not 

 uncover a square inch of her neck or arms to secure the ad- 

 miration of men. If her kimono flops aside in the wind 

 she may show her naked leg half way up the thigh j but 

 she will not protrude a toe from beneath her garments 

 from mere coquettishness. The geisha-girl is full clad, and 

 dances mainly with her arms; she would scorn to show 

 her person or to do high -kicking, as our ballet- girls do; 

 and yet she belongs to the class which we frown from our 

 midst as play-actors. The Japanese rule is simple. Na- 

 kedness is not immodesty at proper times, such as the 

 hour of bathing; nakedness, in whole or in part, to in- 

 cite desire, is the grossest form of immodesty. The 

 Japanese maiden would blush to see our sea-side girl go 

 into the breakers with a suit made of half a yard of 

 serge ; but she would go in as the Lord made her without 

 a notion of impropriety. In other words, the Japanese 

 woman treats the entire subject of clothes au naturel. 

 Her ideas are very similar to those of the ancient Greeks, 

 whom we do not go out of our way to abuse for their 

 lack of what we call modesty. 



So with cleanliness. So long as he bathes from one to 

 half a dozen times a day (as he literally does), the Jap 



