e
various articles of furniture. The _kaioke_[118] is placed on the
raised floor; but if there be no raised floor, it is placed in a
closet with the door open, so that it may be conspicuously seen. The
books are arranged on a book-shelf or on a cabinet; if there be
neither shelf nor cabinet, they are placed on the raised floor. The
bride's clothes are set out on a clothes-rack; in families of high
rank, seven robes are hung up on the rack; five of these are taken
away and replaced by others, and again three are taken away and
replaced by others; and there are either two or three clothes-racks:
the towel-rack is set up in a place of more honour than the
clothes-racks. If there is no dressing-room, the bride's bedclothes
and dressing furniture are placed in the sleeping-room. No screens are
put up on the bridal night, but a fitting place is chosen for them on
the following day. All these ceremonies must be in proportion to the
means of the family.

[Footnote 117: The partitions of a Japanese suite of apartments being
merely composed of paper sliding-screens, any number of rooms,
according to the size of the house, can be thrown into one at a
moment's notice.]

[Footnote 118: A _kaioke_ is a kind of lacquer basin for washing the
hands and face.]

NOTE.

The author of the "Sho-rei Hikki" makes no allusion to the custom of
shaving the eyebrows and blackening the teeth of married women, in
token of fidelity to their lords. In the upper classes, young ladies
usually blacken their teeth before leaving their father's house to
enter that of their husbands, and complete the ceremony by shaving
their eyebrows immediately after the wedding, or, at any rate, not
later than upon the occasion of their first pregnancy.

The origin of the fashion is lost in antiquity. As a proof that it
existed before the eleventh century, A.D., a curious book called
"Teijo Zakki," or the Miscellaneous Writings of Teijo, cites the diary
of Murasaki Shikibu, the daughter of one Tamesoki, a retainer of the
house of Echizen, a lady of the court and famous poetess, the
authoress of a book called "Genji-mono-gatari," and other works. In
her diary it is written that on the last night of the fifth year of
the period Kanko (A.D. 1008), in order that she might appear to
advantage on New Year's Day, she retired to the privacy of her own
apartment, and repaired the deficiencies of her personal appearance by
re-blackening her teeth, and otherwise adorn