t
the keeping of the power in the hands of the husband is better than
giving too much freedom to women who are without education. These men
wish to wait until every woman is educated, before acting in a reform
movement, while many conservatives oppose the new system of education
for girls as making them unwomanly. Between these two parties, the few
who really wish for a change are utterly unable to act.
CHAPTER V.
OLD AGE.
No Japanese woman is ashamed to show that she is getting along in years,
but all take pains that every detail of the dress and coiffure shall
show the full age of the wearer. The baby girl is dressed in the
brightest of colors and the largest of patterns, and looks like a gay
butterfly or tropical bird. As she grows older, colors become quieter,
figures smaller, stripes narrower, until in old age she becomes a little
gray moth or plain-colored sparrow. By the sophisticated eye, a woman's
age can be told with considerable accuracy by the various little things
about her costume,[22] and no woman cares to appear younger than her
real age, or hesitates to tell with entire frankness the number of years
that have passed over her head.
[22] Children wear their hair on top of their heads while very young,
and the manner of arranging it is one of the distinctive marks of the
age of the child. The _marumage_, the style of headdress of married
ladies, consisting of a large puff of hair on the top of the head,
diminishes in size with the age of the wearer until, at sixty or
seventy, it is not more than a few inches in width. The number, size,
and variety of ornamental hairpins, and the tortoise-shell comb worn in
front, all vary with the age.
The reason for this lies, at least in part, in the fact that every woman
looks forward to the period of old age as the time when she will attain
freedom from her life-long service to those about her,--will be in the
position of adviser of her sons, and director of her daughters-in-law;
will be a person of much consideration in the family, privileged to
amuse herself in various ways, to speak her own mind on most subjects,
and to be waited upon and cared for by children and grandchildren, in
return for her long years of faithful service in the household. Should
her sight and other bodily powers remain good, she will doubtless
perform many light tasks for the general good, will seldom sit idle by
herself, but will help about the sewing and mending, the marke
|