Note 11 — Chapter III · MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.

The Japanese standard of female beauty differs in many respects from our own, so that it is almost impossible for a foreigner visiting Japan to comprehend the judgments of the Japanese in regard to the beauty of their own women, and even more impossible for the untraveled Japanese to discover the reasons for a foreigner's judgments upon either Japanese or foreign beauties. To the Japanese, the ideal female face must be long and narrow; the forehead high and narrow in the middle, but widening and lowering at the sides, conforming to the outline of the beloved Fuji, the mountain that Japanese art loves to picture. The hair should be straight and glossy black, and absolutely smooth. Japanese ladies who have the misfortune to have any wave or ripple in their hair, as many of them do, are at as much pains to straighten it in the dressing as American ladies are to simulate a natural curl, when Nature has denied them that charm. The eyes should be long and narrow, slanting upward at the outer corners; and the eyebrows should be delicate lines, high above the eye itself. The distinctly aquiline nose should be low at the bridge, the curve outward beginning much lower down than upon the Caucasian face; and the eye-socket should not be outlined at all, either by the brow, the cheek, or by the nose. It is this flatness of the face about the eyes that gives the mildness of expression to all young people of Mongolian type that is so noticeable a trait always in their physiognomy. The mouth of an aristocratic Japanese lady must be small, and the lips full and red; the neck, a conspicuous feature always when the Japanese dress is worn, should be long and slender, and gracefully curved. The complexion should be light,—a clear ivory-white, with little color in the cheeks. The blooming country girl style of beauty is not admired, and everything, even to color in the cheeks, must be sacrificed to gain the delicacy that is the sine qua non of the Japanese beauty. The figure should be slender, the waist long, but not especially small, and the hips narrow, to secure the best effect with the Japanese dress. The head and shoulders should be carried slightly forward, and the body should also be bent forward slightly at the waist, to secure the most womanly and aristocratic carriage. In walking, the step should be short and quick, with the toes turned in, and the foot lifted so slightly that either clog or sandal will scuff with every step. This is necessary for modesty, with the narrow skirt of the Japanese dress.

Contrast with this type the fair, curling hair, the round blue eyes, the rosy cheeks, the erect, slim-waisted, large-hipped figures of many foreign beauties,—the rapid, long, clean-stepping walk, and the air of almost masculine strength and independence, which belongs especially to English and American women,—and one can see how the Japanese find little that they recognize as beauty among them. Blue eyes, set into deep sockets, and with the bridge of the nose rising as a barrier between them, impart a fierce grotesqueness to the face, that the untraveled Japanese seldom admire. The very babies will scream with horror at first sight of a blue-eyed, light-haired foreigner, and it is only after considerable familiarity with such persons that they can be induced to show anything but the wildest fright in their presence. Foreigners who have lived a great deal among the Japanese find their standards unconsciously changing, and see, to their own surprise, that their countrywomen look ungainly, fierce, aggressive, and awkward among the small, mild, shrinking, and graceful Japanese ladies.