Note 6 — Chapter XXII · JAPAN. MUKASHI

The universal custom among married women in Old Japan. I suppose that to-day it would be impossible to find such a case throughout all the islands, where the ladies now follow French fashions and are dressed by Paris. The shaving of the eyebrows was an important event, announced in the case of the Empress in the Kiōto Gazette of April 20th, 1869, in the following words: “To the Princes of the Blood, Kugés and Princes. The first day of next month having been fixed for the ceremony of shaving off the eyebrows of the Empress, you are ordered to offer your congratulations at the Palaces of the Empress Dowager and of the Empress. It is not necessary to present offerings. Persons in mourning will attend on the following day.” The recipe for lacquering the teeth is given in my “Tales of Old Japan.” It was formerly the fashion for the Emperor and his nobles to blacken their teeth. It originated with one Hanozono Arishito, who was Sadaijin, or minister of the left, at the Court of the Emperor Toba early in the twelfth century. He was an æsthete, with feminine tastes, who plucked out his eyebrows, blackened his teeth, powdered his face and rouged his lips, so as to look as like a woman as possible. The custom became widely spread among nobles in the twelfth century.