ETIQUETTE IN JAPAN.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7779, 25 June 1887, Page 6

ETIQUETTE IN JAPAN.

{Morniny Post)

There are, probably, few countries under heaven where etiquette in every rank of life has attained such rigidity as iri Japan. Going baok but a few years, it is simply appalling to note the pains taken by the educated Japanese to stiffen out social intercourse with the most inflexible buckram of formality. Spontaneous courtesy was uukuown, and not the commonest action of every-day lifo, from sneezing to marriage, from washing to a burial, but was regulated and prearranged in accordance with a rigid code of ceremonialism which never varied or changed, like the laws of the Persians and Medea. A Japanese of the old school — a man, that is, of the generation now past middle-age — was such a stickler for etiquette that when ho drank a cup of tea or tosaed off a bowl of saki lie appeared to be as much engaged in .i ritual performance aa when at his devotions in the teruplo of his patron divinity. As regards formal salutations, ho practised some score of them, faU ; nz upon his knees and knocking his head againßt the ground vrhen encountering a superior ; until he acquired such suppleness from constant exercise of thia description, that his body appeared to bo made of india-rubber. Someone well described this characteristic feature of Japanese life by saying that throughout the whole realm tliei'o is a constant succession of prescribed genuflexions, waves of obeisance flowing from highest to lowest, which can only be compared to the rows of blocks children set up and then topple down ope after another by giving just a single touch to the first. Months before be is born, the Japanese— eveninthese days— becomes thevictim of the existingrule of etiquette, which compels the mother to wear a tight red band round her body, in order, to prevent the unborn child from stealing the food from its mother's throat and so starving hor. As soon aa the little one is born the unlucky mother comes within the grip of the same ceremonialism. Por nine days and nights she is wedged in a aitting position with bags of rius, aiul kept wide awake during tho whole of thnt time. Then the infant, when a month old, makes his firal ceremonial visit to liis relatives, when etiquette requires be should receive a couple of fans and a bundle of hemp to opin a long life. At the age of seven the boy must recoive a garment of honor, and learns the inpnning of troublesome formality when he has bestowed upon him a new name. Four times in the course of his life every respectable Japanese changes his name, a perplexing piece of etiquette indood, first when seven years old, then when coming of age, again when receiving his first official appointment, and yet ugain when moved to a higher olEca of employment. And in the latter case, if a superior in station have by chance the same designation, custom requires that the inferior should change it yet once again. Marriage is such a complicated piece of ceromonialism that even the Japanese no longer understand tho mystic signification of tho numerous formalities incidont lo the colobvation, and the profussioml assistants at a wadding aro obligod to have a number of necessary memoranda inscribed upon their fars in order to rocollecb the various details and arrangements which Japanese e'iquotto prescribes. It is suggestive of the rigidity of tho social formalism in Japan that tho language has no leas than eighteen synonyms for the personal pronoun " I,'' one for each class of people, and etiquette makes it unlawful for a person belonging to one rank in society to make use oE the pronounjpertaining to another. So lirmly has formalism crystallised itself in cv ryday intercourse,

In so far as the gentler sex are concerned, it is not too much to say that it would be a decided gain to civilisation if the example set by the Empress of Japan in the matter of Court ceremonial were followed by every liifly in that land. There is not a single feature of Japane3o woman-life but appears most objectionnblo to westerns ; and, like the laws affecting women generally, the code of Japanese female etiquette requires radical revision. Take that nasty practice of blackening the teeth, the sign of a married lady. Of course there are numbers, of late years, who havn adopted European fashions, wives aud daughters mostly of Japanese who have becomo imbued with occidental ideas, or of men educated nbroad or having travelled in Europe. Those have given up the practice, but In the cases of the vast majority of young girls no sooner does "Mr Fikoyomon '' make an offer of marriage — which is dono by fastening a branch of a pirlicular shrub to tho h'niso of her parents — then the damsel, if tho q-nitleinan h accepted, becomes entitled to dye her uiolnrs and grindors sm<l pluck out her oyebrows. And the compound enployed to dyo the teoth h a uwt villainom mixture, often corroding tho lips and gums and " making tho gangronpd month of a Japiiiiove lady look liko the sepulchre (if nil besur.j." No lesa obji ciionablc is tho custom which compels a young beauty of Fi-ycn to dye linr lips n furious red, aud hide the nuturiil carnation of li'.t cheek beneath a layer of violet piint. It is unnecessary to say thai, there ia much in Jupunesp ctiquottc and custom which is engrained in the charm 1 tor <)C tho people, and wiil chan<ro only slowly and in the course of many j ears. But there is also much tnat the, exaruplo of those in high places will do a good

dral to notify. Japanese have begun to see that it is not indispensable to good mannera that an official shonld perform tho "Harifcari " and disembowl himself in public, because he deems himself insulted, any more than the industrial prosperity of the country is furthered by a law imposing a flogging upon anyone " who shall make any improvouiont in shipbuilding." And now that go august a personage as the Empress has resolved upon introducing a simpler code of state ceremonial nt Court, there cau bo not doubt that the intelligent Japanese will begin to awaken to the fact that ther<! is a good deal in the elaborate and stiff etiquette governing their every day intercourse that ia not in keeping with Iho traditions of au cnlightenod and progressive people.