THE BEAUTY ARTS OF THE JAPANESE.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2901, 10 January 1911, Page 7

THE BEAUTY ARTS OF THE JAPANESE.

WHATEVER HAPPENS BE j PLEASANT. Mme. Lina Cavalieri, herself a famous beauty, has delivered a charming lecture on the Japanese route to beauty, describing the life of the Japanese women, and showing how their clear skins, their bright eyes, their supple brown bodies, and their amiable dispositions are all the result of hygienic living. London is plentifully sprinkled with Japanese just now, and there are few who have not had an opportunity of observing this beauty and charm of the brown-skinned women of the Flowery Kingdom. It is difficult to analyse the complex impression made by these dusky beauties t upon susceptible Saxons. But attempt it, and you will hear much about eyes that are brown and sweet and candid and child-like. You will hear of hair that is satin smooth and black as night. You will be told of ai face as smooth as an inland lake on a June morning. You will listen to a description of a figure as untrammelled as a child's, and of exquisite little feet and hands. But you will hear most of a temper so sweet that it is quite impossible to disturb it. "Talk of good breeding," exclaimed one of Madame Cavalieri's friends returned from a trip around the world. '•'The Japanese women are the best bred in the world." "Smile on, smile ever," is the motto of the women of the Island of Flowers. These are the effects, and there can be no doubt that they are desirable. Now, as to the causes that produce them. *

Japanese women eat no bread, we are told. They eat little meat. They mostly eat rice. They bathe oftener than the women of any other country, some of them three times a day. Japanese women live practically out of doors. Even when they are indoors it is as though only a sheet of paper were between themselves and the out-of-doors. They never exercise violently. They eat almost no sweets. They drink much weak tea. They sleep on mats with low pillows or none at all. They practise massage. They rest their hands by dropping them heavily in their laps and leaving them inert. Then there is the smooth, light brown skin, like a lovely brown marble mask, of the faces of the Japanese. The reason for this blemishless complexion is in the simple life of the people. The Japanese woman lives chiefly upon rice and fish, vegetables and fruits. As already mentioned, she seldom tastes sweets. There are a very few jelly-like pastes made in that country, but they are little used except for foreign consumption. Bread they think a barbarous, useless food. Mme. Cavalieri agrees with them. The less bread, she contends, the better complexion is almost an axiom. Just as true is it that the more baths the better complexion. The Japanese woman bathes frequently in tepid water. There are oft told tales of the boiling baths of the Japanese, but the hot bath is the exception in that kingdom. The cold bath, too, is unknown. The tepid bath followed by a cool one is general.

Yet another is that their clothing is always loose. If the clothing be tighter on one part of the body than another the result is impeded circulation. When circulation is interfered with the complexion suffers. So, too, Japanese women adhere to the original plan in food. They keep the system well irrigated by frequently introducing fluids into it, their weak tea, with neither cream nor sugar nor lemon in it, being a good irrigant. Japan is enlightened upon the value of massage. Every one who can afford it has a masseuse or a masseur, and, massage being regarded as less a luxury than a necessity in Japan, its cost there is less. The Japanese women are famous for their beautiful hands. "Like pale brown lilies fluttering on a silken lap," one enamoured visitor described them. The Japanese woman's hands are hidden by no device of mitten-like sleeve. Thrust forward in plain view from her wide silk sleeves they are always plainly and challengingly visible. They soak their hands twice a day, once in warm water, a second time in oil, to soften the skin and nails. After soaking them in cocoa oil, the hands are gently pinched in a massage process that is all their own. With tiny pincers made of a soft wood they go little by little over the hands, pinching them lightly enough to bring the blood in a pink flood to the surface. Beginning at the elbows they work to the tips of the fingers, thus making the arms rounder and causing the fingers to taper. Their serene faces they owe to the magnificent self-control that is taught to all Japanese. They are taught that it is brutal to feel anger, and vulgar to show it. The golden rule of Japan is, "Whatever happens, be pleasant," and the weight of full obedience to it falls upon the women. That is the reason that a Japanese woman's face has no wrinkles.

Every point is, we are assured, worth considering and in some measure adopting by the beauty seeker.—"Popular Science Sittings."