JAPANESE WOMEN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8375, 22 July 1905, Page 3

JAPANESE WOMEN.

Though not Pretty, tiey are Fascinating.

In his recently published book on China and Japan, Sir Frederick Treves has, naturally, a good deal to say about the Japanese women — the most written about and oftenest misrepresented of the. world's women. Of them Sir Frederick says: — According to the European, standard very few Japanese women could be considered pretty. Their heads appear too large for their bodies, their eyelids are often puffy, and their features coarse. They are, however, neat to a fault, dainty, graceful and full of fascination. They have beautiful necks and hands, and exquisite voices. Bare legs ended by feet cased in white socks are features too strange to be at once admirable. Owing to much wearing of clogs .the Japanese woman walks awkwardly. The English girl is all curves, the Japanese girl is all angles. This last mainly refers to the angular set of the Obi, and to the rest of the costume, as well as the walk. Elsewhere the author speaks" glowingly of the moral and other good qualities or the Japanese lady, but, after all, he was but a wayfarer, even though one gifted with exceptional facilities for social observation. The temptation to quote Lafcadio Hearn— the ever-to-be-lamented— on t-he Japanese woman is irresistible after quoting Treves. And of Hearn Sir Frederick himself writes that he "of a^ students of this wondrous folk, seems to have come nearest to an appreciation of their sentiments and to ; a knowledge of their inmost thouehtsl" (Hearn himself wrote just before bis death that they were still a mystery even to him.) Here is something from Hearn' s eloquent tribute to the women of his wife's nationality:— It has been well said that the most wonderful esthetic products of Japan are not its ivories, nor its bronzes, nor its porcelains, nor its swords, nor any aF its mW vels jn meial or lacquerbut its women- , • Perhaps no such tvt>e of woman will appear again m this world for a hundred thousand years- the conditions of industrial civilisation will not admit of her existence . • It has no more in common with the humanity of this twentieth century of ours—perhaps very

much less — than has the life depicted upon old Greek vases. It* charm is the charm of a Vanished world — a charm strange, alluring, indescribable fis t'ho perfume of soma flower of which t;ie species beeatno extinct in our Occident before the modern languages were born. . . The Japanese woman can be known only in her own country — the Japanese woman as prepared and perfected by the old-time education ior that strange society in which the charm of her moral being — her delicacy, her supremo unselfishness, her child-like piety and trust, her exquisite tactful perception of all ways and means to make happiness about her — can be comprehended and valued.