WESTERN WOMEN.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16812, 2 June 1926, Page 9

WESTERN WOMEN.

WHY THEY SHINGLE. FROM JAPANESE VIEWPOINT. There arc two reasons for the unprecedented cutting of locks by the great ladies of Western Europe—first, a desire to make manifest their newfound political power; secondly, the natural indolence which is Ihc heritage of all mortals (writes Gonnoske Komai in the Daily Mail). When a shingled woman realises that she need but put soap on a towel and rub vigorously the beautiful pedestal of her bead, she spends only a few minutes of lime, and thereafter con answer the telephone, harranguc the cook, or sell tickets lor the next charity ball at the Albert Ilall. As a Japanese, I find a great difficulty in knowing female from male when 1 venture into the haunts of London, that most intricate civilisation. Bewildered, I look at the neat, shorn heads of the intelligent women, and wonder whether they wish to proclaim to all that their political freedom is a fact. To me, a Japanese, who has been brought up to think that action belongs to the waterfall, that colour is the exclusive privilege of the azalea plant, and that tenderness is shared only by breezes and Iho weeping willows, the western women do so stimulate my brain and upset me by their restlessness. . It is all so new and so mysterious. Shingled hair is not, to my mind, a portent of sex revolution. V\ omen N'iU be mothers in spite of a million Mais and a thousand Coiffeurs, and men will be husbands although civilisation undergoes centuries of chaos. Also there is a saving grace provided by Die divinities which shape our ends although we be Japanese or English, of Biarritz or the Lulo —and that is ihc children on whom we are definitely saddling our unsolved problems, our unwaged wars, our hatreds yet to be U "lt 'is not the dressing of the hair and body that matters —these whims nass into the museum or into a picture. The full wigs of the 17th ccn lurv the taut hair of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s hevday, the “ambrosial whiskers of Thackeray, arc merely externals. Although wc all arc tiM n o t 0 enjoy ourselves and draw adm ration to ourselves, we still do om bit of work in order to pay tlie pipci, sweat, blood in doing d. , Whether her hair be slunglec. down to the waist, the woman of East or West is torn by tlie twin wishes o excitement for heisclf and peace m this world for others. Even C.o%einments recognise the significance ami ,bc prophetic depth of womans shingled hair.