Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/342

338 hardly have been born with such a deformity, and they all laughed when one of the playboys remarked, “She must really hate the nurse who is responsible for that!”

Then another girl, perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two, came along wearing a garment of cotton homespun, even the lining of which was so tattered and patched that the wind, blowing it about, exposed her poverty to all. The material of her sash came from an old coat and was pitifully thin. She wore socks of purple leather, apparently the only kind she could afford, and tough, rough Nara sandals. An old cloth headpiece was stuck on the top of her head. It was anybody’s guess how long ago the teeth of a comb had run through her hair, which fell in sloppy disarray, relieved hardly at all by her haphazard attempts to tuck it up.

But while she made no pretensions to style or fashion, the girl, walking alone, seemed to be enjoying herself. As far as her facial features were concerned, she certainly left nothing to be desired; indeed, the men were captivated by the sight of her.

“Have you ever seen anyone with so much natural beauty?”

“If she had some fine clothes to wear, that girl would steal men’s hearts away. Too bad that she had to be born poor.”

They pitied her deeply, and one fellow, seeing that she was on her way home, followed hopefully to learn who she was. “She is the wife of a tobacco-cutter down at the end of Seiganji-dori,” someone told him. It was disappointing—another straw of hope gone up in smoke!

Later a woman of twenty-seven or twenty-eight passed that way. Her arms were covered by three layers of sleeves, all of black silk and lined in red. Her crest was done in gold, but discreetly on the inner lining, so as to be faintly visible through the sleeve. She had a broad sash which tied in front and was made from dark striped cloth woven in China. Her hair was rolled up in a bun, set further back on the head than the type worn by unmarried ladies, and done up with a thick hair ribbon and two combs. Covering it was a hand-painted scarf and a rainhat in the style of Kichiya, also set jauntily