Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/119

 frankly exposed, the back hair being tied in a queue, and brought forward so as to divide the crown equally. This style afterwards came into universal vogue, soldier and civilian, prince and peasant alike affecting it. Connected with this is a superstition characteristic of the age. A belief had prevailed from time immemorial that if a man bathed on a particular day in the year, without reciting an incantation to certain demons, he would lose all his hair. The inauspicious day being called gesshiki in the almanac, the soldier gave that name to a wooden instrument used for thinning his locks.

Beards and mustaches were grown freely, being regarded as manly embellishments. To be without a good provision of hair on the face gave a soldier much concern. He lamented over himself as a "defective being" or a "female man;" and there is on record a case of a samurai of Odawara who so bitterly resented a joking allusion to his beardlessness, that he fell, sword in hand, upon the joker, and both perished. Side-whiskers were much affected, because the demon-slayer Shōki had always been artistically represented with such ornaments, which consequently had the honour of being called Shōki-hige. A chin-beard alone, however, was condemned as imparting a craven aspect. Great veneration attached to a long white beard. Its fortunate possessor enjoyed the privilege of being placed socially above every one else, and was