Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/120

 Shira-hige Miyo-jin, or the "white-bearded deity." A not less esteemed adornment was a battle-scar. In the middle of the sixteenth century the great captain Hōjō Ujiyasu was reputed to have slain thirty strong warriors with his own blade. He had seven sword wounds on his body and one on his face, and from that time a "fine-deed scar" on the visage went by the name of an "Ujiyasu slash."

Staining the teeth black, a habit hitherto confined to Court nobles and officials residing in Kyōtō, was universally adopted by the soldier class after it had been carried from the Imperial city to the military capital (Kamakura) by the Hōjō family. A man with white teeth was derided, and heads taken in battle counted for little unless they had black teeth.

Women continued to wear their hair long, as in the Heian epoch. They added artificial hair if nature had not been kind to them. When a lady of rank walked abroad, her long tresses were gathered into a box which an attendant carried, following behind; and when she seated herself, it was the attendant's duty to spread the hair symmetrically on the ground like a skirt. A lady lacking an attendant festooned her hair over the right shoulder, using paper to tie up the ends. Sometimes a woman "banged" her hair in a triplet of loops; and girls in their teens had a pretty fashion of wearing it in three clearly distinguished lengths,—a short fringe over the forehead, two