Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/210

 has induced some persons to suppose that it did not serve for supporting a girdle-pendant. But, as will be seen just now when pipes and pouches are spoken of, there are certain classes among the lower orders of Japanese who affect everything on a large and obtrusive scale. These persons found a big ponderous netsuke quite to their taste, and were moreover pleased that it should have a rude, portentous aspect. The carver, therefore, had recourse to the popular idea of a foreigner,—a Dutchman for the most part,—and endeavoured to impart to the figure a suggestion of all the solecisms of dress and manners that the outer barbarian was supposed to perpetrate. If the average Japanese connoisseur be asked to identify these grotesque figures, he replies off-hand that they are Nam-ban-jin, or "southern barbarians," a term originally applied to all aliens coming from regions southward of Japan, but ultimately used with special reference to the Spaniards, the Portuguese, and the Dutch. But the fact is that the Japanese recognised several conventional types of half-civilised outsiders, and often borrowed the characteristics of three or four to form a specially unlovely and confused compound. There was the "Orangai" of the Amur region with his sack-like garment of woolly hide, his feathered and furred cap, and his Chinese face. There was the "Ezo-jin," with his hirsute visage, monstrous features, semi-Occidental costume, and savage aspect. There was the "Dattan" of Tartary, a ferocious edition of the "Orangai," with voluminous ears, repulsively ugly features, fur-bristling robes, bow of vast strength and arrows three feet long. There was the "Taiwan-jin" of Formosa, with whiskers, moustache, and imperial ornamenting a vacuous face; his costume a