Page:Costume, fanciful, historical, and theatrical (1906).djvu/199

XIII liberty is never permitted in the presence of a superior. As a matter of fact, the etiquette of dress is rigidly observed throughout China. No gentleman would dream of either paying or receiving a visit without shoes on his feet, a fan in his hand, and a wide, pointed hat, rather suggestive of a tent, on his head. How true it is that manners, like morals, are mere matters of geography!

In contrast to the love of display characteristic of their Chinese neighbours, the Japanese are conspicuous for extreme simplicity. This national trait finds expression in their dress. Here I pause to consider whether, as a chronicler of costume, I should allude to the Japanese in the present or past tense? I regretfully incline to the latter view, for there is little doubt that the smoke of factory chimneys, built on European lines and fed with Cardiff coal, is rapidly blurring local colour. Already the quaint little men have adopted the outward and visible sign of inward civilisation in the form of a frock coat and top hat. Their women -folk have followed their example and discarded the picturesque for the prosaic, exchanging the fashions transmitted by their ancestresses for those telegraphed from Paris. Will the Geishas do likewise, and is another decade destined to see them in caps and aprons, and will Imagination fails me, and I revert to the glorious days of the Daimios and Samourais—days for which, I am firmly convinced, every frock-coated Japanese sighs as ardently as I do.

In old Japan social distinctions were drawn for all time, and there was no crossing the line of demarcation. Society was divided into nine grades.