Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/32

 kimono, is as picturesque as her richer sister in silk and crape. With heads elaborately dressed, and folds of gay crape, or a glittering hair-pin thrust in the smooth loops of blue-black hair, they seem always in gala arrays and, rain or shine, never protect those elaborate coiffures with anything less ornamental than a paper umbrella, except in winter, when the zukin, a yard of dark crape lined with a contrasting color, is thrown over the head, concealing the whole face save the eyes. A single hair-pin of tortoise-shell, sometimes tipped with coral or gold, is all that respectable women of any class wear at one time. The heavily hair-pinned women on cheap fans are not members of good society, and only children and dancing-girls are seen in the fantastic flowers and trifles sold at a hundred shops and booths in this and every street.

The little children are the most characteristically Japanese of all Japanese sights. Babies are carried about tied to the mothers’ back, or to that of their small sisters. They sleep with their heads rolling helplessly round, watch all that goes on with their black beads of eyes, and never cry. Their shaven crowns and gay little kimonos, their wise, serene countenances, make them look like cabinet curios. As soon as she can walk, the Japanese girl has her doll tied on her back, until she learns to carry it steadily and carefully; after that the baby brother or sister succeeds the doll, and flocks of these comical little people, with lesser people on their backs, wander late at night in the streets with their parents, and their funny double set of eyes shine in every audience along Isezakicho.

These out-of-door attractions are constantly changing. Native inventions and adaptations of foreign ideas continually appear. “Pigs in clover” and pot-hook puzzles followed only a few weeks behind their New York season, and street fakirs offer perpetual novelties. Of jugglers the line is endless, their performances filling 16