Page:TASJ-1-1-2.djvu/20

 borrowed from China, but their socks, straw sandals and wooden clogs are of the forms usual in Japan.

Both men and women tie their hair into a knot on the top of the head, passing a pin through it, sometimes more than a foot in length. The best are made of gold throughout, the next best of silver with a golden top, the commonest of copper. The girdle, worn exclusively by the men, is the only difference in the dress of the two sexes. Between the ages of sixteen and nineteen the ceremony called gembuku, which corresponds somewhat to coming of age, takes place for the males. The central part of the top of the head is shaven, and two short pins are substituted for the long one previously worn, one of which is ornamented with an artificial narcissus-flower, while the other has the form of an ear-pick. This practice of shaving part of the hair dates back only two centuries, and is probably a mark of Tartar influence. At the age of four-and-twenty the men grow their moustachios, and the beards six years later.

The study of Chinese literature is based on the commentaries of Kuŏdtzŭ, a learned scholar of modern times. Medicine is studied both in China and at Kagoshima, and no one is allowed to carry the medicine-case (inrô), which is the distinguishing mark of a physician, if he has had only a native doctor for his instructor. A few Loochooans endeavour to imitate the caligraphycalligraphy [sic] of the old Chinese inscriptions, and read the classics according to the modern Chinese pronunciation, but the majority learn to write the Japanese hiragana, and copy the handwriting of the Japanese caligraphists Ôhashi and Tamaki. Instead of reading Chinese straight down the page, they construe it backwards and forwards into their own language like the Japanese. In the pictorial art they have copied both the Chinese and the Japanese, but they have also a school of native growth. Their music is that of the last two Chinese dynasties, and is performed on instruments of Chinese form. In the arts of arranging flowers in vases and of making tea, both of which require many years of practice, they follow the Japanese style, and they