I did not attempt the hair-dressing, as that is a most complicated affair, and must be left to the attentions of a hair-dresser, who comes to the homes once or twice a week and makes the elaborate coiffures that add so much to the beauty of a Japanese face. Each age has its coiffure, and a woman never tries to disguise her age in Japan, because by her dress and style of hair-dressing she frankly confesses the stage she has reached in life. There is the baby with her shaven head, then the little queue tied on the crown; afterward the hair is cut square across the neck, like the little dolls we see in the London shops; then when she is ten years old the hair is divided and made into a bow knot tied with a piece of ornamental paper. As she arrives at young ladyhood there is the elaborate “shimada,” which in the case of the young woman is very large, and, if Nature has not been generous, helped out with tresses bought in the shops. The married woman has a special coiffure which grows smaller with age, until, when she is a matron of forty, the age when the woman of the Orient considers herself an old woman, it is quite small. If the woman is so unfortunate as to lose her husband, she cuts her hair, and thus shows all the world that she is a widow. The Japanese mature early, and old age comes to them sooner than it does to people from the West. A Japanese proverb says that man lives but fifty years, and rarely does his span exceed seventy years. In former days old age began at fifty, and a man then considered himself unfit for business and made over his name and property to his son, passing the rest of his life in ease without the cares of business. Old age is not a burden to the Japanese woman, but is a paradise to be looked for longingly. Then she, who has perhaps been subservient to the mother of her husband all her married life, knows that she will be the head of her household, with her sons and daughters ready to obey her, and, because of her age and motherhood, respected and holding a position in life denied her as a young woman.
Many of these quiet, soft-voiced mothers of Japan were brought to call upon me by Mrs. Consul. They taught me how to serve the tea, the proper way of bowing, and even tried to make of me a good follower of the Law by taking me with them to the temples and visiting shrines and holy places. One kindly woman brought me a tablet for my “august-spirit-dwelling,” which she placed in a tiny model of a Shinto temple and put above the inner doorway of the hall, where I was supposed to burn before it each morning candles and incense, and keep the little cups for rice and water filled. I was well provided with gods, as another friend gave me a Buddha for my household shrine, and all the paraphernalia of service with which to worship him.