JAPAN
attending the performances of professionals. But soon wives and daughters of merchants began to take lessons, and presently it became fashionable for teachers of jōruri to organise periodical reúnions at which their pupils performed and the latter's parents, relatives, and friends attended. These meetings passed into occasions for displays of rich costumes and for banquets on an extravagant scale. The samurai were drawn into the vortex, and Yedo became as fully engrossed with these musical romances as Kyōtō had been with the more refined pastime of couplet composing during the Fujiwara epoch. Fashion suggested that private citizens should imitate the costumes and coiffures of professional jōruri singers, and from this extravagance men and women soon passed to copying the style of actors and even of the demi-monde. The samurai became an effeminate dandy. He bestowed minute attention on his hair and his garments, and considered the furniture of his sword more important than the quality of the blade. Objects hitherto disregarded began to receive special æsthetic study. The clasp of the girdle, the pipe and its case, the tobacco-pouch with its ornaments and appendages of metal or ivory, the pocket-book of rare and costly material,—on all these things the whole resources and ingenuity of applied art were lavished. Rich lacquer utensils, highly ornamented bronzes, censers and vases of silver, shibuichi, shakudo or gold, fine porcelains and faiences,
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