JAPAN
garments, the samurai objected to baggy sleeves and long robes, except for boys; wore leather trousers and leather socks; no longer blackened his teeth, and generally went with uncovered head, though occasionally he wore a straw hat which effectually concealed his features from the mouth upwards, or bound a kerchief round his head. It was his pride when he walked or rode abroad to be followed by a retainer carrying his spear, and upon the garb and appearance of this man much attention was bestowed. By and by, trifling differences in style of coiffure or in the manner of thrusting the swords into the girdle began to attract attention inconsistent with a spirit of true simplicity. Men devised rebuses which they caused to be embroidered on their surcoats or picked out with metal—as when a sickle (kama), a circle (wa), and the character nu were combined to suggest the word kamawanu (do not care), and thus to indicate the wearer's indifference to his surroundings. Such paltry conceits preluded decadence of the nation's martial mood. Beards and moustaches, which the Government had once vainly tried to abolish, went out of fashion, and by the end of the seventeenth century, when debauchery made the Genroku era notorious, men were found powdering their faces as the gallants of Kyōtō had done in old time, increasing the dimensions of their garments laterally as well as vertically, and wearing trousers and socks of silk instead of leather.[1]
- ↑ See Appendix, note 24.
178
