smoking, if in nothing else, Japanese manners sanction complete equality between the sexes.
Around the pipe as an evolutionary centre, a whole intricate and elegant little world of smoking furniture and smoking etiquette has come into existence. There is the tabako-ire, or tobacco-pouch,—as far removed in its dainty beauty from the cheap gutta-percha atrocities of Europe as a butterfly is from a blunderbuss,—the netsuke, or carved button, used to attach the pouch to the owner's girdle, and above all the tabakobon, or smoking-box, which contains a brazier and other implements. In aristocratic houses the smoking-box is sometimes lacquered, and the brazier is of plated or solid silver. A specially light and graceful kind is that invented for use in theatres, and arranged so as to be easily carried in the hand. The smoker before whom, on a winter's day, is placed—let us say—a handsome bronze brazier to warm his hands and light his pipe at, must not empty the pipe into it by knocking the metal head upon the rim. He must insert the leather flap of his tobacco-pouch between the pipe head and the brazier, so as to prevent the tapping of the former from making a dent in the bronze. The introduction of European costume among the upper classes has entailed certain modifications in the smoking paraphernalia. The tobacco-pouch has been reshaped so as to accommodate itself to a breast or side-pocket, and the little pipe itself has been shortened so as to be enclosed in the pouch, much as a pencil is enclosed in a pocket-book. The old plan was for the pipe to be carried at the girdle in a case of its own. These innovations have happily not, as in so many other cases, been attended with loss of beauty. On the contrary, charmingly designed articles have sprung into existence, and are all the more interesting for their novelty.
To clean a Japanese pipe is an art in itself. One plan is to heat the pipe head in the charcoal of the brazier, and then blow out the refuse; but this method corrodes the metal of a fine pipe. Such must be cleaned by means of a twist (koyori) of fine, tough
