Japan and the Japanese

JAPANESE WOMEN. 487
greater part, however, were content with a few words written on
their fans.
Mr. G. F. Meylan, who first arrived in Japan shortly after Fiss-
cher left it, and who subsequently died there, as director, has also
contributed something to our knowledge of Japan, by a thin volume
published in 1830, like Fisscher's, in the Dutch language, with
the title of " Japan ; presented
in Sketches of the Manners and Customs
of that Realm, especially of the Town of Nagasaki." One of
the most original things in Meylan's book is his apology for the
custom of the Dutch in taking female companions from the Nagasaki
tea-houses. None of the male Japanese servants are allowed to
remain in Desima over night.
"
How, then," plaintively asks Mr.
Meylan, " could the Dutch residents otherwise manage to procure any
domestic comfort in the long nights of winter, their tea-water, for
instance, were it not for these females ? " He passes a high eulogy
upon their strict fidelity and affectionate activity ; and indeed the connection
appears to be regarded by them not so much in the light in
which we see it, as in that of a temporary marriage. The female
inmates of the Japanese tea-houses hold, indeed, in the estimation of
their own people, a very different position from that which our man-
ners would assign to them ;
since not is only the custom of frequenting
these houses, as places of relaxation and amusement, general among
the men, but sometimes, according to Fisscher, they even take their
wives along with them.
Of the personal charms of these wives, with their teeth blackened,
their eyebrows shaven, their lips painted red and their faces
white, Fisscher does not
give
a very high idea. The concubines do
not shave their eyebrows, but the custom of blackening the teeth is
so common as to be adopted by all females above the age of eigh-
teen. The immoderate use of the warm bath causes them to look, at
twenty-five, at least ten years older. Not content with the natural
burdens of child-bearing, they augment them by several absurd
customs, one of which is the wearing, during pregnancy, a tight
girdle round the body.
The works of Fisscher and Meylan are chiefly valuable for the
confirmation they give of Kiimpfer's accounts, and as showing the
were when he described
Japanese very little altered from whattbey
A visitant to Japan, and a wr'ter of much higher preten-