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THE WEDDING OF A PRINCESS. 289
guests and was thus made the subject of compliments;
but as to "receiving" male company, she
never did it. Kiku never went out, unless accom-
panied by ladies-in-waiting or the maidens selected
to attend her. These were arrayed in most
elegant silks, and the dressing of their hair was an
of the hair-dresser's art. Well
amazing triumph
stiffened with camellia pomade, their tresses at the
back of their heads spread out from a central body
of tortoise-shell comb like the wings of a butterfly.
The gods of Japan are said to meet together at
the great temples in Is during the eleventh month,
and tie all the nuptial knots for the following year.
Kiku's marriage-knot had been tied by the gods long
years before she even suspected the strings had been
crossed, for when an infant in the cradle she had
been betrothed, and the negotiations, settled when
she had come to lovely maidenhood, only confirmed
officially the covenants of the parents.
In Japan only the people in the lower classes are
acquainted and see each other frequently before
marriage. The business of selection, betrothal, and
or friends of
marriage is attended to by the parents
the pair, who carry on negotiations by means of a
third factor, a middle-man, or go-between. Children
are often betrothed at birth or when on their nurses'
backs. Of course the natural results, mutual dislike
and severance of the engagement at mature age,
or love and happy marriage, or mutual dislike and
subsequent divorce, happen as the case may be. In
general, when the parents take oversight of the