So The Old And The New In This
Great City Contrast With And Jostle Each Other.
The Mikado and his
ministers, naval and military officers and men, the whole of the
civil officials and the
Police, wear European clothes, as well as a
number of dissipated-looking young men who aspire to represent
"young Japan." Carriages and houses in English style, with
carpets, chairs, and tables, are becoming increasingly numerous,
and the bad taste which regulates the purchase of foreign
furnishings is as marked as the good taste which everywhere
presides over the adornment of the houses in purely Japanese style.
Happily these expensive and unbecoming innovations have scarcely
affected female dress, and some ladies who adopted our fashions
have given them up because of their discomfort and manifold
difficulties and complications.
The Empress on State occasions appears in scarlet satin hakama, and
flowing robes, and she and the Court ladies invariably wear the
national costume. I have only seen two ladies in European dress;
and this was at a dinner-party here, and they were the wives of Mr.
Mori, the go-ahead Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, and of the
Japanese Consul at Hong Kong; and both by long residence abroad
have learned to wear it with ease. The wife of Saigo, the Minister
of Education, called one day in an exquisite Japanese dress of
dove-coloured silk crepe, with a pale pink under-dress of the same
material, which showed a little at the neck and sleeves.
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