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Then I notice how small and shapely the feet of the people are whether bare brown feet of peasants, or beautiful feet of children wearing tiny, tiny geta, or feet of young girls in snowy tabi. The tabi, the white digitated stocking, gives to a small light foot a mythological aspect the white cleft grace of the foot of a fauness.
But the tabi feel like bare feet on account of the division of the big toe from the other toes, and as soon as you put them on you feel as if the toes were really made to use, and the foot clings as you walk. I am taking a set of cotton kimonas to China so as to have them to wear in my room with the tabi on hot days. Without the obi the dress becomes quite cool if made of thin material.
The missionaries have had great trouble in demolishing their tombs and idols; but the Indians, inland, still continue the custom of pasing tabi sa nano, or asking permission of their dead ancestors, when they enter any wood, mountain, or corn field, for hunting or sowing; and if they omit this ceremony imagine their nonos will punish them with bad fortune.
Their kimono are rolled about their waistilike girdles, leaving their bronzed limbs and torsos naked to the warm air; they wear nothing else save their immense straw hats, and white tabi, donned expressly for the festival. Never before among these people saw I such men, such thews; but their smiling beardless faces are comely and kindly as those of Japanese boys.
The same art of painting leaves, etc., with single strokes of the brush is still common in Japan even among the poorest class of decorators. 2 There is a Buddhist saying about the kadomatsu: Kadomatsu Meido no tabi no Ichi-ri-zuka.
Sinang's coachman, who was driving her and her cousin in an elegant carriage, had the impudence to call out tabi to them in such a warning voice that she had to get out of the way, and was only able to exclaim, "Look at that brute of a coachman! I am going to tell his master that he should educate his servants better!" "Let us go back to the house," she ordered her husband.
As they both sit and sleep on their matting-covered floors, we now see why the Japanese never wear any boots or clogs in the house. To do so would make their beautiful and spotless mats dirty; so all shoes are left at the door, and they walk about the house in the tabi, the thick glove-like socks.
This will need the attention of the hairdresser so as to wax into obedience a few hairs left wayward by the night in spite of that severe wooden pillow, whose hard, high discomfort was invented by female vanity to preserve from disarray the rigid order of their locks. Her feet are encased in little white tabi like gloves, for the big toe has a compartment all to itself.
When a Japanese walks out, he slips his feet into high wooden clogs, and when he comes home he kicks off the clogs at the door, and enters his home in tabi alone. The reason for this we shall hear later on. In Japanese clothes there are no pockets. Whatever they need to carry with them is tucked into the sash or into the sleeves of the kimono.
He accepts my invitation to a cup of tea, and informs me that his august master is waiting for us at the temple. This is delightful news, but we cannot go at once. Akira's attire is pronounced by the messenger to be defective. Akira must don fresh white tabi and put on hakama before going into the august presence: no one may enter thereinto without hakama.
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