Of course, farmers, without education or social demands, require little beyond the simplest food and shelter. The clothing needed by their families is the cheapest cotton, with cotton wadding added in the winter for warmth. The heat of the summer renders much clothing a burden. A farmer is adequately dressed for the field or his own home if he has on his loin-cloth. His wife or grown-up daughter, when in the house with only the immediate members of the family or most intimate acquaintances present, is satisfied with the _koshimaki_--a strip of cloth some two feet wide tied around the waist and covering the lower part of the body. But on the street both men and women conform to the national customs and wear the kimono.
The Japanese household and bathing customs have served to prevent the development of that particular type of modesty characteristic of Western lands. It is difficult for Occidentals to understand this feature of Japanese civilization, but such an understanding is essential if one would do justice to the moral life of this people. We may not apply to them Occidental standards in matters of modesty or dress. They have standards of their own, to understand and appreciate which requires no little study.
At this point, I venture a second quotation from Miss Bacon, for she has studied carefully this subject, which all foreigners seeking to estimate the nature of Japanese civilization and moral character should not fail to master. "As one travels," she writes, "through rural Japan in summer, and sees the half-naked men, women, and children that pour out from every village on one's route, surrounding the _kuruma_ (wheeled vehicle) at every stopping place, one sometimes wonders whether there is in the country any real civilization, whether these half-naked people are not more savage than civilized. But when one finds everywhere good hotels, scrupulous cleanliness in all the appointments of toilet and table, polite and careful servants, honest and willing performance of labor bargained for, together with the gentlest and pleasantest of manners, one is forced to reconsider the judgment formed only upon one peculiarity of the national life, and to conclude that there is certainly a high type of civilization in Japan, though differing in many particulars from our own. A careful study of Japanese ideas of decency, and frequent conversation with refined and intelligent Japanese ladies upon this subject, has led me to the following conclusion. According to the Japanese standard, any exposure of the person that is merely incidental to health, cleanliness, or convenience in doing necessary work is perfectly modest and allowable; but an exposure, no matter how slight, that is simply for show, is in the highest degree indelicate. In illustration of the first part of this conclusion, I would refer to the open bath-houses, the naked laborers, the exposure of the lower limbs in wet weather by the turning up of the kimono, the entirely nude condition of the country children in summer, and the very slight clothing that some adults regard as necessary about the house or in the country during the hot season. In illustration of the last point, I would mention the horror with which many Japanese ladies regard that style of foreign dress which, while covering the figure completely, reveals every detail of the form above the waist, and, as we say, shows off to advantage a pretty figure. To the Japanese mind, it is immodest to want to show off a pretty figure. As for the ballroom costumes, where neck and arms are frequently exposed to the gaze of multitudes, the Japanese woman who would with entire composure take her bath in the presence of others, would be in an agony of shame at the thought of appearing in public in a costume so indecent as that worn by many respectable American and European women."[2]