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Show Japanese Interiors. The houses that tho Japanese women occupy are, it goes without saying, as neat and woudrously fashioned as themselves; almost always full of sur-nrises. sur-nrises. with movable panels, with boxes and slides, with compartments of nil shapes aud astonishing little closets. Everything is mioutiously clean, even among the humblest, aud of apparent simplicity, especially among the richest. Alone the altar of the ancestors, where sticks of incense burn, is gilded, lacquered, and garnished like a pagoda with vases and lanterns. Everywhere else a purpose bareness a bareness all the more complete and white if the dwelling pretends to elegance. el-egance. No embroidered tapestries; sometimes transparent portieres, made of struug beads and bamboos. And never any furniture; it is ou the floor or on little lacquer pedestnls that necessary objects or vases of flowers are placed. To the mistress of the house luxury consists in the very excess ex-cess of that cleanliness of which I spoke above, and which is one of the incontestable incon-testable qualities of tho Japanese people. peo-ple. It is everywhere the custom to unshoe before entering a house, aud nothing equals the whiteness of those mats, upou which ono never walks without tine socks with divided toes. The wood-work itself is white, ueither painted nor varnished, keeping as its sole ornamentation, among women of true taste, the imperceptible veins of the young pino. Metre Lo!i, in Harper's Har-per's Magazine. |
