-June, 1901, p. 93.)
"In Japan (Captain ---- tells me), the bathing-place of the women
was perfectly open (the shampooing, indeed, was done by a man),
and Englishmen were offered no obstacle, nor excited the least
repugnance; indeed, girls after their bath would freely pass,
sometimes as if holding out their hair for innocent admiration,
and this continued until countrymen of ours, by vile laughter and
jests, made them guard themselves from insult by secrecy. So
corruption spreads, and heathenism is blacker by our contact."
(Private communication.)
"Speaking once with a Japanese gentleman, I observed that we
considered it an act of indecency for men and women to wash
together. He shrugged his shoulders as he answered: 'But these
Westerns have such prurient minds!'" (Mitford, _Tales of Old
Japan_, 1871.)
Dr. Carl Davidsohn, who remarks that he had ample opportunity of
noting the great beauty of the Japanese women in a national
dance, performed naked, points out that the Japanese have no
aesthetic sense for the nude. "This was shown at the Jubilee
Exposition at Kyoto. Here, among many rooms full of art objects,
one was devoted to oil pictures in the European manner. Among
these only one represented a nude figure, a Psyche, or Truth. It
was the first time such a picture had been seen. Men and women
crowded around it.
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