Folklore -- Japan; Japan -- Social life and customs
At the weddings of the great, the bridal chamber is composed of three
rooms thrown into one,[117] and newly decorated. If there are only two
rooms available, a third room is built for the occasion. The presents,
which have been mentioned above, are set out on two trays. Besides
these, the bridegroom's clothes are hung up upon clothes-racks. The
mattress and bedclothes are placed in a closet. The bride's effects
must all be arranged by the women who are sent on a previous day for
the purpose, or it may be done whilst the bride is changing her
clothes. The shrine for the image of the family god is placed on a
shelf adjoining the sleeping-place. There is a proper place for the
various articles of furniture. The _kaioké_[118] is placed on the
raised floor; but if there be no raised floor, it is placed in a
closet with the door open, so that it may be conspicuously seen. The
books are arranged on a book-shelf or on a cabinet; if there be
neither shelf nor cabinet, they are placed on the raised floor. The
bride's clothes are set out on a clothes-rack; in families of high
rank, seven robes are hung up on the rack; five of these are taken
away and replaced by others, and again three are taken away and
replaced by others; and there are either two or three clothes-racks:
the towel-rack is set up in a place of more honour than the
clothes-racks. If there is no dressing-room, the bride's bedclothes
and dressing furniture are placed in the sleeping-room. No screens are
put up on the bridal night, but a fitting place is chosen for them on
the following day. All these ceremonies must be in proportion to the
means of the family.
[Footnote 117: The partitions of a Japanese suite of apartments being
merely composed of paper sliding-screens, any number of rooms,
according to the size of the house, can be thrown into one at a
moment's notice.]
[Footnote 118: A _kaioké_ is a kind of lacquer basin for washing the
hands and face.]
NOTE.
The author of the "Sho-rei Hikki" makes no allusion to the custom of
shaving the eyebrows and blackening the teeth of married women, in
token of fidelity to their lords. In the upper classes, young ladies
usually blacken their teeth before leaving their father's house to
enter that of their husbands, and complete the ceremony by shaving
their eyebrows immediately after the wedding, or, at any rate, not
later than upon the occasion of their first pregnancy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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