the two sexes bathe promiscuously together in all the simplicity
of nature; but for a Japanese woman to appear on the stage in any
character, however proper, would be deemed indecent. The difference
between the two hemispheres may be said to consist in an artless liberty
on the one hand, and artistic license on the other. Their unwritten code
of propriety on the subject seems to be, "You must see, but you may not
observe."
These people live more in accordance with their code of propriety
than we do with ours. All classes alike conform to it. The adjective
"respectable," used above as a distinction in speaking of woman, was in
reality superfluous, for all women there, as far as appearance goes, are
respectable. Even the most abandoned creature does not betray her status
by her behavior. The reason of this uniformity and its psychological
importance I shall discuss later.
This form of modesty, a sort of want of modesty of form, has no
connection whatever with sex. It applies with equal force to the
male figure, which is even more exposed than the female, and offers
anatomical suggestions invaluable alike to the artistic and medical
professions,--suggestions that are equally ignored by both. The coolies
are frequently possessed of physiques which would have delighted Michael
Angelo; and as for the phenomenal corpulency of the wrestlers, it would
have made of the place a very paradise for Rubens. In regard to the
doctors,--for to call them surgeons would be to give a name to what does
not exist,--a lack of scientific zeal has been the cause of their not
investigating what tempts too seductively, we should imagine, to be
ignored. Acupuncture, or the practice of sticking long pins into any
part of the patient's body that may happen to be paining him, pretty
much irrespective of anatomical position, is the nearest approach to
surgery of which they are guilty, and proclaims of itself the in corpore
vili character of the thing operated upon.
Nor does the painter owe anything to science. He represents humanity
simply as he sees it in its every-day costume; and it betokens the
highest powers of generalized observation that he produces the results
he does. In his drawings, man is shown, not as he might look in the
primitive, or privitive, simplicity of his ancestral Garden of Eden, but
as he does look in the ordinary wear and tear of his present garments.
Civilization has furnished him with clothes, and he prefers, when he has
his picture taken, to keep them on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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