Japanese Girls and Women: Revised and Enlarged Edition

								

watches over mother's or nurse's shoulder, between naps taken at all
hours, the processes of drawing water, washing and cooking rice, and all
the varied work of the house. Imperial babies are held in the arms of
some one night and day, from the moment of birth until they have learned
to walk, a custom which seems to render the lot of the high-born infant
less comfortable in some ways than that of the plebeian child.
The flexibility of the knees, which is required for comfort in the
Japanese method of sitting, is gained in very early youth by the habit
of setting a baby down with its knees bent under it, instead of with its
legs out straight before it, as seems to us the natural way. To the
Japanese, the normal way for a baby to sit is with its knees bent under
it, and so, at a very early age, the muscles and tendons of the knees
are accustomed to what seems to us a most unnatural and uncomfortable
posture.[3]
[3] That the position of the Japanese in sitting is really unnatural and
unhygienic, is shown by recent measurements taken by the surgeons of the
Japanese army. These measurements prove that the small stature of the
Japanese is due largely to the shortness of the lower limbs, which are
out of proportion to the rest of the body. The sitting from early
childhood upon the legs bent at the knee, arrests the development of
that part of the body, and produces an actual deformity in the whole
nation. This deformity is less noticeable among the peasants, who stand
and walk so much as to secure proper development of the legs; but among
merchants, literary men, and others of sedentary habits, it is most
plainly to be seen. The introduction of chairs and tables, as a
necessary adjunct of Japanese home life, would doubtless in time alter
the physique of the Japanese as a people.
Among the lower classes, where there are few bathing facilities in the
houses, babies of a few weeks old are often taken to the public bath
house and put into the hot bath. These Japanese baths are usually heated
to a temperature of a hundred to a hundred and twenty Fahrenheit,--a
temperature that most foreigners visiting Japan find almost unbearable.
To a baby's delicate skin, the first bath or two is usually a severe
trial, but it soon becomes accustomed to the high temperature, and takes
its bath, as it does everything else, placidly and in public. Born into
a country where cow's milk is never used, the Japanese baby is wholly
dependent upon its mother for milk,[4] and is not weaned entirely until
it reaches the age of three or four years, and is able to live upon the
ordinary food of the class to which it belongs. There is no intermediate
stage of bread and milk, oatmeal and milk, gruel, or pap of some kind;
for the all-important factor--milk--is absent from the bill of fare, in
a land where there is neither "milk for babes" nor "strong meat for them
that are full of age."
[4] Sometimes, in the old days, rice water was given to babies instead