dainty lacquer-box, and under the gaze of
all sits down to decorate herself with a frank joy in the pleasure she
knows she is going to give. And she knows too what she is about. She
knows the value of a tone in a lip. Something suggests to her that you,
an artist, may have found the vermilion lip not quite in harmony with
the plan, and she changes it to bronze. Three times this evening does my
geisha-girl change her lip; she frankly takes it off with a little bit
of rice-paper, which she rolls up and tucks into the folds of her
kimono, to be thrown away later, and the bronze lip is substituted. By
and by it seems to occur to her that the bronze lip has become
monotonous, and she will change it again to vermilion. No doubt before
the evening is over there will be a series of little bits of rice-paper
folded away ready to be got rid of when the bill is paid, the supper
eaten, and the festival at an end.

It is through the geisha-girls that there is still a living art in Japan
at the present day in the designs of the silk dresses that they wear.
They are so modern, so up-to-date, and yet so characteristic of Japan.
The women are very extravagant in their dress, and some of the leading
geisha-girls will often go to the length of having stencils, with
elaborate designs and an immense amount of hand-work, specially cut for
them, the stencils and designs being destroyed when sufficient material
for one dress has been supplied. For such a unique and costly gown the
geisha will of course have to pay a fabulous sum, and a sum that would
astound the average English woman of fashion. But then when a geisha
orders a costume she thinks it out carefully; she does not go, as we do,
to a dressmaker, but to an artist. It may be that she has a fancy for
apple-blossom at sunset, and this idea she talks out with the artist who
is to draw the designs.

[Illustration: A STREET SCENE, KIOTO]

A Japanese woman chooses her costumes, not according to fashion but to
some sentiment or other--apple-blossom because it is spring-time,
peach-blossom for a later season,--and many beautiful ideas are thus
expressed in the gowns of the women of Japan. But although the geisha
has plenty of latitude in which to display her artistic feeling, there
are some little details of etiquette and fashion that she must adhere
to, which show themselves in a few details of the Japanese women's
attire, as, for example, in the thongs of her little wooden shoes and
the