Excerpt from The Juvenile Instructor, Vol. 19: March, 1884 But to return to the habits and customs of the Japanese. As a, race they are described as being friendly, good-humored, contented, industrious and brave. Like many other oriental races, they are divided into several classes or castes. The caste to which a person belongs is determined by his birth, and it is impossible for him to rise to a higher degree, no mat ter what his natural ability may be. Each caste wears a certain style of dress by which it can always be distinguished. The priests and medical men have their heads shaved entirely, while others have their hair shaved off in front and the remainder combed up all around and glued in a tuft on the top of the head. You will observe this by looking at the male persons in the engraving. The females, as you will see, have a greater abundance of hair. Women in Japan. Live in seclusion and they are seldom seen outside of their houses. It appears, also, that they take no part in public worship. A traveler once observed a notice something like the following, posted on the gate of one of their temples: No swine, cat tle or women allowed inside! When a lady gets married her teeth are blackened and her eyebrows plucked out, thus she is made to appear a hideous spectacle. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.