Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 November 1888 — JAPANESE BRIDE AND GROOM. [ARTICLE]

JAPANESE BRIDE AND GROOM.

Custom* Which Differ Very Much from Western Ones. [Tokio letter in St. Louin Globe-Democrat.] Quite as interesting as the scenery ■were the movements of a bride and a groom in the same car with us. We afterward learned that he was a Nagoya youth who had gone to Kiota and prospered in business and had just been down to Nagoya to marry the young girl chosen by his parents and a go-be-tween friend of the family. He was a raw, callow youth in appearance, and spreading his rug on the cushions lay down at half-length, and obliged the bride to sit bold upright in a small space. When he did sit up it was he who leaned against the bride’s shoulder, instead of resting her head on his shoulder, in true wedding journey style. For the whole day that we traveled together it was his comfort and not hers that was considered. The groom hurried on board the steamer and into the next train of cars, and helping himself to the only remaining chair or seat, looked around curiously to see where she was going to sit. The bride smiled sweetly all the time and did not seem to think it at all out of the way for her to be a cushion or footstool or baggage porter for her lord. She wore a dark striped silk kimono and an eru obi, brocaded with pine needfes in black and gold. The Japanese reverse our custom in traveling, and wear their best clothes when off on a journey, in order, they say, that their station may be known and proper attention paid them. The bride’s attention was much occupied with her new gold ring, the wedding ring being a foreign fashion that they have taken up with enthusiasm. The gold band on the finger is fast replacing the shaved eyebrows and blackened teeth that used to distinguish the married women, but they adhere to the change in hair-dressing, and after marriage red is no longer worn. The gay red crape petticoats, the red folds in the neck of the kimono, and the bits of red crape tied in the ear, disappear on the wedding day, and the Japanese have the bitter but sadly true maxim: “Love flies with the red petticoat.” Any demonstration of affection between a married couple is not only considered bad form but most disgusting by the Japanese, and kisses are unknown except for babies. Men, or rather lubberly schoolboys, and great, hulking young soldiers are often seen in the street hold-, ing hands, or with their arms around each other’s necks; but there are no sentimental tableaux to be seen between maidens and youths in the ideal lovers’ lanes with which this picturesque country is seamed.