Yesterday Morning We All Breakfasted Soon After Daylight, And The
Able-Bodied Men Went Away To Hunt.
Hunting and fishing are their
occupations, and for "indoor recreation" they carve tobacco-boxes,
knife-sheaths, sake-sticks, and shuttles.
It is quite unnecessary
for them to do anything; they are quite contented to sit by the
fire, and smoke occasionally, and eat and sleep, this apathy being
varied by spasms of activity when there is no more dried flesh in
the kuras, and when skins must be taken to Sarufuto to pay for
sake. The women seem never to have an idle moment. They rise
early to sew, weave, and split bark, for they not only clothe
themselves and their husbands in this nearly indestructible cloth,
but weave it for barter, and the lower class of Japanese are
constantly to be seen wearing the product of Aino industry. They
do all the hard work, such as drawing water, chopping wood,
grinding millet, and cultivating the soil, after their fashion;
but, to do the men justice, I often see them trudging along
carrying one and even two children. The women take the exclusive
charge of the kuras, which are never entered by men.
I was left for some hours alone with the women, of whom there were
seven in the hut, with a few children. On the one side of the fire
the chief's mother sat like a Fate, for ever splitting and knotting
bark, and petrifying me by her cold, fateful eyes. Her thick, grey
hair hangs in shocks, the tattooing round her mouth has nearly
faded, and no longer disguises her really handsome features. She
is dressed in a much ornamented bark-cloth dress, and wears two
silver beads tied round her neck by a piece of blue cotton, in
addition to very large earrings. She has much sway in the house,
sitting on the men's side of the fire, drinking plenty of sake, and
occasionally chiding her grandson Shinondi for telling me too much,
saying that it will bring harm to her people. Though her
expression is so severe and forbidding, she is certainly very
handsome, and it is a European, not an Asiatic, beauty.
The younger women were all at work; two were seated on the floor
weaving without a loom, and the others were making and mending the
bark coats which are worn by both sexes. Noma, the chief's
principal wife, sat apart, seldom speaking. Two of the youngest
women are very pretty - as fair as ourselves, and their comeliness
is of the rosy, peasant kind. It turns out that two of them,
though they would not divulge it before men, speak Japanese, and
they prattled to Ito with great vivacity and merriment, the ancient
Fate scowling at them the while from under her shaggy eyebrows. I
got a number of words from them, and they laughed heartily at my
erroneous pronunciation. They even asked me a number of questions
regarding their own sex among ourselves, but few of these would
bear repetition, and they answered a number of mine.
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