from between the shoulders to far below the hips.  The garments fit tightly in front, while at the back they form a sort of huge bunch.  On their high-heeled clogs the women walk with precisely the same gait as ladies in high-heeled boots.  In fact, so exactly do the Japanese women (you never see Japanese ladies walking about in the streets) caricature the present fashionable style of dress in Europe, that I have formed a theory of my own on the subject, and this is it.

Some three or four years ago, among other proposed reforms in Japan, the Ministers wished the Empress and her Court to be dressed in European fashion.  Accordingly a French milliner and dressmaker, with her assistants, was sent for from Paris, and in due time arrived.  The Empress and her ladies, however, would not change their style of dress.  They knew better what suited them, and in my opinion they were very sensible.  This is what I hear.  Now what I think is, that the Parisienne, being of an enterprising turn of mind, thought that she would not take so long a journey for nothing—­that if the Japanese ladies would not follow European fashions, at least European ladies should adopt the Japanese style.  On her return to Paris I am convinced that she promulgated this idea, and gradually gave it effect.  Hence the fashions of the last two years.

Watching the crowd occupied the time in a most interesting manner, till the firing of guns and the playing of bands announced the arrival of the imperial train.  The Mikado was received on the platform, and after a very short delay he headed the procession along the covered way on to the dais.

He is a young, not very good-looking man, with rather a sullen expression, and legs that look as though they did not belong to him—­I suppose from using them so little, and sitting so much on his heels; for until the last few years the Mikado has always been considered far too sacred a being to be allowed to set foot on the earth.  He was followed by his highest Minister, the foreign Ministers, and a crowd of Japanese dignitaries, all, with one or two exceptions, in European official dress, glittering with gold lace.  I believe it was the first time that many of them had ever worn it.  At any rate, they certainly had never learned to put it on properly.  It would have driven to distraction the tailor who made them, to see tight-fitting uniforms either left unbuttoned altogether, or hooked askew from top to bottom, and to behold the trousers turned up and disfigured by the projecting tags of immense side-spring boots, generally put on the wrong feet.  Some of the visitors had no gloves, while others wore them with fingers at least three inches too long.  Certainly a court dresser as well as a court tailor ought to be appointed to the Mikado’s establishment, before the European costume becomes generally adopted.