Choosing the Jar, and a Young Lady's White Teeth — A Tale of Kane, the Iron Dye

Why was there ever an age in which black teeth were thought more beautiful than white?

Put that question today and most people will laugh. The shelves of toothpaste are lined with brands competing in whiteness, and when you laugh, a flash of white teeth makes you look clean and young at once. The whiter, the more beautiful: no one in this age doubts it.

What is now called ohaguro, the blackening of the teeth, was in those days known simply as kane, the iron dye.

I once brewed that dye, in more than one jar, and judged it. A green apprentice who knew nothing, I was left on one morning, once only, to judge on my own which jar was good, on the morning a young lady's teeth were to be dyed.

It happened in the spring of 1014 (Chōwa 3), at a certain mansion in Heian-kyō.

I was a menial apprentice at that mansion, not long adrift into its service. Given all the tasks the gentlewomen shrank from, I had come to own, without quite meaning to, the work of keeping the kane from ever running out. Old nails and the snapped points of hoes I would drop by the handful into a chipped jar, and over them pour sake and vinegar, boiled tea, and the clear top of rice gruel. After that, a stir now and then, and a full month left to sleep. What began as reddish rust-water took on more black the longer it lay, and grew thick and slow. The iron seemed to melt away in the liquid, and there stood a dark, clinging water.

The jar stank, above all else. The smell of rusted iron and the smell of soured vinegar mingled and struck at the back of the nose. Each time I lifted the lid I caught my breath. Yet the gentlewomen awaited this foul liquor as though it were treasure. Over two years I had come, without noticing, to know the trick of telling good from bad by the depth of colour in the liquid. When the plum in the garden began to open, preparations for coming-of-age rites started up here and there about the house, and the jars were called for more often. Counting the jars that had slept the winter through was the first task of my mornings.

That morning the inner rooms were unusually astir. The young lady of the house, they said, was to blacken her teeth for the first time, following the celebration of her mogi, the coming-of-age rite. But the senior gentlewoman who was to teach her had been laid low by a sudden pain in the belly. In her place the young lady's mouth had been left to a single young gentlewoman not yet used to judging a jar. With no one else able to tell a good jar from a bad, I was sent for in haste.

"You know what is in those jars best of all. Just for today, will you watch over her hands?"

At the elder gentlewoman's word I nodded. Keeping watch over a jar and judging which to bring out, and how finely to grind the fushi, the gallnut powder, are two different matters. Choose the wrong jar, or grind the powder too coarse, and the colour will not take, and the young lady's great day would be spoiled.

I ran to the storehouse, set two of the jars that had been left to sleep side by side, and compared them. One was black and heavy, brewed long enough. The other still held some red, and its smell seemed a shade weaker. Two more days' sleep would have suited it, but if we let today pass we would wait for the next auspicious day. My hesitation lasted only a moment. I put the lid back on the weaker jar and took up only the darker. Handed a vessel and a mortar, I walked the corridor with sweat rising in my palms. At least my choice of jar must be sound, I told myself, and went toward the young lady's room.

The young lady sat leaning on an armrest, her face still marked with childhood. The hair she had put up on the day of her *mogi* still lay on her shoulders as though it had not yet learned her. Beside her her nurse's daughter held the mirror. The stand-in gentlewoman, waiting a little way off, was older than I by some years, I think, and yet knew nothing of the good or ill of a jar; she took the vessel and the powder I had brought with fearful hands. Spring light through the blinds cast pale stripes across the floor. Into the scent of burned incense the reek of kane mingled, and I felt ever more ill at ease. On the writing desk were laid out a mirror case, a comb box, even a small jar of face powder; things from the day of her *mogi*, I suppose, not yet put away. The young lady, restless, kept peering into the mirror and opening her mouth a little to look at her own white teeth. Whether she was reluctant to part with them, or longing for the face she was about to become, her young eyes went back and forth in the glass.

While we waited, her nurse's daughter, to pass the time, opened her own mouth to show us. At the roots of her teeth a faint trace of mulberry-juice dye still remained. She and the young lady, she said, had played at blackening their teeth many times. Looking closer, I saw that the traces were of two kinds. The row of front teeth had taken thin, many-layered colour that had not faded even when rubbed. But a single eyetooth, painted on too thick, was patchy and cracked, and half of it had peeled away.

I could not take my eyes from that mark. What was laid on thin and layered had stayed; what was put on thick, all at once, had come off. Here was a reason that I could never have seen merely by minding the jar. I tried the fushi powder in my hand between my fingertips. It was coarser than I had thought. I had brought it ground too little, and I bit my lip. Thick and patchy this would go on. I took up the mortar again and ground it over. The powder grew, by and by, fine enough to cling to the pad of my finger. Both the doubt that had made me choose that jar and the hand that ground the powder again had been taught by no one; they were my own judgement.

The stand-in gentlewoman took up the brush in a trembling hand. As I held out the vessel, to each stroke I answered only with a nod or a shake of the head. A stroke of kane, laid on very thin. Before it dried, fushi powder dusted on with a fingertip. As kane and fushi were laid on and on, the grey teeth deepened by degrees into a lustrous black. One tooth painted, then wait for it to dry; then the next. The young lady kept her lips lightly closed and bore it, moving as little as she could. The sun shifted the stripes a little at a time, and in the garden the birds clamoured for a while and fell quiet.

Midway, a slip of strength let the tip of the brush graze the gum. The young lady winced slightly. The gentlewoman's hand stopped. Sweat had beaded on her forehead.

"Forgive me... I am truly sorry."

"It is all right. Rest a little."

It was the young lady who, quietly, urged her on. After a pause they laid on thin coats again. Each time she hurried to paint it thick, I set the amount of powder lower, and recalled again and again the trace on the nurse's daughter's teeth. As if applying lacquer, the gentlewoman built up the black slowly. That the nurse's daughter brought water and softly wiped the sweat from her forehead is something I remembered only afterwards. Somewhere down the corridor a voice rose in laughter, but the young lady did not stir; she kept her mouth shut and waited.

As the sun's slant changed, the young lady's front teeth, upper and lower, had been dyed a deep black as of drawn lacquer. Counted up, there were more than thirty layers. The jar of kane had fallen to about half.

"Now, look."

The room went still. Her nurse's daughter held out the mirror. The young lady peered in fearfully. And then she opened her mouth, softly. In the glass, the glossy black teeth showed. The nurse's daughter gave a small cry, and the gentlewomen in attendance let out a breath, ah.

"...I look like a grown woman."

A sure pride seeped through her voice. The childishness of her white-toothed days was gone, and in the glass was the face of a girl a shade more grown.

My fingertips, whitened and dry with powder, had turned black with kane without my noticing, and for a while they would not come clean however I washed them.

"It is thanks to you."

At that small voice I shook my head. It was I who had been taught.

Now I understand. The rust of the iron and the astringency in the gallnut bind together, and that is what makes the black. But on that morning what settled my judgement was neither chemistry nor reasoning: it was that faint trace of colour left on the nurse's daughter's teeth.

From that day, though I went back to keeping watch over the foul jars, the way I stirred the liquid was somehow changed. I had come to know that this black could make someone's day so proud.

The nurse's daughter who had held the mirror that day later became, they say, a gentlewoman who took up the kane brush herself. Kneeling before girls, feeling the cold of the boards through the soles of her feet, she is said to have dyed teeth beyond number.

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