A Japanese has only one wife, consequently women stand far higher in the social scale than among other Eastern people.  They have evening parties, when tea is handed round; and the guests amuse themselves with music and cards.  Japanese ladies have an ugly custom of dyeing their teeth black, by a process which at the same time destroys the gums.  The more wealthy people have suburban villas, the gardens of which are surrounded by a wall, and laid out in the Chinese style, with fish-ponds, containing gold and silver fish, bridges, pagoda-shaped summer-houses and chapels, beds of gay-coloured flowers, and dwarf fruit-trees.