Tokyo, June 30. Half a hundred of the most beautiful dancers in Tokyo recently' sembled on the spacious stage of the Nippon Gekijo, the largest theatre in the country. They passed in review before a jury of 30 men in the first beauty contest of its kind in Japan, the type made popular by The strange thing about his beauty contest '0 any visitor to the Land of Cherry Blossoms would have been the fact that practically all of the girls were attired. in Western garb. But there is nothing strange about this to anyone acquainted with the trend of events) in fast-moving Nippon.
In fact, if one were to visit Tokyo to-day he or she would be astonished during even so. brief a stay as a week to perceive the constantly Increasing number of girls and young women who are casting aside their traditional customs for western ways living. The augmentation in the number of girls who are, for instance, Goffing their native dresses to appear foreign costumes, is so noticeable at present, that few visitors have failed to. observe and comment on this phase of changing Japan.
What is more important, the change that is taking place is not confined to. outward aspects. for Just as fundamental and thorough-going a transition is occurring though this naturally may not be apparent to a newcomer, in the minds of Nippon's young women and girls, On the Ginza in Tokyo, which corresponds to Fifth Avenue in New York, on any fair day or even: ng, one will note that more than half of the girls are attired at present in European dresses whereas a few years ago scarcely more than one In ten dared venture forth in such habiliment {or fear of being dubbed a brazen_modernist Imagine one-half of the your women of England altering "their mode of attire completely to some foreign form of dress, say the kimono, in the lapse of a few years and one will have an idea of what is happening in Japan to-day.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.