Playfellows
Mortimer Menpes
1901
Watercolour
Source: Japan, A Record in Colour, facing p. 194
Menpes felt that children in Japan were "brought up with a certain strictness of propriety unknown in the less ceremonious West," and behaved with utter naturalness and absolute freedom from seeking after effects." He found "a curious formality and staidness" about them (142-43), which perhaps he was trying to capture here. — Jacqueline Banerjee