How to please your man: 1858

In the first place, young ladies do not, as a rule, neglect any means of improving their looks; but no Japanese young ladies, even after they are "out," think of taking this method of increasing their powers of fascination; they color their cheeks and lips, and deck their hair, but it is not until they have made a conquest of some lucky swain, that, to prove their devotion to him, they begin to blacken their teeth and pull out their eyebrows. He, privileged being, is called upon to exhibit no such test of his affection; on the contrary, his lawful wife having so far disfigured herself as to render it impossible that she should be attractive to any one else, seems to lose her charms for her husband as well; so he places her at the head of his establishment, and adds to it an indefinite number of handmaidens, who neither pull out their eyebrows nor blacken their teeth; hence it seems not difficult to account for the phenomenon which is universally admitted, that while Japanese wives are celebrated for their virtue, their husbands are no less notorious for their licentiousness.

--From Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's mission to China and Japan--

Don't you hate how some people let themselves go once they're in a relationship?

Isolation: 1858

As the only foreigners of whom the untraveled inhabitants of Yedo have ever heard are the Chinese, we had the very high compliment paid us of being supposed to belong to that favored nation; so that, as in China you are called, as you ride along the streets, a barbarian or a " foreign devil," in Japan the gamins run after you and say, " Look at the Chinamen!" " There go the Chinamen!" while their commercial instinct is betrayed by the shout, "Chinamen, Chinamen! have you any thing to sell?"

This trifling circumstance enables us forcibly to realize the extent of that entire exclusion of strangers which has been for so long so jealously and successfully maintained.

--From Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's mission to China and Japan--

It is hard to imagine this situation occurring today, but on the other hand, I wonder if someone from East Asia walking through the streets of America today could be assured of having their nationality correctly identified by passersby.