Perhaps it’s because I come from a country without a very long history, but I really love walking in old places like Kyoto, strolling down streets that have been used for 1500 years or more. You can almost see the beautiful women of the Edo Period and earlier, wearing elegant kimono and flashing a smile complete with black teeth. Black teeth? Yes, it’s true: for much of Japan’s history women had a strange custom of applying black makeup to the teeth to stain them. Called ohaguro, the custom was associated with married women and was done because black things were considered especially beautiful. Based on archeological evidence from Japanese burial mounds historians know that the practice of dying teeth existed in prehistoric times, and it shows up in the famous Tale of Genji and the ukiyoe art of the Edo Period. If you think it sounds a little terrifying, you’re not alone: there’s a classic Japanese ghost story about a specter (yokai) called Ohaguro-bettari, who haunts old shrines while wearing a bridal kimono and smiling with a mouth full of blackened teeth. Kowai! (Scary!)
In days of old, married women would paint their teeth black.
