3-078-016 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Street sketches in Tokio, Japan: Amma (shampoo rubber at hot baths), 1890. 'The city of Tokio, formerly called Yedo,...has three quarters of a million inhabitants...Our Illustrations, furnished by an amateur photographer, Mr. Chas. J. S. Makin, show street life, the figures and costumes of different industrial classes, who are met everywhere in the throng of city folk... Towards evening the "amma" makes his appearance. The "ammas" are people employed to administer a kind of massage treatment, known as "momu," which is, in fact, shampooing. Many of them are blind, and may be seen guiding themselves with a bamboo pole, and advertising their presence by a plaintive whistle on a bamboo reed. The Japanese of both sexes are very fond of hot baths, which they enter in the evening, after the day's work is done. After their ablutions the "amma" is often called in, and by his treatment produces an exhilarating glow, which is conducive to sleep, and also serves to renovate the exhausted frame'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.