Dressing Samuel Pepys: Japanese Garments and International Diplomacy in the Edo Period

By Timon Screech

`Sir Mungo Murray, Son of the Second Earl of Atholl' By John Michael Wright (1617-94), c. 1683 Oil on canvas Height 224.8 cm, width 154.3 cm Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, PG 997

A famous portrait of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) by John Hayls (d.1679) shows him wearing a kimono (see Fig. 8). How Pepys came to be wearing such exotic clothing underscores the importance of textile and costume in international trade, politics and diplomacy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The prime purpose of trading with Japan in the early seventeenth century, during the years when the Dutch and English East India Companies (VOC and EIC respectively) were competing with varying degrees of amity on the isle of Hirado off Kyushu, was to purvey cloth. Fabric was exchanged for silver, wheat or rice. Similar types of exchange had been normal during the late sixteenth century with Iberian merchants, but it was after the northern Europeans assumed their increasingly dominant roles (the Dutch from just after 1600, the English from 1613), that the range of imported cloth expanded. Indian chintz and calico and Chinese silks were brought in, along with great quantities of European cloth, mostly woollens like worsted and broadcloth. Fabrics became the primary import in Japan. There was a large market, at least potentially, for woollen clothing. Many of the splendid garments that have come to stand as icons of late Momoyama or early Edo period taste are in fact fashioned from imported wool. Some of the best remaining examples are the tabards (jinbaori, or battle tunics), in which daimyo and their attendants would parade into battle (Fig. 1). Silk was perfect for the fierce Japanese summer, but despite the severity of winters there was little available for body warming; the usual ploy was to insert cotton wadding. During the decade that the EIC operated in Hirado, some L1 million worth of fabric was annually exported from London, although only a small proportion went to Japan. Cloth also travelled the other way. During this period, the EIC was importing cloth to the value of L10,000 per year, which was often re-exported after initial disembarkation in London. Although mostly Chinese silk and Indian calico, a proportion would have been cloth from Japan. It is beyond the scope of this paper to address the trade, its range and complexities in detail. But when it came to cloth, there was a remarkable parallel in commodity circulation on both sides of the globe, in Japan and England. Cloth was the basis for trade, followed, only remotely, by sugar and tobacco; only later did tea and spice figure largely. Fabric is relatively light and readily transportable, and could easily be turned into elegant apparel for the rich, who alone were significant consumers of imports. Cloth could be made up according to taste, and was an excellent choice for gift-giving. It is therefore not unexpected that cloth became more than a trade item; it was also a product which insinuated itself into diplomatic practices. The elite exchanged presentation items for the enhancement of their mutual finery. While it is easy to assume that textiles mostly pertain to female space, diplomatic use of cloth is generally a male preserve. Before cloth assumed this role, there had been another item doing the occasional rounds between gentlemen of note - one which clarifies the gender issue: armour. In Japan's Warring States period (`Sengoku Jidai', 1477-1573), before the substantial pacifications in the second decade of the seventeenth century, powerful men gave each other military garb. European cloth found a ready market as it was a novelty that had a use in this orbit. James Cocks (1566-1624), head of the English factory throughout its period of operation, remarked that worsted was immediately taken over by men for use as tabards or weapon covers. He wrote, that `they use it not in garmentes, except some fewe in an outward cloak or garment now of late. But the greatest use they put it to is for the cases or coverings for armours, pikes, langenattes [naganata], cattans [katana, i.e. swords], or sables [sabres], with muskettes or guns' (Cocks, vol. 2, p. 311). For hardwear, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616) owned a fine Portuguese helmet which he had adapted to fit Japanese needs by the addition of a neck guard (Fig. 2). Ieyasu's grandson Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604-51), the third shogun, had a splendid and complete suit of Dutch chain-mail, which he would use when he sallied forth on horseback (Deshima dagregister [hereafter DDR], vol. 11, p. 145). Matsura Hoin, the retired daimyo of Hirado, who was close to the Dutch and English since their factories were within the borders of his domain, presented the English captain John Saris (1580-1643) with his own favourite suit of armour, dear to him because he had worn it as a younger man while fighting with Toyotomi Hideyoshi's (1536-98) armies in Korea (Saris, p. 107). The armour was presented in thanks for the English ship's flying full colours on the anniversary of Hoin's investiture as daimyo. Some ten weeks later, the second shogun Hidetada (1579-1632), Ieyasu's son and Iemitsu's father, `sent two Armors, a present to his Majesty the King of England, Allso a Tatch [tachi, i.e. longsword], which none wear here but soldiers of the best rank' (Saris, p. 134). James I (r. 1603-25) was intrigued. Although he was sceptical about many of the stories he heard, the king had already taken an interest in Japan. He announced that he wished to receive Saris on his return to London. In England, the court extolled the `two varnished armours'. One of these suits remains in the Tower of London, but the other, and the sword, are missing (Fig. 3). Other suits of armour were brought to England and Holland. They would have entered the collections of aristocrats and military men, as emblems of their valour, but also as proof of the exchange of compliments by powerful males even across vast distances. It is not always possible to tell when such suits of armour first arrived in the West, but in one instance, a painting is informative. An Irish nobleman, Sir Neil O'Neil, had himself painted with a Japanese suit by John Michael Wright (1617-94), one of the better-known English portraitists of the period. Since Wright was in Rome from the 1680s, this work is dated to circa 1680 (Fig. 4). The painting clearly depicts a real suit of armour, presumably in the O'Neil collection, not a generic one. It is particularized by an accurately rendered family crest (kamon), representing the wheel of the dharma (rinbo); since this was used by several families, it is not possible to trace the original Japanese owner, so we cannot tell whether he had any connection with the East India Companies. As O'Neil appears not to have been involved in Asian trade, he must have acquired the armour as a gift or a purchase, probably while in London. After fifty years of neglect in England, the suit is rather bashed about. Various sections are missing, most strikingly its arm-plates. The helmet and face mask are also gone, although a servant to the rear holds the neck guard. In a kind of reverse adaptation that Ieyasu made to his Portuguese helmet, O'Neil had inserted a jaunty plume in the European manner. O'Neil stands tall with his Irish spear and shield and his hound before a scene that is half Irish woodland and half mysterious mountain. He was a fighting man who was to take the side of James II (r. 1685-88) at the Battle of the Boyne in 1691. O'Neil's portrait was celebrated, and there is another version where the sitter is not identified (as he is here by an inscription on the dog's collar), known as The Irish Chieftain. This version has a companion which was until recently referred to as The Highland Laird (Fig. 5). It has now been identified as a portrait of Sir Mungo Murray, son of the second Earl of Atholl. As the Tokugawa became increasingly successful in pacifying the Japanese states (the last of the Toyotomi clan were tracked down and killed horribly in the 1640s), armour rather fell from favour and cloth took its place, since it was also for personal beautification but was without bellicosity. When trading with foreigners, the shogunate was especially keen to expunge any thought of the fighting which they associated with the Portuguese and Spanish but not the Dutch and English. Before long, giving or selling weaponry to Europeans was banned. Cocks wrote in 1621 that it was now forbidden to export `armour, cattans, lances, langanantes, powder or shot guns' (Cocks, vol. 2, p. 191). The German physician Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716), who was in Japan in the 1690s, noted that `long ago it hath been forbid to sell them to foreigners, or to send them abroad, under pain of the cross for the seller, and death for all persons concerned in the fact' (Kaempfer, vol. 3, p. 312). Even pictures of military hardware were banned: `lacquerware, screens and so forth, on which cities, castles, persons especially those carrying arms, are painted, everything under penalty of death' (DDR, vol. 11, p. 24). Bartolomeus Breenbergh (1598-1657) painted the intriguing Stoning of St Stephen in 1632 (Fig. 6). Stephen was the first Christian martyr, and it is highly symbolic that his feast day is placed on 26 December. In the painting, there is a Japanese umbrella in the foreground with a set of Roman military paraphernalia. Perhaps Japanese equivalents of the Roman pieces were not easy to come by during this period, but their relevance is evident, for a brutal suppression of Catholics was unfolding in Japan. Here `Japan' is shown as something soft, not metal and not even cloth, but paper, which would have suited Iemitsu, some years into his shogunate, very nicely.

Cloth had a civilian and peaceful aura. However, arms and armour continued to have a place in Tokugawa gift exchange. Although its popularity gradually tailed off, armour was never completely abandoned, and was often given together with cloth. Thus, just after Cocks received the armour for James I, `20 silk keremons [kimonos] (or coates) for a present' also came from Hidetada (Cocks, vol. 2, p. 93). After the English withdrew from Japan in 1623, the Dutch mission formalized relations with the Tokugawa court. In 1640 the mission was relocated from Hirado to Nagasaki (against their will), and they began to make an annual trip to Edo, where they presented their `rarities' to the Tokugawa elite (spectacles, telescopes, wine, and of course cloth), and received kimonos in return. From 1642, the number was fixed at twenty. It is not clear why, but the number must have been significant, as Cocks had also received the same amount from Hidetada almost two decades before. In 1642, the recipient was Jan van Elseracq, head (or opperhooft) of the Dutch factory, who was informed that the shogunate now regarded this system as established diplomatic protocol. On this occasion, the Dutch lagged in recognition of the changes wrought by the emerging pax Tokugavana, and reciprocated with a gift of ordnance (DDR, vol. 11, p. 59). They soon stopped doing this. Nuances of giving and receiving were closely watched. In 1646 the opperhooft Reijnier van Tzum was permitted to collect the kimonos at Edo Castle - `a special honour, because on all other occasions the gowns were sent to our lodgings'. He received twenty from Iemitsu. From that year it became the rule to receive a further twenty from Iemitsu's son, Ietsuna (whom the Dutch called `the prince'), who was five that year (DDR, vol. 11, p. 288). In 1651 Ietsuna was to become shogun. The next year, the Dutch were given thirty kimonos: `His Majesty's reciprocal present [was], larger than ordinary - for instead of two trays, there were three trays, each bearing ten gowns. The captain [opperhooft] should accept them as a token of great honour, which had never before been bestowed on anyone.' The reason for this extension of the norm is not stated, but perhaps it was because the opperhooft, Willem Versteeghen, had himself given particularly fine gifts that year, nothing less than two live camels and a very large perspective peepbox, which caused massive excitement at the castle. Inoue Masashige, the Dutchmen's minder on the shogunal staff, impressed on Versteeghen how significant an honour this was for `no previous captain had received more than twenty gowns from either of the shoguns before' (ibid., vol. 11, p. 271). Special circumstances or occasions could evidently raise (or reduce) the number of kimonos conferred. When the Dutch sent a full ambassador to Edo (representing the VOC, and not the Dutch state - although this was hidden from the shogunate), the opperhooft was presented with fifty kimonos, while the ambassador, Andries Fresius, received a further forty (ibid., vol.11, p. 392). Kimonos were admired for their value and beauty, even by those who had not been to Japan. At least one European, Nicholas van Diemen, Governor-General of the East Indies, was inclined to commission some for himself. Van Diemen ordered sixty, surely intending them for resale or as presents. It took such a long time for them to arrive because the Kyoto dealer was arrested for debt, and the opperhooft had to hunt for another `well-known merchant' to complete the order (ibid., vol. 11, p. 42). Unlike imported bolts of cloth, kimonos were generally not very useful to Europeans, with their different codes of dress. Moreover, the garments were so colossally expensive that few would think the purchase worthwhile for the mere pleasure of ownership, or the few occasions when it might be possible to dress up in them. It was not until the age of Japonisme in the nineteenth century that anything approaching a kimono craze emerged. The gift garments, frankly, had more utility in Japan, where their status as diplomatic items made them literally priceless. The Japanese side was not unaware that the Dutch might subsequently offload them before leaving the country. In 1645, two officials quizzed the opperhooft, Pieter Overtwater, about this: `their Excellencies inquired whether any of the gowns would be sent to Holland. The interpreter replied "yes" and that the recipients in Holland were very delighted with them because they came from His Majesty' (ibid., vol. 11, p. 197). In this instance, it is the interpreter who butts in to assure the court that the kimonos were sent to Europe; he does not seem to be translating anything Overtwater actually said. Records reveal how the Dutch gave their kimonos away, but equally, how they often did not, shipping them out with care. Most years the Dutch log specifically records the loading of the shogunal kimonos, although the number is always unstated and they may in the intervening weeks have dwindled to just a few. When the Eliza foundered sailing out of Nagasaki Bay in 1799, under command of the incompetent and criminal skipper William Stewart, the Dutch `employed every possible means to get the Company's silk gowns salvaged from the hold'. The acting opperhooft, Jacob Ras (his superior having died en route from Edo), sent divers down `to look for the Company's gowns', but to no avail, for the water was murky. It was recorded weeks after the wreck that `they still have not found them yet'. When the kimonos were eventually retrieved, Ras had to write `the gowns are completely ruined', but he had them unstitched and sent into town `to have them washed as clean as possible in the river' (DDR, vol. 10, pp. 116-21). The result was apparently satisfactory, and we hear no more on the subject. There is little evidence on the fate of the kimonos that were sent to Europe. At a rate of twenty per year for about 150 years, this would be a very large number of gift gowns, even if only a fraction made it to Amsterdam. Perhaps word that the kimonos came from the `emperor of Japan' (as the shogun was called) intrigued some people enough to buy them, or at least to go and take a look. But the level of value would surely have descended, because these exquisite and formal Japanese costumes could only be worn in Europe, if at all, in informal, relaxed situations. The European dressing gown is essentially nothing other than a Japanese kimono. This is precisely the end to which kimonos were put. The descriptive terminology used in records is often vague and hard to unravel. However, information may also be gleaned from paintings like Nicholaes Maes' Family Group Portrait (Fig. 7). As Maes died in Amsterdam in 1690, this was probably executed about a decade earlier. The affluent Dutch family are dressed in their finery, but the scene is domestic. They are at home, not at work or in the public arena. The father wears a kimono. This unknown man, surely a responsible burgher of public consequence, is here shown as a paterfamilias. By the kimono the viewer knows he is rich and a product of the Netherlands' international economic sway. He has access to the wealth of many continents, but is also a gentleman who can enjoy leisure. The kimono was not intended for women and wrongly worn by a man: the diplomatic gowns were exchanges between males. Maes' painting is not unique, and it is therefore worth spending more time in considering another example of a European man in a kimono: the portrait of Samuel Pepys.

When the English withdrew from Japan, they sealed their godowns and put them under the care of the daimyo of Hirado, Hoin's grandson, who waited for word of the ships' return. None came. Cocks died on the voyage to England with his affairs under a cloud, and Saris had seriously queered his pitch by touting Japanese pornography around London, thereby bringing the EIC into disrepute. The English were further hit by the Civil War, with its huge destruction and near total interruption of the financial systems required for large-scale investments like long-distance sailings. A return to Japan was attempted in 1646, and news of this reached Japan the following year. Overtwater was questioned in Edo by Inoue Masashige, who `broached the subject of the possible return of the English. He asked if I thought the Portuguese would try to run their business in Japan through them. I replied that I did not know for certain, but that I thought - if the English did come - for the first two or three years they would not occupy themselves with any Portuguese business as it did not concern them' (DDR, vol. 11, p. 198). The old alliance between England and Portugal might well have inclined towards a pooling of resources, for neither country was very strong in East Asia. But Overtwater also committed to record that `I did not give these replies because they were what I really thought, but because this would be detrimental to them [the English]'. The Japanese were fearful of the unsettling effects of Portuguese Catholicism; thus warned, no English ship arrived. In 1666, the Great Fire of London damaged much of the infrastructure of trade. Pepys' Diary gives one of the best accounts of the fire. The English tried again in 1673, aboard a ship redolently named the Return. It arrived in June and was readily admitted to Japan, to the annoyance of the Dutch. But then Ietsuna, now an adult, was informed that Catherine of Braganza, the wife of the new king, Charles II (r. 1660-85), was Portuguese, the sister of Afonso VI. The English were therefore told to leave, the Return's captain Simon Delboe stated that `they could not admit us to have any trade, and for no other reason'. Somewhat inauspiciously, Delboe inquired whether the English might come again after the queen's death, and was told `possibly we might ...[but] our surest way was not to come' (Kaempfer, vol. 3, pp. 352 and 357). Catherine, in any case, was robust, and lived right through the reigns of her husband and his brother James II, only dying in 1705 when William and Mary were on the throne. The Japanese cannot be accused of over-reacting, for the Catholic leanings of Charles II had caused untold damage in England too. `Roman idolatry' was inveighed at, and then in 1678, came the Popish Plot. It was not just the queen either: although the Japanese did not know it, Charles' mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth, was a French Catholic. Pepys himself was once wrongly imprisoned on suspicion of Catholicism after someone claimed to have seen a crucifix beside his bed. To marry into the house of Braganza was to marry into an international world view. For all the Portuguese power that had waned in East Asia, it remained strong elsewhere. Catherine's dowry included Bombay and Tangier, free trade with Brazil, and L1 million. Perhaps Japan could be left to one side with all this on offer. We do know, though, that there was interest in the place. About 1661, the Duke of York (the future James II) acquired two `very fine chests carved with gold and Indian varnish' which had been `given him by the East India Company of Holland'. Pepys saw them (Pepys, p. 129). These were most certainly Japanese lacquered trunks. Pepys worked for the Admiralty Board and was closely involved with naval matters. He was part of the team sent to evacuate Tangier; which had been Portuguese since 1463, but abandoned by the English in 1683-4. He left behind a well-known record of these events (Henry Wheatley, Samuel Pepys and the World He Lived In, London, 1880, pp. 64-70). Pepys had frequent access to the Tower of London, and was close friends with its lieutenant, Sir John Robinson. They dined together occasionally, at least twice within the confines of the Tower itself, first in February 1664 (`his ordinary table being very good - and his Lady a very high-carriaged but comely big woman ...no discourse at table to any purpose') and the second time the following November (`a good dinner, but disturbed in the middle of it by the King's coming into the Tower) (Pepys, pp. 358 and 440). It would be interesting to know if he heard about, or even saw, Hidetada's suits of armour, given fifty years before. In 1679, Pepys got to know the Tower even better for it was there that he was sent after being charged with Popery. In his portrait, Pepys is elegantly dressed, not as a government figure but as a gentleman at leisure, like Maes' Dutchman (see Fig. 8). The depiction is bust-length, which was right for paintings intended to be dignified but not over-formal. Pepys holds a piece of paper marked with musical staves, and careful examination reveals this to be a song, with the lyrics written between, reading `Beauty retire, thou etc'. Pepys was a keen musician, and Beauty Retire was one of his own works. He mentions it many times in his Diary, and its composition was one of his proudest achievements. His record of the ode's creation can assist in dating the painting. Pepys began in late 1665, although the month was unspecified. It was completed in December. He was then 31. His friends' opinions were recorded with satisfaction: `I think is a good song and they praised in mightily'. Some slight objections emerged, such as on the 9th, when he sang it to his music-loving friend Thomas Hill, who liked it `only, excepts against two notes in the bass'. The following summer, the song was `being mightily cried up which I am not a little proud of', and Pepys' superior at work, Sir George Downing `extolled it above anything he ever heard. And without flattery'. He began to write another song, It is Decreed, which was written over the next year and completed in time for him to teach it to his wife on Christmas Day 1666. In his own opinion, the latter song excelled: `I do think I have done [it] better' (Pepys, pp. 561, 568, 656 and 690). But the general fame of the former was greater, and probably an additional gloss also attaches to a first effort. Since he holds Beauty Retire and not It is Decreed in his portrait, we can infer it dates to between late 1665 and late 1666. Given that the Great Fire wiped out normal life from September 1666, we can further infer that the painting was executed in late 1665 or the first half of 1666. As was the norm at the time, Pepys had portraits of his wife painted on several occasions, as he notes in the Diary, but only once does he refer to a painting made of himself. There are other extant portraits of Pepys made outside the period covered by the Diary, but Hayls' painting, as we have established, must be within it. Pepys writes of his portrait having been made by an artist he calls `Hales', to form a pair with a picture of his wife, Elizabeth, although that work is now lost. We do not know when work on Elizabeth Pepys' portrait began, but it was completed on 17 March 1666. On that day, we find the following entry:

...at noon, home to dinner, and presently with my wife out to Hales's, where I am still infinitely pleased with my wife's picture. I paid him 14l for it, and 25s for the frame, and I think it is not a whit too dear for so good a picture. It is not yet quite finished and dry, so as to be fit to bring home yet. This day I begin to sit, and he will make me, I think, a very fine picture. He promises it shall be as good as my wife's, and I sit to have it full of shadows, and do almost break my neck looking over my shoulder to make the posture for him to work by. (ibid., p. 599)

Hayls was then fashionable and well known, although modern critics hold him as no genius. At L14 it was not a vastly extravagant purchase, nor even at just over L30 for the pair with frames. John Michael Wright charged L36 for his best works (Waterhouse, p. 109). Pepys had selected Hayls after seeing his portrait of no less a person than the Lord Chancellor. He visited Hayls on Valentine's Day, while work was underway, and noted: `[It] will be mightily like him, and pleased me, so that I am resolved presently to have my wife's and mine done by him, he having a very masterly hand.' The very next day, he took his wife to Hayls' atelier, and arranged for her to be painted in the pose which the artist had recently rendered for another fashionable person, Lady Petre (called `Peters' by Pepys). Although this painting is no longer extant, it was said to have been `like a St Katherine' (Pepys, pp. 584 and 589). Katherine was martyred on a wheel and she is iconographically identified by standing beside one. In this case it was more likely to be intended as a tribute to Catherine of Braganza, who had started a craze by having herself depicted as St Catherine (minus wheel but with martyr's palm) by Jacob Huysmans. Pepys had seen the painting in 1664. When Hayls began work, Pepys and some friends remained in his atelier singing songs to pass time and to entertain the painter. At the end of the first sitting, Pepys was `pleased mightily' and believed `it will be a very noble picture'. He did not have time to attend every day, but five days later was back to inspect the progress. This time he was less happy, and even began to suspect some trick had been played, and that Lady Petre's portrait was not by Hayls at all, `which troubled me'. That evening he consoled himself by singing Beauty Retire. By 27 February, he was relieved to think: `I do mightily like her picture and think it will be as good as Lady Peters's'. He even found it hard to sleep, so excited was he `in consideration of the fine picture I shall be master of'. His wife sat almost daily for a full month. Work was completed on 17 March, and only then was the price determined, not too expensive, and `the truth is, I think he does deserve it'. Pepys then commissioned from Hayls a portrait of his father, which was a success (ibid., pp. 588-89, 592, 599 and 631). Throughout this period, Pepys was preoccupied with his duties relating to Tangier. Hayls has not left much of a mark on the history of English painting, much less of European. Grove's Dictionary of Art says his work `distantly echoes van Dyke's manner, but crudely handled' and at best is `reasonably accomplished'. David Waterhouse thinks him the `least important' known artist of the period (Waterhouse, p. 100). Anthony van Dyke (1599-1641) was, of course, the benchmark for painters and their patrons in London. Significantly, when Pepys' had his wife painted again in July 1668, he chose the great miniaturist Samuel Cooper, who had painted Oliver Cromwell, and had been friends enough with van Dyke to paint his mistress Mrs Lemon in 1637. Pepys thought Cooper's portrait excellent, `yet I think not so like as Hales's is'; it cost œ30 (Pepys, pp. 897 and 935). Encouraged by the result of Hayls' portraits of Pepys and his wife, his friend, a physician to the navy, James Pearce (Pepys calls him Pierce), also commissioned a painting of his wife, which was begun while Pepys' was under way. The two men sometimes went to Hayls' atelier together, or met there by chance. The painting of Mrs Pearce, though, was a disaster: `it does not please her, nor me endeed, it making no show nor is very like, nor is no good painting' (ibid., p. 619). There were debates while work was in progress. Hayls had painted Elizabeth against a plain sky, as Pepys notes in his Diary, but his own portrait had a landscape background. He was not happy with this: `Here we fell to discourse of my picture, and I am for putting out the Landskipp, though he [Hayls] says it is very well done; yet I do judge it will be best without, and so it shall be put out - and be made a plain sky, like my wife's picture, which will be very noble' (ibid., p. 606). This is what we see today, although the blue sky has darkened to blackness. To return to the kimono, which is what most concerns us. On 30 March, some two weeks into production, Pepys went to sit for Hayls, and it was during this period that the artist began work on the gown. Pepys wrote: `To Hales's and there sat till almost quite dark upon working my gown, which I hired to be drawn [in]' (ibid., p. 602). He refers to it as an `Indian gown', which, again, means East Indian, or in this case, Japanese. Pepys does not own the fine robe, which looks a costly item. He does not say what the rental fee was, nor explain the mechanisms for clothing hire. He could have possessed one had he chosen to, for the Diary mentions other expensive articles of clothing which would have been for public wear. A kimono such as the one worn by Pepys would have been for private use. It is evident that while a money-conscious young bureaucrat like Pepys felt it appropriate to be painted in a kimono, it was not financially prudent to buy one. Dressed in it, he looked the perfect townsman of a vigorous trading city. Exchanges between males can also encompass gifts for each other's womenfolk. Some men are suspicious of the motivation behind presents given by other men to their wives. Gift-giving to wives had therefore to be ritualized to avoid jealousy. Pepys' Diary also sheds light on this: In December 1663, a certain Mr Abrahall, whom Pepys knew somewhat in a business context as he worked for the king's chandlery, sent a kimono for Elizabeth. Pepys wrote, `[He] hath sent my wife a Japan gowne; which pleases her very well and me also' (Pepys, p. 332). They had been married for eight years, and Elizabeth was 21. On this occasion Pepys was confused how to repay the gift, or to find what diplomats would call an appropriate reciprocal present. None is ever stated in the Diary and Abrahall is not mentioned again. The circulation of cloth has great political importance for it is about the dressing and redressing of people. In portraits, turning such outfits into parts of represented selves, even when the identity of the sitters is lost today, speaks of the construction of personalities and the display of egos