Snap-on style washable pad -Washable pad with belt - See how women wear a belt with a pad - see a Swedish ad showing a belt and pad - German pattern for washable pads, probably before 1900 - And see a menstrual sponge
Washable pads from Almora, Uttar Pradesh state, India - Nineteenth-century Norwegian washable pads - Italian washable pad, probably from the 1890s
CONTRIBUTE to Humor, Words and expressions about menstruation and Would you stop menstruating if you could?
Some MUM site links: homepage | MUM address & What does MUM mean? | e-mail the museum | privacy on this site | who runs this museum?? |
Amazing women! | the art of menstruation | artists (non-menstrual) | asbestos | belts | bidets | founder bio | Bly, Nellie | MUM board | books: menstruation and menopause (and reviews) | cats | company booklets for girls (mostly) directory | contraception and religion | costumes | menstrual cups | cup usage | dispensers | douches, pain, sprays | essay directory | extraction | facts-of-life booklets for girls | famous women in menstrual hygiene ads | FAQ | founder/director biography | gynecological topics by Dr. Soucasaux | humor | huts | links | masturbation | media coverage of MUM | menarche booklets for girls and parents | miscellaneous | museum future | Norwegian menstruation exhibit | odor | olor | pad directory | patent medicine | poetry directory | products, current | puberty booklets for girls and parents | religion | Religión y menstruación | your remedies for menstrual discomfort | menstrual products safety | science | Seguridad de productos para la menstruación | shame | slapping, menstrual | sponges | synchrony | tampon directory | early tampons | teen ads directory | tour of the former museum (video) | underpants & panties directory | videos, films directory | Words and expressions about menstruation | Would you stop menstruating if you could? | What did women do about menstruation in the past? | washable pads
Leer la versión en español de los siguientes temas: Anticoncepción y religión, Breve reseña - Olor - Religión y menstruación - Seguridad de productos para la menstruación.

Instructions for making Japanese washable menstrual pads (early 20th century?), successors of the uma (pony or horse)

In 1998 a Japanese college student, Tomoko Maeno, kindly sent a copy of her study of the history of Japanese menstrual devices to this museum. Read her English version.

Below I reproduce two pictures from "Reader on Hygiene for Daughters, Wives, and Mothers" about making homemade pads, from her thesis; they're from the early 20th century. Mrs. Akiko Roller translated part of the text for this museum.

Japanese women made their own menstrual pads, tampons, sponges, etc., before they were available commercially, probably just like women almost everywhere.

Ms. Maeno points out in her own handwriting on the document at the bottom of this page that she writes about uma, the pony (or horse), in the grayed-out columns.

Ms. Maeno did not attach her references or bibliography.

See ads for Japanese commercial belts from the early 20th century, also from Tomoko Maeno.

Below: But before you learn how to make menstrual gear (underneath these images) look at these
images of MEN from 18th-19th century Japanese woodblock prints that the artist Hokusai
drew (others engraved the wooden plates just as the Frenchman Gustav Doré hired
others to engrave HIS famous wood engravings). Hokusai broke ground in Japanese art by
depicting ordinary people.

Below: Japanese laboring men wore a loin cloth held by a band around the waist (and wore little else); this loin cloth also seemed to serve as underpants under other clothing. (Detail from one of the prints of the series One Hundred Views of Mt Fuji, 1834. No, those aren't the twin peaks of Mt. Fuji; Fuji has only one. As a kid I walked to the top and slid down its volcanic cinder flows with my Explorer troop when my family lived on Okinawa, today the southern-most part of Japan, at that time an American-governed territory.)
Below: Detail from Hokusai's Gathering Shellfish, 1798.
Compare with the menstrual gear, below.

 

 



Below: A part of Tomoko Maeno's thesis about the history of Japanese menstrual protection, part of which she sent to MUM.
 
Mrs. Akiko Roller translates the grayed area of the thesis, below left, as follows:

"The actual examples of a T-shaped sanitary belt appear in the book called 'Reader on Hygiene for Daughters, Wives, and Mothers' [see the two illustrations, above]. Three examples of menstrual belts are shown. They emphasize not only 'physiological hygiene' but also user friendliness and low cost, saying that they are easy to use and wash, airy and hygienic, and besides they are economical because they only cost 0.78 Yen apiece to make.
"These types of menstrual belts are not anything special that the magazine 'Friend of Housewives' invented, but were used by ordinary people. They are probably improved versions of a sanitary belt called uma (horse). The uma is thought to be named after a waistcoat or a belly band for horses that prevented urine and feces from soiling the environment, and they have been in use since the Edo Period (1603-1867)."
     

Snap-on style washable pad -Washable pad with belt - See how women wear a belt with a pad - see a Swedish ad showing a belt and pad - German pattern for washable pads, probably before 1900 - And see a menstrual sponge - Washable pads from Almora, Uttar Pradesh state, India - Nineteenth-century Norwegian washable pads - Italian washable pad, probably from the 1890s

© 2000 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute any of the work on this Web site in any manner or medium without written permission of the author. Please report suspected violations to hfinley@mum.org