Color film did kinda exist back then-- see here (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/gorskii.html)-- but the Japanese pix were probably tinted by hand at the time.
In an old biography of Akihito (the current emperor), written around the time of his marriage, it mentions that when he started going to school (against previous tradition, which had sequestered the imperial children with private tutors), he still had relatively long hair with bangs, so all the other (close-cropped) boys thought he was a girl. So his household[*] surreptitiously cut his hair to the standard length, by distracting him with picture books while he thought he was just getting a standard trim. He figured it out that evening at dinner when he saw his reflection in a lacquer dish, and politely asked his attendants not to do things like that without telling him first.
[*: tradition did maintain enough of a hold that, when Akihito was still a toddler, he was separated from his parents to be raised by his own set of courtiers in his own palace compound. They were able to reunite for family get-togethers every week or so, but still.]
It might be interesting to play with the scenario of leaving Kenji's hair long and letting people think he was a girl (as with Kawakami Gensai)... come to think of it, I wonder who he'd model his speech patterns after? He might not've wanted to emulate Kenshin's "sessha" and "de gozaru" archaic formality, but Kaoru uses (of course) girlier pronouns and stuff. But I guess if Yahiko was coming around regularly as an assistant instructor (along with Yutarou as the other shihandai, plus Outa and the other students), there would've been a fair amount of "ore"/"boku" normal macho swaggering going on.
no subject
In an old biography of Akihito (the current emperor), written around the time of his marriage, it mentions that when he started going to school (against previous tradition, which had sequestered the imperial children with private tutors), he still had relatively long hair with bangs, so all the other (close-cropped) boys thought he was a girl. So his household[*] surreptitiously cut his hair to the standard length, by distracting him with picture books while he thought he was just getting a standard trim. He figured it out that evening at dinner when he saw his reflection in a lacquer dish, and politely asked his attendants not to do things like that without telling him first.
[*: tradition did maintain enough of a hold that, when Akihito was still a toddler, he was separated from his parents to be raised by his own set of courtiers in his own palace compound. They were able to reunite for family get-togethers every week or so, but still.]
It might be interesting to play with the scenario of leaving Kenji's hair long and letting people think he was a girl (as with Kawakami Gensai)... come to think of it, I wonder who he'd model his speech patterns after? He might not've wanted to emulate Kenshin's "sessha" and "de gozaru" archaic formality, but Kaoru uses (of course) girlier pronouns and stuff. But I guess if Yahiko was coming around regularly as an assistant instructor (along with Yutarou as the other shihandai, plus Outa and the other students), there would've been a fair amount of "ore"/"boku" normal macho swaggering going on.