Ohaguro
The old Japanese custom of dyeing the teeth black, worn mainly by married women.
Also: teeth blackening
Ohaguro used a dye of iron filings in vinegar mixed with tannin from plant galls. Black teeth were seen as beautiful and marked adulthood; at court men wore them too, and in the Edo period it became the sign of a married woman. The Meiji government discouraged the custom from 1870, and it faded by the early twentieth century. Teeth blackening was also practised in Vietnam, southern China and parts of Southeast Asia.