Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/262

 also means of communication were so bad that the Court could not hope, by its own unaided strength, to follow and arrest a fugitive. It is true that some of the barriers erected to check the freedom of men's movements had been removed, but these artificial obstructions counted for very little compared with the absence of roads and inns, the dangers from bandits and pirates and the want of any organised system of conveyances. In the middle of the tenth century, a famous litterateur describes how a journey from Tosa to Kyōtō took more than fifty days, and a century later a high official spent a hundred and twenty days getting from Hitachi to the capital. The only important place easily accessible from Kyōtō was Naniwa, the modern Osaka. It was, in effect, the port of Kyōtō, and a man could travel thither by boat, calling en route at four towns, and paying a visit finally at the shrine of the three Sea-Gods at Sumiyoshi, where, if he intended to pursue his journey, he prayed very fervently for protection. Many a citizen of Kyōtō made the trip down the Yodo River to Naniwa merely for pleasure. Houses of entertainment abounded in the towns on the way, and before a ship dropped anchor she was surrounded by boats carrying courtesans, dancing girls, musicians, and other agents of amusement.

It must not be supposed that the courtesan of those days descended to any depth of moral degradation when she espoused her abandoned calling.