Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/139

 said that the abuse has yet disappeared altogether. In addition to the respect—insufficient but still worthy of all praise—evinced by the Tokugawa administrators for liberty of the subject, they must also be credited with a sincere desire to check vicious practices. From the beginning of the seventeenth century, unnatural crimes were declared punishable with confiscation of the offender's entire property, and though this prohibition is attributable in a large measure to incidents connected with such crimes,—quarrels, suicides, and other catastrophes,—no hint of that reason appeared in the official attitude. Again, in 1627, steps were taken to give practical effect to the system of relegating the social evil to remote quarters in the principal cities and penalising its practice elsewhere. Much has been written and said about this system, but its keenest opponents must at least admit that the Tokugawa rulers were guided by a sound instinct when they preferred isolation of vice to its promiscuous practice. Probably the most efficient measures of segregation were a law depriving employers of all authority to retain the services of a female for immoral purposes outside the appointed quarter, and an enactment that not only the owner of a house used for such a trade, but also the headman of the district and the five householders of the "group" to which the offender belonged, should be held responsible.

Then, as now, the dancing-girl (geisha) proved