Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/140

 herself a potent perverter of good morals. At first (1710) the authorities seem to have imagined that they could get rid of this troublesome attraction by prohibiting the teaching of dancing under penalty of expulsion from house and district. But of course no such veto could be enforced in a society where dancing represented the chief pastime of all classes. The danseuse flourished in the face of legal prohibitions, and not until the close of the eighteenth century were the abuses of which she was typical attacked with really strenuous practicality by the good Shōgun Iyenari and his able minister, Matsudaira Sadanobu. This era (1787–1838), as well as that of the Shōgun Iyeyoshi (1838–1853),may claim attention, for the records of the sixty-six years immediately prior to the renewal of foreign intercourse afford interesting information about the attitude of Japanese officialdom towards problems generally supposed to have remained unsolved, and even unconsidered, until contact with the Occident suggested new canons of conduct. One of the first acts of Iyenari's administration was to declare the geisha illegal, and three years later (1790) he issued a strict prohibition against the publication of any kind of pornographic literature. Complete success did not attend his efforts in either case, but that could scarcely have been expected. At any rate, the spirit of his legislation was admirable. It is to this era, too, that the embryo of a press law may be