Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/172

 ("squire"), who had many representatives in the seventeenth century and who unconsciously parodied the true samurai by excessive emphasis of his traits. These persons were easily recognisable by their remarkably long swords,—too long to be drawn without special training,—by the rococo fashion of their garments, and by their hair, which was gathered into a queue of exceptional thickness. They found imitators among the tradespeople, who, partly because they admired this vehement type of manhood, but chiefly because they were roused to resistance by the overbearing methods of the swaggering samurai, aped the latter's fashions, so that, from the middle of the seventeenth century, the "citizen squire" (machi yakko) began to pit himself against the "banneret squire" (hatamoto-yakko). Both claimed the title of "gallant" (otoko-date), but it ultimately came to be applied to the citizen only. It is not always possible to distinguish between the otoko-date and the members of less reputable associations that had their origin in the early part of the seventeenth century, and became very fashionable some fifty years later. They called themselves by various quaint names, as "great and small deities" (daishō shingi-gumi), "iron sticks" (tetsubō-gumi), "Chinese dogs" (token-gumi), "wag-tails" (sekirei-gumi), and so forth, being, in short, clubs of roisterers who showed some of the worst traits of military licence side by side with features of the genuine