Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/174

 against the strong, fought as blithely as the "Prentice Lads" of medival Europe, abhorred avarice, stoned the funeral procession of a notorious swindler, burned incense perpetually at the grave of his assassin, and worshipped regularly at the tombs of the "Forty-seven Loyal Rōnins." Readers of what has been already written about the modern soshi and the oyabun of the chevaliers d'Industrie will recognise their prototype in some of the qualities that disfigured the Otoko-date and the Yedokko.

It was owing to the growth of a gentler civilisation that these rough representatives of militarism gradually passed out of fashion. Kyōtō was the source of that growth. In all ages Kyōtō had been the Paris of Japan. There the refinements of life had their origin; there the fine arts were most assiduously practised, and there the nation found its standards of taste and erudition. Osaka, which from the days of the Taikō acquired metropolitan importance, served in Tokugawa times as the portal for the passage of Kyōtō influences to the nation at large. In neither city did the spirit of simplicity and integrity manifest the robustness that it attained in Kamakura under the early Hōjō viceregents or in Yedo under the first four Tokugawa Shōguns. Osaka and Kyōtō loved gain; took supreme pleasure in amassing money; regarded dainty viands, rich costumes, and artistic surroundings as the chief desiderata of existence; freely indulged their sensuous appetites,