Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/184

 into extra-marital relations by a general interdict against the keeping of many concubines, and subsequently by an explicit command that however wealthy a man might be his concubines must not exceed two. In that particular region of immorality the Tokugawa rulers never attempted to effect any reforms: it would have been necessary for them to begin by remodelling their own establishments. But for the rest their statutes indicate that legislative attention was vigorously directed to the restraint of extravagance. Sometimes the capriciousness of fashion appears to have influenced law-makers themselves; as when, in the time of Iyemitsu, certain methods of hairdressing were proscribed, and the wearing of beards was forbidden under penalty of imprisonment together with fines varying from £3 to £5; or when (1688) an edict denounced the use of garments having a design of cranes woven or dyed on them, or the adoption of names in which the ideograph tsuru (crane) occurred. But in general the spirit informing the sumptuary regulations of the era was essentially economical. Thus the number of servants in a samurai's family was limited to one if the employer's yearly income did not exceed the equivalent of £400, and to ten in a household with an income not greater than £4,800. Peasants were forbidden (1628) to have any material but cotton in their clothing, though their wives as well as the headman of a village might wear pongee, and ordinary samurai