Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/187

 erected. Still, as time passed, the luxurious tendency of the age defied these restraints, and the laws became more and more stringent. From the close of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth, legislation was of such a nature that it checked progress for the sake of inculcating thrift. In 1790 a veto was imposed on the sale of single-sheet chromoxylographs, which had now become very beautiful and correspondingly expensive; and presently officials set limits to the number of blocks used in manufacturing coloured prints, which were then a chef-d'uvre of Japanese artists. The sale of costly flower-pots; the use of large flags and numerous lanterns at festivals; advertising displays by medicine-venders, restaurant-keepers, and fruiterers; the manufacture of crepe ornaments for woman's hair; expensive funerals; the wearing of mourning by any except near relatives; the sending of hot-house vegetables to market; the making of any toy more expensive than fourpence,—all these things were forbidden during the first forty years of the nineteenth century. In 1842 a most arbitrary measure was taken. It was proclaimed that all merchants in possession of gold or silver ware in contravention of the regulations must carry it at once to the mint for exchange, the duty of enforcing the order being entrusted to district headmen. The result is said to have been the surrender of quantities of women's