Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/189

 "gloire de Dijon" rose sold for any amount from a hundred to three hundred pounds. The Government had to interfere in every case by means of prohibitive taxes. But nothing illustrates more forcibly the difference between past and present Japan than the fact that of the innumerable sumptuary statutes and regulations of the Tokugawa epoch not one remains in force to-day. A nation which, thirty-five years ago, could not eat a meal, ride in a public conveyance, or wear a garment without considering whether the law would be offended, is now absolutely free from every restraint of the kind, and does not seem to find the liberty injurious. The history of Japan's swift transition from the old civilisation to the new has furnished illustrations of many theories, but nothing has been more marked than the lesson it teaches as to the futility and needlessness of paternal legislation.

There are many facts to be noted with regard to means of communication, changes of costume, forms of entertainment, and so on during the Tokugawa epoch. At a very early period of the era the use of ox carriages passed out of fashion for ordinary purposes of locomotion. They were still employed at festivals or on the rare occasions when the Emperor or Empress went abroad, but among the upper classes and the people in general their place was taken by palanquins. Of these there were four varieties, two of them, called nori-mono (things for riding), being elabo-