Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/198

 comparatively easy, but by no means safe. Kago-bearevs and baggage-coolies often despoiled unarmed wayfarers, and innkeepers acted in collusion with the thieves. Sometimes commoners obtained immunity by disguising themselves as samurai and carrying a sword, but, on the other hand, such a device exposed them to official penalties. On the whole, however, travelling in Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was less perilous than travelling in Europe at the same epoch.

Under the auspices of the Tokugawa Shōguns was established the first regular postal system in Japan. At the outset it was limited to official uses. Men in uniform wearing two swords started at regular intervals from Yedo and Kyōtō travelling viâ Osaka. In 1663 this example found imitators among the business-men in the three cities: they organised a service of runners, performing the journey three times a month. Arriving at their destination, these men's habit was to expose upon a piece of matting in the open air the letters they had carried in order that the addressees might come to claim them.

The reverential attitude required of the people during the passage of a feudal chief and his retinue has already been mentioned. At no time was the etiquette in such matters stricter than in the Tokugawa epoch. Iyemitsu (1623–1650), the most imperious of all the Shōguns, required every house to be closed in the streets or highways