Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/201

 modating several passengers, and her very low bulwarks made it impossible that she could live in a high sea. These junks, or a modified form of them, nevertheless plied regularly between Osaka and Yedo from the middle of the seventeenth century, hugging the shore and carrying cargo at the rate of about four shillings per six tons. Of pleasure-boats there were several types. The most aristocratic had a roof stretching over the whole deck except at the stem and the stern. The space under the roof was covered with mats and otherwise fitted like a Japanese chamber, and was divided by a partition of sliding doors, so that the servants accompanying a party of pleasure-seekers could sit separately. All these boats were similarly propelled by means of one or two long oars which, balanced on a pivot, were thrust into the water from the stern and worked by a man standing. It need scarcely be said that the Tokugawa Government, which endeavoured so strenuously to check extravagance in matters of every-day life, did not fail to extend its supervision to pleasure-boats. Regulations were issued from time to time limiting their number or curtailing their dimensions, and legislation proved more effective in this case than in many others.

Throughout the Tokugawa era the increase of luxurious habits was reflected in the people's costumes; they grew constantly more elaborate and costly in spite of stringent sumptuary laws enacted with almost pathetic pertinacity by Shōgun after