Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/119

 untary victims. No one adopts the career, if any possible alternative offers, and that fact must be placed to the credit, either of the system itself, or of the morality of Japanese women. One of the aspirations of modern Japanese reformers used to be the abolition of licensed prostitution. But it never appeared that they had studied the subject by the light of ethical philosophy, and the public declined to take them seriously.

Reverting to the story of the year's fêtes, the reader finds himself in the eighth month of the old calendar, approximately the ninth of the new. This is essentially the dead season. In the times of the Tokugawa Shōguns, Yedo was required to hold a grand festival in commemoration of the fact that Iyeyasu, the founder of the Shogunate, made his official entry into the city on the 1st of the eighth month. But the Tōkyō of to-day eschews all acknowledgment of the fact that it was once the capital of the Shōguns, and, in September, pays homage to the moon only. There is a Japanese saying that in spring the moon-beams lose themselves among the blossoms; in summer their image reflected from the water is more beautiful than the original; in winter they have an air of desolation; in autumn only their charm is perfect and unmixed. Hence, on the 15th of the eighth month, and the 13th of the ninth, parties are formed to admire the moon;