Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/172

 the first half of the month, and that in the west during the second half. The spirit of extreme formalism that had presided at the laying out of the city with mathematical regularity, made itself apparent in the rules for the control of trade. It was required that the headman of the market should present to the governor a catalogue in triplicate, containing an exact statement of all the commodities offered for sale and of the prices at which they were offered, the latter being limited in the case of every staple. No person was allowed to enter the market wearing a sword. The old veto held strictly with regard to operations of sale by servants of men of rank. Government officials patrolled the street in front of the fiftv-one stores in the eastern market and the thirty-three of the western, and police constables were on constant duty to prevent theft or incendiarism. These elaborate enactments naturally ceased to be operative during the evil days that overtook Kyōtō in the civil wars from the middle of the twelfth century, but up to that time trade seems to have flourished in the Imperial city, and its affairs were certainly regulated most carefully. In many provincial towns, also, the same method of special market-places existed, but it has already been shown that this system dated from an early period. Nothing is on record as to the habits of the mercantile class, or the mode of transacting business between remote