Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/183

 Mention has been made of the fact that the impression of the thumb was often used on documents in ante-feudal days by way of substitute for a written signature or seal. From the beginning of the sixteenth century stamped seals began to be used. They had their origin in the employment of a vermilion seal by the Shōgun, and they soon obtained wide vogue, though the superior value of a written signature or seal has always been recognised. By degrees it became the custom for every Japanese to have a seal, and such deep root did the habit take, that, in spite of the obvious abuses incidental to a device which presents such ineffective obstacles to fraud, the nation seems to have formed a permanent attachment for seals, and in modern times they have been accorded the validity of signatures by act of Parliament.

The establishment of barriers having guard-houses attached was originally a precaution against bandits. But during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the feudal chiefs became practically independent of the central Government, barriers served not only for military purposes, but also as means of levying toll from wayfarers. Buddhist and Shintō shrines were allowed to set up barriers for the latter purpose, and it is on record that the Kasuga Shrine and the Kokufu Temple collected two thousand kwan (£800) annually at a single barrier,—that of Hyōgo. It stands to the credit of the great Takauji, founder