Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/233

RV 205 always left Yedo fifty days before midsummer, stood for a week, in a specially prepared store until every vestige of moisture had been expelled, and then, having been filled, were carried to Kyōtō and there deposited for a space of one hundred days. Meanwhile the members of the procession which had escorted the jars from Yedo returned thither, and in the autumn repaired once more to Kyōtō to fetch the tea. The return journey was by the Kiso-kaidō, and again the progress of the jars was marked by ceremonious welcomes and feastings in each district. For each jar of tea a gold ōban (sixteen pounds) was paid, and the same rate held for purchases by a daimyō. No new tea might be delivered from Uji until the Shōgun's jars had been filled, and official permission to proceed with the plucking of the first crop of leaves had to be obtained with much formality from Kyōtō. These extravagances had a political purpose, but the cost of the jars' progresses to and from Yedo being enormous, the frugal Shōgun Yoshimune (1710—1744) put an end to the picturesque custom.

Japan's foreign trade, its origin and its development during the Meiji era, are so intimately connected with the political history of the fall of the Tokugawa and the restoration of administrative power to the Emperor, that in speaking of the latter events some reference to the former could not be avoided. Hence the reader is already familiar with the manner in which commercial