Page:EB1911 - Volume 15.djvu/216

RAILWAYS] posts. The highway between his stronghold, Kamakura, and the imperial city, Kiōto, began in his time to develop features which ultimately entitled it to be called one of the finest roads in the world. But after Yoritomo’s death the land became once more an armed camp, in which the rival barons discouraged travel beyond the limits of their own domains. Not until the Tokugawa family obtained military control of the whole empire (1603), and, fixing its capital at Yedo, required the feudal chiefs to reside there every second year, did the problem of roads and post-stations force itself once more on official attention. Regulations were now strictly enforced, fixing the number of horses and carriers available at each station, the loads to be carried by them and their charges, as well as the transport services that each feudal chief was entitled to demand and the fees he had to pay in return. Tolerable hostelries now came into existence, but they furnished only shelter, fuel and the coarsest kind of food. By degrees, however, the progresses of the feudal chiefs to and from Yedo, which at first were simple and economical, developed features of competitive magnificence, and the importance of good roads and suitable accommodation received increased attention. This found expression in practice in 1663. A system more elaborate than anything antecedent was then introduced under the name of “flying transport.” Three kinds of couriers operated. The first class were in the direct employment of the shōgunate. They carried official messages between Yedo and Osaka—a distance of 348 miles—in four days by means of a well organized system of relays. The second class maintained communications between the fiefs and the Tokugawa court as well as their own families in Yedo, for in the alternate years of a feudatory’s compulsory residence in that city his family had to live there. The third class were maintained by a syndicate of 13 merchants as a private enterprise for transmitting letters between the three great cities of Kiōto, Osaka and Yedo and intervening places. This syndicate did not undertake to deliver a letter direct to an addressee. The method pursued was to expose letters and parcels at fixed places in the vicinity of their destination, leaving the addressees to discover for themselves that such things had arrived. Imperfect as this system was, it represented a great advance from the conditions in medieval times.

The nation does not seem to have appreciated the deficiencies of the syndicate’s service, supplemented as it was by a network of waterways which greatly increased the facilities for transport. After the cessation of civil wars under the sway of the Tokugawa, the building and improvement of roads went on steadily. It is not too much to say, indeed, that when Japan opened her doors to foreigners in the middle of the 19th century, she possessed a system of roads some of which bore striking testimony to her medieval greatness.

The most remarkable was the Tōkaidō (eastern-seaway), so called because it ran eastward along the coast from Kiōto. This great highway, 345 m. long, connected Osaka and Kiōto with Yedo. The date of its construction is not recorded, but it certainly underwent signal improvement in the 12th and 13th centuries, and during the two and a half centuries of Tokugawa sway in Yedo. A wide, well-made and well-kept avenue, it was lined throughout the greater part of its length by giant pine-trees, rendering it the most picturesque highway in the world. Iyeyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa dynasty of shōguns, directed that his body should be interred at Nikkō, a place of exceptional beauty, consecrated eight hundred years previously. This meant an extension of the Tōkaidō (under a different name) nearly a hundred miles northward, for the magnificent shrines erected then at Nikkō and the periodical ceremonies thenceforth performed there demanded a correspondingly fine avenue of approach. The original Tōkaidō was taken for model, and Yedo and Nikkō were joined by a highway

flanked by rows of cryptomeria. Second only to the Tōkaidō is the Nakasendō (mid-mountain road), which also was constructed to join Kiōto with Yedo, but follows an inland course through the provinces of Yamashiro, Omi, Mino, Shinshū, Kōtzuke and Musashi. Its length is 340 m., and though not flanked by trees or possessing so good a bed as the Tōkaidō, it is nevertheless a sufficiently remarkable highway. A

third road, the Oshūkaidō runs northward from Yedo (now Tōkyō) to Aomori on the extreme north of the main island, a distance of 445 m., and several lesser highways give access to other regions.

The question of road superintendence received early attention from the government of the restoration. At a general assembly of local prefects held at Tōkyō in June 1875 it was decided to classify the different roads throughout the empire, and to determine the several sources from which the sums necessary for their maintenance and repair should be drawn. After several days’ discussion all roads were eventually ranged under one or other of the following heads:—

I. National roads, consisting of—


 * Class 1. Roads leading from Tōkyō to the various treaty ports.


 * Class 2. Roads leading from Tōkyō to the ancestral shrines in the province of Isē, and also to the cities or to military stations.


 * Class 3. Roads leading from Tōkyō to the prefectural offices, and those forming the lines of connexion between cities and military stations.

II. Prefectural roads, consisting of—


 * Class 1. Roads connecting different prefectures, or leading from military stations to their outposts.


 * Class 2. Roads connecting the head offices of cities and prefectures with their branch offices.


 * Class 3. Roads connecting noted localities with the chief town of such neighbourhoods, or leading to seaports convenient of access.

III. Village roads, consisting of—


 * Class 1. Roads passing through several localities in succession, or merely leading from one locality to another.


 * Class 2. Roads specially constructed for the convenience of irrigation, pasturage, mines, factories, &amp;c., in accordance with measures determined by the people of the locality.


 * Class 3. Roads constructed for the benefit of Shintō shrines, Buddhist temples, or to facilitate the cultivation of rice-fields and arable land.

Of the above three headings, it was decided that all national roads should be maintained at the national expense, the regulations for their up-keep being entrusted to the care of the prefectures along the line of route, and the cost incurred being paid from the Imperial treasury. Prefectural roads are maintained by a joint contribution from the government and from the particular prefecture, each paying one-half of the sum needed. Village roads, being for the convenience of local districts alone, are maintained at the expense of such districts under the general supervision of the corresponding prefecture. The width of national roads was determined at 42 ft. for class 1, 36 ft. for class 2, and 30 ft. for class 3; the prefectural roads were to be from 24 to 30 ft., and the dimensions of the village roads were optional, according to the necessity of the case.

The vehicles chiefly employed in ante-Meiji days were ox-carriages, norimono, kago and carts drawn by hand. Ox-carriages were used only by people of the highest rank. They were often constructed of rich lacquer; the curtains suspended in

front were of the finest bamboo workmanship, with thick cords and tassels of plaited silk, and the draught animal, an ox of handsome proportions, was brilliantly caparisoned. The care and expense lavished upon these highly ornate structures would have been deemed extravagant even in medieval Europe. They have passed entirely out of use, and are now to be seen in museums only, but the type still exists in China. The norimono resembled a miniature house slung by its roof-ridge from a massive pole which projected at either end sufficiently to admit the shoulders of a carrier. It, too, was frequently of very ornamental nature and served to carry aristocrats or officials of high position. The kago was the humblest of all conveyances recognized as usable by the upper classes. It was an open palanquin, V-shaped in cross section, slung from a pole which rested on the shoulders of two bearers. Extraordinary skill and endurance were shown by the men who carried the norimono and the kago, but none the less these vehicles were both profoundly uncomfortable. They have now been relegated to the warehouses of undertakers, where they serve as bearers for folks too poor to employ catafalques, their place on the roads and in the streets having been

completely taken by the jinrikisha, a two-wheeled vehicle pulled by one or two men who think nothing of running 20 m. at the rate of 6 m. an hour. The jinrikisha was devised by a Japanese in 1870, and since then it has come into use throughout the whole of Asia eastward of the Suez Canal. Luggage, of course, could not be carried by norimono or kago. It was necessary to have recourse to packmen, pack-horses or baggage-carts drawn by men or horses. All these still exist and are as useful as ever within certain limits. In the cities and towns horses used as beasts of burden are now shod with iron, but in rural or mountainous districts straw shoes are substituted, a device which enables the animals to traverse rocky or precipitous roads with safety.

Railways.—It is easy to understand that an enterprise like railway construction, requiring a great outlay of capital with returns long delayed, did not at first commend itself to the Japanese, who were almost entirely ignorant of co-operation as a factor of business organization. Moreover, long habituated to snail-like modes of travel, the people did not rapidly appreciate the celerity of the locomotive. Neither the ox-cart, the norimono, nor the kago covered a daily distance of over 20 m. on the average,