Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/325

Rh But one day, as the conqueror was returning from the battle of Sekigahara and taking his ease in the teahouse of Shoji Jinyemon, at Shinagawa, the proprietor, whose efforts to please were seconded by eight red-aproned waitresses of unusual beauty, so impressed the Shōgun with his talent for that kind of management, that he was appointed nanushi, or director-in-chief, of the Moto-Yoshiwara, founded in response to many petitions in 1618. Into this quarter, which either took its name from Yoshiwara, a town on the Tokaido famed for the prettiness of its daughters, or from its literal import, the "place of reeds," being situated in a marsh on the outskirts of Yedo, all the courtesans who had infested various portions of the city were gathered, licensed, and supervised. It at once became a little city in itself, wisely and usefully administered, and, being burnt down fifty years later, was replaced by the new or Shin-Yoshiwara, which remains in most essentials to this day a copy of its predecessor. It was divided into eight wards, each of which had responsible recorders, whose duty was to keep order, to guard against fires, and report suspicious characters to the police. Policemen stood at the gates, and every guest was required to enter his name in a register, though he might disguise it by changing the characters, if it were phonetically correct. At one time Christians and gamblers were forbidden to enter, while the samurai, or military retainer, whose Roman discipline excluded visits to Capua, was provided by the Amigasa tea-houses with a large braid hat to conceal his features. Espionage, as always under the Tokugawa régime, was a pronounced feature of this autonomous system, which was, and still is, of immense service in the detection of crime, since ill-gotten gains