Page:Sketches of Tokyo Life (1895).djvu/17



JAPANESE street is remarkable for nothing so much as the multiplicity and variety of the sign-boards which line its sides. These are usually wooden boards, plain or lacquered, hung from the eaves of the first or second storey, parallel or at right angles to the frontage, and with their lengths horizontal or perpendicular, so that there is ample scope for ingenuity in the disposal of these boards. Similar to the sign-board in its use is a square-framed lantern papered on all sides, and as diversified in its position. Eating-houses, especially of the lower class, which are comparatively more numerous in Tokyo than in any other Japanese city, invite customers with these lanterns, the forms of which have by usage become so fixed that it is generally