Page:Sketches of Tokyo Life (1895).djvu/72

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HE centuries of peace under the Tokugawa Shogunate brought a grateful relief to the nation exhausted with years of internecine war. Under that rule, men could pursue their vocations unmolested. The peasant, the artisan, and the merchant, each went his way contented with the domination of the military class, which, if sometimes oppressive, still extended to him their effective protection. The samurai who had to keep and maintain with the sword what that weapon had won for him, never allowed it to leave his side; but even he was girt with it more from custom than from necessity, and was seldom called upon to draw it in defence of his rights. It crossed his girdle in a sheath of rare workmanship, but the hilt was tied down and the blade often unwhetted. The daimyo, a despot in his own territory, was laid under wholesome restraint by the shogun’s central government,