3 182202465 1721 s$J%*mf- m^W Jfe*'^^*^ *'* WWW;: -'W - Library

AT THE BIG GOLD-FISH. 219
were dealers whose stock-in-trade was empty trunks,
parade ornaments, ceremonial uniforms, and men to
be hired. He soon learned to recognize the same
faces, the same bare legs and top-knots, the same
clothes, and the identical trumpery turning up, day
after day, in different processions entering Yedo
from various points of the compass. The daimio
might be from Yezo or Kiushiu, but the same faces
and legs and top-knots reappeared under the different
coats marked with the varying coat-of-arms.
Having bought a book on heraldry, a pocket dictionary
of the feudal nobility, he was able at once
to recognize the train of any one of the three hundred
or more province rulers or petty vassals of the
lord of Yedo, the Tycoon.
Of the other two friends, teacher and pupil, the
former kept busy at books, waiting to see whether
his proposition to the government to send Japanese
to Europe to buy a man-of-war ship and to learn
western civilization should be approved. He had not
long to wait for ; although the authorities vetoed
his suggestion, yet
it was in the form of substantial
victory for him. The law of lye'yasu, passed in
1609, forbidding the building of seaworthy ships or
any craft holding over twenty-five hundred bushels,
thus allowing only small coasting-junks to be constructed,
was repealed. The daimios were given permission
to build war-ships, which were to fly the
feudal flag or pennant of the clan at the foremast,
and the national flag of Japan, a red sun on a white
ground, at the peak or mainmast. This was really