JAPAN
repaired to Kyōtō to receive investiture at the Emperor's hands, and in the case of their successors an imperial delegate travelled to Yedo to convey the sovereign's commission. A regular transport service was organised for the purposes of these communications, and also for the convenience of the feudal chiefs as they passed to and from Yedo with their large retinues every second year. Further, by the close of the seventeenth century, a fleet of merchant vessels under the control of a powerful guild plied regularly between Yedo and Osaka. Mere contact with evil need not have disturbed the morals of the Shōgun's capital, especially as the samurai of Yedo professed to despise the ways of Kyōtō. But the military type naturally lost its pre-eminence as the era of peace became prolonged. Even though the fifth Shōgun had not made the Genroku epoch (1688–1704) notorious by his depraved example, a strongly demoralising influence would have been exercised by the circumstances of the feudal chiefs' residence in Yedo, each deeming it a point of prestige not to be surpassed by his fellow-peer in magnificence of appointments and grandeur of life. Not merely because of the immense sums lavished by the Shōguns on the mausolea of Shiba and Uyeno, but also for the purpose of decorating the splendid mansions of the territorial nobles in the northern capital, artists that had formerly made their residence in Kyoto flocked to Yedo, creating new standards of taste among the citizens.
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