MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
sweet potato was supposed to be only one stage short of the chestnut in point of palatableness. Towards the close of the eighteenth century fashion favoured the Chinese style of setting up between two posts a board carrying a couplet or some learned phrase in eulogy of the goods sold within, and from that era it became orthodox that restaurants, tea-houses, confectioners, vermicelli sellers, and brothels should take names of classic or artistic import, as fugetsu-do (hall of the breeze and the moon), bairin-ken (hostel of the plum forest), banka-ro (tower of the myriad blossoms), and so on. This custom has never been abandoned: it remains as much in vogue as ever. Pictorial signboards and advertisements, after the mode of the modern Occident, did not suggest themselves to the Japanese of Tokugawa times, unless a particularly artistic innovation, dating from the eighteenth century, be classed as an advertisement. This was a square lantern (called jiguchi andon) having sides of transparent paper upon which the best artists of the era sketched figure-subjects, floral designs, or landscapes in sepia or light colours. Rows of such lanterns were set up at night along the streets on festive occasions, tradespeople competing to show the finest lantern. The custom survives, and lovers of Japanese art may see on these transparencies rare and beautiful sketches from the hands of the pictorial celebrities of the Tokugawa era.
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