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les, under a law of Iyemits[)u], the third of the Tokugawa line, were compelled to spend half of each year at the city of the Sh[=o]guns; and each had his _yashiki_, or large house and garden, in the city. At this house, his family must reside permanently, as hostages for the loyalty of their lord while away. The annual journeys to and from Yedo were events not only in the lives of the daimi[=o]s and their trains of retainers, but in the lives of the country people who lived along the roads by which they must travel. The time and style of each journey for each daimi[=o] were rigidly prescribed in the laws of Iyemits[)u], as well as the behavior of the country people who might meet the procession moving towards Yedo, or returning therefrom. When some noble, or any member of his family, was to pass through a certain section of the country, great preparations were made beforehand. Not only was traffic stopped along the route, but every door and window had to be closed. By no means was any one to show himself, or to look in any way upon the passing procession. To do so was to commit a profane deed, punishable by a fine. Among other things, no cooking was allowed on that day. All the food must be prepared the day before, as the air was supposed to become polluted by the smoke from the fires. Thus through crowded cities, full and busy with life, the daimi[=o] in his curtained palanquin, with numerous retinue, would pass by; but wherever he approached, the place would be as deserted and silent as if plague-stricken. It is hardly necessary to add that these journeys, attended with so much ceremony and inconvenience to the people, were not as frequent as the trips now taken, at a moment's notice, from one city to another, by these very same men. One story current in T[=o]ky[=o] shows the narrowing effect of such seclusion. A noble who had traveled into Yedo, across one of the large bridges built over the Sumida River, remarked one day to his companions that he was greatly disappointed on seeing that bridge. "From the pictures," he said, "which I have seen, the bridge seemed alive with people, the centre of life and activity, but the artists must exaggerate, for not a soul was on the bridge when I passed by." The castle of the Sh[=o]gun in Yedo, with its moats and fortifications, and its fine house and great _kura_, was reproduced on a small scale in the castles scattered through the country; and as in Yedo the _yashikis_ of
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