instruct the jinrikisha-man that he may take off the top of his vehicle in fine weather, order what clothes he shall generally wear on a fair day, and lay down the cut and colour of his water-proof coat when wet. They are equally minute in their rules of the road. Where there is a carriage-way apart from the foot-way, the jinrikisha should always take the left side of the road, and the middle where there is no distinction between the foot and carriage ways. On meeting with vehicles, horses, and foot-passengers, the left side should be taken; but the jinrikisha must move to the other side on coming across troops, artillery, or commissariat waggons. The empty jinrikisha should always yield the way to the occupied, and on a hill-side the descending wheeler has the right of the road. A jinrikisha must first call out to another in front of it before it can overtake it, when the latter, on being so apprised, should move to the right to let the other pass. Postal carts, horses and engines of the fire-brigade, water-drays, and funerals can send the jinrikisha to the wall. At a street-corner, a jinrikisha should turn sharply to the left, but wheel in a large curve to the right. With these full instructions which are often more honoured in the breach, an attempt is made to prevent collisions, the comparative rarity of which is due more to the jinrikisha-man’s skill in steering his vehicle than to a strict observance of these regulations.
In each of the fifteen districts of Tokyo, there is a jinrikisha guild, to which every jinrikisha-man who draws for hire must belong; and each guild has a manager who is annually elected by the members. Every police notice relating to the jinrikisha is sent to this manager for publication in his district; and he receives in recompense a trifle for every application for a jinrikisha-man’s license and the registry of a jinrikisha, which must bear his countersignature. The manager has no sinecure office, for the men under him are among the rowdiest, as they are among the dregs, of the population of Tokyo. At the end of 1893,
