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to have generally worn it with the hilt pointing straight upwards, almost parallel with the body; the common people to have stuck it horizontally in the belt; while ordinary samurai wore it in a position about half-way between the two just quoted. This, however, does. not appear to be an idea worthy of much credence, for all visitors to Yedo some three years ago must have noticed that the style of carrying it first quoted above was one that found great favour in the eyes of the low-class swashbucklers of the Capital, who frequently were seen swaggering about girt with weapons placed perpendicularly in their belts and reaching almost from the level of their chins to their ankles. To clash the sheath of one’s sword against that belonging to another person was held to be a grave breach of etiquette;—to turn the sheath in the belt, as though about to draw, was tantamount to a challenge;—while to lay one’s weapon on the floor of a room, and to kick the guard with the foot, in the direction of any one else, was a deadly insult that generally resulted in a combat to the death. It was not even thought polite to draw a sword from its sheath without begging the permission of any other persons present.
The decay of the practice of wearing swords is certainly a hopeful sign of more intelligent and orderly times. The contrast between the present peaceful condition of the great cities of Japan, and that of the same places a few years back, is in itself a sufficient argument that the swords were not really needed, but were, on the contrary, incentives to violence. Tales of unfortunate dogs serving as a test for the sword of the roystering student, or of some wretched foot passenger losing his life beneath the stroke of a ruffian anxious to try the edge of his blade by what is so expressively styled in Japanese “cross-road cutting,” are happily now unknown. That these tales were, even in former times, much exaggerated is more than likely, but that such things did actually occur is beyond all doubt, and it is gratifying to find the Japanese themselves so far awakened to a sense of the uselessness
