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ber Street,’ would be laid out, the former one would be called ‘First,’ or ‘Original’ ‘Timber Street,’ and the succeeding namesakes would be dubbed ‘N.,’ ‘S.,’ ‘E.,’ ‘W.,’ ‘Front,’ ‘Rear,’ ‘Timber Street,’ as the case might be. When all these villages agglutinated together, there would he several scores of ‘Timber,’ ‘Blacksmith,’ ‘Pine,’ and ‘Willow’ streets; just as in London were formerly, and perhaps are now, hundreds of ‘Prince,’ ‘King,’ and ‘Queen’ streets. In speaking of one of the many ‘Pine’ streets in Yedo, the name of the old village or district, or the new subdivision in which it is situated, must be mentioned to distinguish it from the others.
The names of Japanese streets are not marked on conspicuous sign-boards, as in European cities. Before each house, over the doorway, is pasted a slip of paper containing the name of the householder, the numbers and sexes of his family and household, the number of the house and the name of the street. At present the custom is coming in vogue of nailing up on the corners of the streets small boards containing the names of the streets and the numbers of the division or ward, and subdivision or precinct, of the neighbourhood. In many places, especially in the unbuilt or newly surveyed portions, small stakes, marked as above, are driven into the ground, and act as guide-posts. In directing a letter we must write the name of the person, street and number, the ward and precinct, and to avoid all mistake, the ancient name of the neighbourhood. These names are still tenaciously retained in the mouths of the people.
Iyeyasŭ made Yedo, then a comparatively insignificant town, his capital, about the year 1600. He gave new names to several of the principal streets, naming them after those in Shidzuō,[1] but does not seem to have made any great municipal changes, and the street nomenclature of Yedo remained, with scarcely any variations, until after the civil war, six years ago. The name Yedo (ye ‘river’ or ‘bay ; and do, door’) was changed to Tokei (to,
- ↑ Shidzuôka is the present name of the ancient city of Fu Chu, once the Shôgun’s capital.
