There are feasts and festivities galore in Tokyo. In the old times the feast-days marked in the calendar were far more numerous than they are now. In those days, while the daimyo and his retainers travelled pretty often between Yedo and their native province, the citizens seldom left town; it was a red-letter day with them when they set out on a pilgrimage to the great shrine of Ise or on a trip to Kyoto; and even these persons formed a very small minority. The high roads were infested by robbers; and it was only with their lives in their hands that humble citizens could go on a long journey. Being, then, confined in the town, its inhabitants naturally took what pleasures they could in it and availed themselves of every festivity to give themselves up to enjoyment. The festivals of the tutelary deities were, for instance, celebrated with great pomp; on annual feast-days the time-honoured customs were religiously observed; and the flowers of the season were admired and made occasions for general hilarity, for they served to break the monotony of a purely urban life. But the great facilities of transportation which have been introduced since the Restoration have in these days diminished the interest of the better classes in their city. The well-to-do men, who formerly considered it a luxury to possess a villa on the outskirts of Tokyo, are now not content unless they keep one at Kamakura or beyond for spending the week-end in and another a hundred miles or more from the city for their summer retreat. Kamakura and Enoshima, which are only thirty miles away from Tokyo, were in the old days so distant that they would not think of visiting them unless they intended to spend a few days there; but now school-children are taken to those places on a day’s excursion. The ease with which men can leave the city has made them but lukewarm supporters of the institutions which gave the town its periodical gaiety; for they no longer take an active part in the local festivities or pride themselves upon the fine show their ward might make on such occasions. Even the flowers for which Tokyo is noted they go to look at in the country; and the festivals of the tutelary deities have lost their former splendour, and their most prominent feature, the procession-cars, cannot now be built on the grand scale of the old days, for unless they can be bent low, they cannot parade the streets without snapping the innumerable electric wires which disfigure the thoroughfares of the metropolis. Of the five great feasts which were held every year in former times, two are no longer celebrated in Tokyo, the Feast of Tanabata on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar and the Feast of the Chrysanthemum on the ninth day of the ninth month, the remaining three being the New Year’s Day on the first day of the first month, the Feast of Dolls on the third day of the third month, and that of Flags on the fifth day of the fifth month.