In the Tokugawa period, extending from about 1615 to 1860, two and a half centuries, Japan was a hermit nation distinguished for its peaceful character. Yet its population for one hundred years remained almost stationary. By some authorities, this has been explained not only on the ground of many famines and devastating diseases but the common practice of abortion and the fact that the Samurai considered it disgraceful to marry until they were thirty, and equally disgraceful to raise a family of more than three children. “Among the lower classes it was not common to rear all the children born, especially if girls came too frequently.” Also, “While there was hardly in the whole country a hospital in our sense of the term, there were in the large cities physicians famous for their skill in preventing the birth of living children. They kept private establishments to accommodate calculating patrons. All authorities agreed that sexual morality in the large cities was at a very low ebb among all classes, while luxury and effeminacy prevailed among people high in birth and wealth.”[112] As a picture of what the people were driven to and a terrible example of what attitude famine may lead parents to take toward their children, there is no more important document than the statement of Shirakawa Rakuo, distinguished as the Minister of Finance of the Eleventh Shogun, Iyenari. The trace of cannibalism in semi-civilized peoples is easier to understand after the fearful famine in the third year of Temmei (1783).