Flower, river, alley, iki (ascetic style), hana (glamour) and association were standards for evaluating Edo town.

 'Flower': Edo people loved flowers and gardening was very popular. Typical townspeople's houses had flowers of the season in front of the alley. This was rather like putting pot plants on the verandah in the West. It is said that Westerners at the end of the Tokugawa period who were surprised and impressed by this commented, 'Why do the people of Edo love flowers so much when they live in such small places and do not even seem to get enough to eat? You will not find this in Europe.'

 'River': Edo was an important point for the water transportation system consisting of a network of canals. It was vital to keep the rivers and canals clean to prevent outbreaks of mosquitoes and maintain a good standard of hygiene. So excrement and urine were not discharged into the water but carried to North Kanto as manure in exchange for vegetables and rice.

 'Alley': People cleaned and placed flower pots in front of their houses to beautify the town landscape. A clean alley was part of culture. One would sweep the road in front of the house up to just beyond the middle. It was uncultured to sweep up to the front of the house across the road. The house across the road did the same, and people walked in the middle. This was considered to be stylish and rich in sensitivity.

 'Iki': Although this meant being full of vitality, energetic and active, it also meant having and valuing not only things that were essential for day to day living but also something extra or perhaps surplus to requirements which created a feeling of well-being.

 'Hana': This meant having something special and glamorous. It indicated a certain uniqueness of an individual.

 'Association': This meant acquaintances or relationships formed through hobbies. It referred to people coming together to learn something. Several such associations in Edo competed with each other.

 A town was evaluated on the basis of how much of the above aspects it possessed. A town with many of these aspects was highly regarded.

　

 Edo people had an interesting attitude towards money. They did not spend much money in day to day life, but when it came to entertainment such as kabuki, theater, sumo and comedy, which were known as the four great entertainments of Edo, they spent money equivalent to a year's earnings without a thought.

 As far as they were concerned, it was alright if they could live day to day without having possessions. Their working hours were very short. Merchant house bosses, for instance, only worked for about 3 hours per day and spent the rest of the day playing, doing volunteer work, going sightseeing, and so on. That is to say, they spent time collecting information. Information could be gathered mostly in bars and barbers. There what they earned by day they spent by night, competed to eat the first bonito of the season at functions and enjoyed themselves. This was how their culture developed. The male population was considerably higher than female in Edo since there were many samurai and construction workers. Homosexuality seemed to have been popular in the men's world, but women who were few in number were strong. Women, including those working in Yoshiwara (a red-light district), could remarry several times and it was not unusual for them to marry into samurai households. On the other hand, men could never remarry once they were divorced.

 Traveling at that time was a great entertainment. Tradesmen and artisans who loved to spend money went for many outings to nearby places and thought nothing about going for pleasure trips. Once in a lifetime they went on a grand pilgrimage to Ise, taking about 3 months for an excursion which would usually take about 2 weeks. Culture was transmitted all over the country as ordinary people traveled for pleasure and the samurai moved in shifts. The culture of Kansai region was introduced into Edo during the Genroku period and influenced the culture of Edo town. Characteristics of different regions were displayed to create the culture of Edo town and a unique Edo culture blossomed. A significant aspect of this culture was its cosmopolitanism, that is to say, there was a great effervescence of energy produced by the unbiased combination of language and culture. Paintings, art and traditional culture unique to each region were introduced and influenced each other. The standards demanded by the audience were high and there was a system by which they could enjoy a stylish culture based on high levels of intelligence and aesthetics. One needs to be cultured to enjoy spending money on culture. Women in Nihonbashi and Honmachi area studied a lot more and were much more cultured than men. Private elementary schools and coaching centers were open from 8 o'clock in the morning to around 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Poor children who could not bring packed lunch were helped by those around them and could pay later when they became successful. The literacy rate was as high as 80%, and there was a tendency among the common people to value the aspiration to be cultured. Among the samurai, of course, the literacy rate was 100%, so bestsellers selling 1,000,000 copies appeared.

 Studying was necessary in merchant houses. Book-keeping, reading and writing, courtesy toward customers were basic requirements for merchant houses, so they had to be educated. There was a very good chance that people from either high or low stations could expand their businesses through effort, and the door was open towards higher status for those who had the opportunity to study. This was extremely significant in terms of development of culture. Systems for nurturing culture, such as rental library and publishing, appeared based on this kind of spirit. There were about 700 rental libraries, which kept many copies of very popular books such as Nanso Satomi Hakkenden, so this book became a bestseller of 1,000,000 copies. By the end of the Edo period, many nishikie (colored woodblock prints) were carried around and sold along with rental books. Distribution systems were organized and professions were established for this purpose. Thus, although distribution systems were more compact than in the West, they were very much developed, and information about what was currently fashionable in a neighboring town was readily available. This led to competition and development of culture in various ways, as each place tried to create their own culture. Unique popular culture in Japan led to the development of a variety of entertainments such as tokiwazu, kouta and joruri.

 Such systems indeed flourished among the common people in the Edo period. Several techniques of illustrations that required no written explanations emerged and became one of the origins of Japanese manga and animation that went on to develop over the years. The works of Utamaro and Hokusai seem to represent styles that were rather like manga divided by frames. There was considerable demand from the users that encouraged the spirit of competition and rivalry. Producers, such as Tsutaya Jyusaburo, who responded to the users' demands, played an important role.

 The issue of maintaining peace and order of the town was also related to the characteristics and cultures of Edo people. There was basically little crime, and there were only a maximum of 240 of what we would call policemen today in the magistrate's offices of both the northern town and southern town put together. It was a great mystery how the peace and order was maintained under such conditions. The common people of Edo all had a cultural sense of gambling on how to enjoy life in the present. People thought about making choices in life that they could only live once. There was also a mechanism for equal opportunity in which efforts bore fruit, and society was such that if people did their best they could live happily in their own way. This probably functioned as a kind of system for maintaining peace and order. To put it another way, people might have had an implicit understanding of allowing each other's ways. With respect to policing, prisons and trials, there were 240 policemen in the magistrates' offices, apart from officers and five-family social responsibility groups who arrested people for small thefts, petty frauds and fights, took them to police stations and later set them free. If the same people committed offense several times, they were imprisoned for about 3 months and brought to trial in an oshirasu (what we would call a summary court today). The punishment was usually thrashing 100 times, but discretion was shown if the person was repentant, and the number of thrashing was reduced to 50, nominally counting it as 100. If there was insufficient repentance, the thrashings would be harder. The maximum penalty was death in cases of very serious crimes such as murder, but usually the punishment was exile. Exile meant being sent to places like Hachijo or Miyake, but the prisoners were permitted to take their living expenses and work there. In return, they were expected to come back rectified. Those under 15 years old did not have to go because they were not fit enough. The cases were mediated by town leaders. The leaders were of two types. One was appointed by officials, received a small salary from the office and worked as an assistant. Another was appointed in the town like a town official. He did not receive any money but called himself a town official, protected the peace and order and let the common people know about official announcements from the bakufu. He was rather like the head of a neighborhood organization today.

 Women had high social and economic status. As I have already mentioned, there were fewer women than men, so women could divorce and remarry 2 or 3 times. Divorce papers were important before remarriage as documents proving that the person was official divorced. There were not many full-time housewives and most women worked. Women earned more than men. Wives earned more than husbands and old women also earned. They exchanged information through gossip by gathering around the common well. Although they only worked for 3 hours, they earned by doing needlework at home. To put it another way, husbands were not domineering. They looked after the children and contributed to the housework. There were many pictures depicting this kind of situation. Yajisan and Kitasan of 'Tokaidochuhizakurige' are an example. This is a story about two homosexual men who go for a pilgrimage to Ise after the death of their wives. At that time in Edo, it was very common for people to get together, form a reserve fund, and go for a pilgrimage after saving for a year. Groups were formed to save funds for pilgrimages to Mount Oyama and Mount Fuji, and pilgrimages to Enoshima were also popular. Apart from mutual help savings to be spent on the people themselves, there were savings for needs of the town. Large merchant houses and landlords contributed money to be spent on construction works for public utility. The largest of these were repairs of the waterworks of Kanda and Tama River, which required major repairing about once every 3 years. Savings for needs of the town were also used for construction and repair of floats for festivals and gates for protecting peace and order of the town. The system of five-family social responsibility groups based on collective responsibility was fairly effective for maintenance of peace and order. From about the time when Shogun Iemitsu was replaced by Shogun Ietsuna, tradesmen and artisans increased, productivity improved due to development of agricultural technology, and more tenant farmers bought land and became independent. Thus the population of various people increased and the economy developed significantly. I would say that this period saw economic progress comparable to the Industrial Revolution in late eighteenth century England. Economic impetus led to the rapid emergence of new consumer classes and tastes in both provinces and cities. Versatility and spirituality of the Japanese and their sensitivity to the presence of multiplicity of gods and spirits led to the blossoming of a new culture in Edo. Popular culture in Edo was chiefly based on subculture. Thus, it was not only the rich who could enjoy it, but the poor could also appreciate most of it. Miura Atsushi has recently published a book called Low Class Society. In low class society, people can reasonably enjoy a variety of cultures and have sufficient amusement through the internet with a small amount of money. If we compare this situation to the fact that there were many permanent part-time workers in the Edo period and Edo popular culture consisted of only subcultures, we can see a strong connection between this and the foundation of manga culture.

 I think this is represented by the low crime rate. In one sense, young low class people can do most things, such as writing blogs, surfing the internet, playing internet games, downloading software using Winny without spending hardly any money. They can see films and dramas, so they might be consuming more software than others as they have a lot of time. In the same way, even low class people in Edo had some economic power and a certain level of education and had plenty of access to entertainment software in the form of popular culture. We can argue that this had the effect of deterring crime.