The
history of Japan has involved the rise and fall of
many
strata in
society. The
emperor's decline into
impotence and
ressurection as a
figurehead is
fascinating, as is the rise of the
Seiitai-shogun from obscure
military post to
dominating political
regime. But given
Japan's current position as an
economic superpower,
perhaps none of these
ancient orders are as ultimately sucessful or as
important to Japan as the
merchant class.
Borne of political restructuring in the late Heian period and
unintentionally given significant economic power through the Tokugawa,
the merchants of Japan were arguably her greatest resource through the
difficult period when Japan's doors were forced open at the beginning
of the Meiji restoration. How, then, did the merchants rise from
nonrecognition in the feudal order to eventually embody Japan's place
in the world? How indeed. It is this eventuality that we will
investigate here, tracing the history of commerce in Japan from the
earliest period until the modern times.
It makes sense to say that there was probably not much in the way of
merchant activity going on in Japan's prehistoric days. Towering
economic presence though they are now, they started out the same way
the rest of human society did. Even when the various Uji clans
managed to find some kind of unity and relations began with China,
there was probably little in the way of a merchant occupation as
such; the leaders of the clans and their advisors would have
been the ones to conduct any sort of commerce. It seems likely that
at this point, getting enough food would still have been the concern of
the majority of citizens, in the beginning of the the Nara period.
With the rapid adoption of Chinese systems in the Nara and early
Heian, though, Japan moved from a fairly primitive agrarian state into
what was likely the most modern system in the world at the time. The
imperial court (using, of course, the Chinese court as an example) was
set up first an Nara, then moved to larger quarters at Heian. A
system of more formal government and taxation was set in place, and
land was parceled out. The complex
nature of the land allotment certainly played a part in bringing the
Heian era to an end; it was easy to take advantage of the complexities
and avoid paying taxes. Hence the imperial court steadily lost money.
While it lost financially, the Heian court set the precedent for
centuries of artistic acheivement. We can see from the Tale of Genji
that it was the Heian aristocracy that would be the most-remembered
group of this time; indeed, it was the last time the imperial court as
an institution would hold much power and influence. Perhaps what
doomed it was its choice to pursue its elusive aesthetic ideals
rather than economic gain. Much later, in the Tokugawa era, the
merchants would find that with economic gain came the ability to
direct Japan's artistic endeavors. How different would history be if
Genji had been a shrewd trader-nobleman instead of the sensitive
aristocrat he was?
Conjecture notwithstanding, the power of the Heian court eventually
waned beyond recovery, and Japan entered a 700-year-long era of
rule by the warriors, with Yoritomo setting up the first bakufu.
Trade with China, which had been fairly steady through the end of the
Heian period, showed a significant increase right before the beginning
of the Kamakura period. Throughout this age, commerce increased, both
in the form of foreign trade with China and Korea, and internal
economic growth. Piracy was the bastard child of the two, and
became quite commonplace among the more daring
traders. Since Japan's
interest in foreign nations at the end of the Kamakura was purely
trade-related, and not cultural, the traders had no qualms in taking
by force what they failed to get by more legitimate means. This is
also when barter began to fall out of favor as the preferred vehicle
for conducting business, victim to copper coins from China. Trading
guilds and independant wholesale merchants became more common, allying
themselves with clans in order to travel more easily through the
politically fragmented countryside. This was to become the norm for
commerce until Japan's reunification under the Tokugawa bakufu.
When Tokugawa Ieyasu consolidated power in 1600, the changes his
regime brought to the Japanese society affected all levels of the
citizenry, and the merchants were no exception. Unification made
travel considerably easier and less dangerous; although taking to the
road was still risky, one did not have rely on tenuous agreements with
daimyo for safe passage through the land anymore. That in and of
itself was a boon to commerce, but it was compounded by the fate of
the daimyo that Ieyasu defeated. As many of these daimyo's retainers
lost their status as samurai, they turned to other
occupations. Loath as many of them
must have been to set aside their daisho, the merchant class
got a sizable boost in population from the retired samurai.
Under the Tokugawa bakufu, the merchants flourished. Improved
agriculture techniques and the rigidly enforced peace meant business
was good for those conducting it. While foreign trade had, thanks to
the paranoid Tokugawa, become quite infrequent with either the Chinese
or the relatively new-to-Asia Europeans, Japan's domestic economy was
booming.
It is useful to think of the influence of the \textit{chonin}
merchants in the Tokugawa era as inversely proportional to that of the
samurai; the former steadily increased while the latter declined. The
question is then, of course, which is the independant variable?
One would think that the businessmen of Japan, being theoretically
lowest on the social hierarchy, would be handicapped by their low
place in the cosmic order. This was not so, however; as Japan became
more and more urbanized, samurai became more and more accustomed to
the pleasures of city life. These pleasures did not come cheaply,
however. The samurai received their stipends in rice--far more than
they could use to feed them and their families, so to finance their
expensive urban lives, they became increasingly indebted to merchant
moneychangers and lenders. The urban merchants became very wealthy,
and the samurai were increasingly poor. Strangely, the bakufu didn't
levy any taxes on trade, which probably
would have helped the samurai out of their financial hole. Other,
more obtuse schemes were tried at various points; they involved fees
on various monopolies or the cancellation of debts incurred by
samurai, but these initiatives were too narrow in scope to stem the
economic growth of the chonin. It appears that the party
responsible for the explosion of merchant wealth was the bakufu and
its samurai, rather than the merchants themselves. By requiring
daimyo to spend significant amounts of time in Edo, the bakufu created
the urban culture] so conducive to spending money, which the merchants
would gladly take.
So it was that the urban commoners became the financiers of a bawdy
culture that would become the Tokugawa era's main addition to Japan's
cultural heritage. The spectacle that is Tokugawa-era theater,
including Kabuki and Bunraku, were part of the entertainment that the
samurai enjoyed so. The playwright Chikamatsu, the novelist Saikaku,
the Kabuki acting schools that endure to this day---we would have none
of these today were it not for the urbanization that characterized the
Tokugawa era, and was made so pervasive thanks to the
merchants.
The merchant class may have been ostensibly the lowest group on the
social hierarchy, that did not preclude a certain amount of leakage
between social strata, particularly in the middle to late Tokugawa
era. Although samurai still adhered in theory to the code of
bushido, in practice they often deviated from its spirit, if
not its letter. We can see from the life of Katsu Kokichi that many
government men, particularly the low-ranking ones whose stipends were
very small, were not above making money any way they could. If Kokichi
is at all representative of the many thousands of samurai at his
level, they lied, stole, extorted, and otherwise obtained as much
money, ill-gotten though it may have been, as they
could.
This is not to say that most commerce was as illegal, or at least as
unsavory, as many of Kokichi's exploits. Rather, some of the larger,
more successful and established merchant houses wrote their own codes
of business and conduct. They exhorted future generations of their
houses to work diligently and be frugal, to avoid excess and waste,
and to cooperate with the government. These codes are telling for
many reasons. First, they show a high level of education among the
larger merchants, that they could begin to set down such teachings.
Second, they warn against risky enterprises and aggressive expansion.
The highest priority was to preserve the business for one's
descendents--one life is worth little, but the house will endure
forever. Third, because they espouse cooperation with the government,
it is clear that they wanted no trouble with the higher classes,
poorer though those classes may have been at times. Indeed, the
cultural influence of the samurai is clear; the resemblance of these
house rules to the older code of bushido is not
coincidence. These rules, whether the were
meant to be followed to the letter, or only used to keep up a good
appearance for customers, help the merchant class take full advantage
of their social circumstances, and, in some cases, withstand the test
of time.
A few legitimate businesses that were started in the Tokugawa period
continue, it one form or another, through the present day. The
Minaguchi-ya in ``Japanese Inn'' is one example of such an
establishment. Obviously, as we move forward through history, the
chances of a business lasting through to present day increase.
Considering, though, the radical political and social changes that
Japan underwent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, weathering
the various upheaveals was no small feat.
The Meiji restoration is an event difficult to classify, but this much
is certain: it was a consequence of Japan's foreign relations being
forcibly reopened, and Japan being thrust onto the world stage without
so much as a by-your-leave. Coping with the consequences of sudden
participation in the world market was too much for many Tokugawa-era
businesses\footnote{Reischauer, p. 110} so most sucessful businesses
in the Meiji, at least on a large scale, were new to the Meiji period.
It seems logical to assume that the opening of Japan to foreign trade,
and hence foreign competition, would've struck a fatal blow to many
small-scale businesses. The wide technology gap between Japan and the
west would be expensive to close, and although the government
eventually accompished just that, the relatively small-scale merchants
that flourished during the Tokugawa were now being absorbed by a new
kind of business organization: the Zaibatsu.
The Zaibatsu were the solution that arose to close the industrial gap
between Japan and the western world. Mitsui, one of these huge
combines, was notably anomalous--it was formed during the reign of
Tokugawa's bakufu, but survived the changes brought about during the
Meiji restoration to become one of great financial empires of Japan.
It and a few other combines--names like Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, and
Yasuda--built enterprises encompassing an amazing breadth of
interest. This was in marked contrast to the conservative merchant
houses of the Tokugawa era, so it's not hard to see why few of them
survived the change. Centered around banks bearing their names, the
zaibatsu profited immensely from the cheap labor that was becoming
rapidly available in Japan due to the new wave of population
growth\footnote{Reischauer, p. 133}. Through the beginning of the
20th century the zaibatsu grew enormously, both facilitating and
taking advantage of Japan's rapid modernization. World War I proved
to be a tremendous economic stimulus to the Japanese economy, and
growth continued briskly all the way through to the 1920s. At this
point, life became much harder for the Japanese businessman.
The effects the rise of militarism in the late 20s and 30s are outside
the scope of this paper. It will suffice to say that while the
zaibatsu nearly singlehandedly made Japan's war effort possible, the
nation's ultimate defeat and subsequent occupation forced a complete
restructuring of its economic system. The zaibatsu were dissolved,
and while companies bearing their names continue to this day, they are
nothing like the monolithic concentrations of economic power they were
in the prewar days.
Japan's rise from the ashes is instead attributable to two factors:
The economic framework provided by the occupation forces, and the hard
work and resolve of the Japanese people in filling that framework.
One can see the old standbys of hard work and diligence in this
ressurection. Perhaps the failure on the old government's part that
was World War II encouraged the small entrepreneurs to embrace this
change more wholly than their zaibatsu big brothers. While the
breakup of the zaibatsu reduced its component families to moderate
affluence, the lower echelons of business felt Japan's defeat far
more. Theirs were the sons who died, and theirs were the houses that
were ravaged. Perhaps this contributed to a mistrust of the symbols
and ideals associated with the war. The supermarket owner we see in
``In the Realm of a Dying Emperor'' embodies this mistrust. Running a
successful business, he does not want to see that which contributed to
the suffering of his forebears venerated or celebrated. His business
suffered because of his outspoken actions, but eventually rebounded.
His attitude is probably not indicitave of the silent pragmatism that
characterizes most modern Japanese, but it is a refreshing attitude,
that might in and of itself show some kind of determination on the
part of Japan's merchants to do the right thing--that is, brisk
business.
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