Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
benefited from the protection it had. Apart from the general good of reducing the amount
of species that had to be carried to and fro between Edo and Osaka, the Mitsui concern
alsoreapedtheprivatebenefitofhavingthegovernment'smoneyfortheirownusefortwo
months, being able to charge interest when it was loaned to the Osaka merchants. It was a
very safe enterprise, and constituted a major step in Mitsui's development from a trading
firm engaged in a fairly restricted field to a nation-wide financial organization.
In 1694 Takatoshi took to his bed, to which he summoned his four sons who were en-
gaged in the business, and handed over to them jointly the whole of the family's assets, but
laying down the proportion of the profits that would be taken by each participant. When
he died in 1695, the general lines of policy had been firmly laid down. Risky operations
were avoided: for example, there were scarcely any loans to
daimyō,
and no loans for land
reclamation were advanced; towards the end of the period, however, this latter policy was
abandoned. The Mitsui enterprise is still very powerful indeed, in all sorts of fields, while
itsdraperysideisnowtheMitsukoshidepartmentstorechain
(Mitsu
beingthefirstelement
of the family-name, and
koshi
the Japanese reading of the character used for writing
echi
in Echigo, the original house-name).
There were several other great merchant families, each with a specialty like the Sumi-
tomo with its mining interests, but the description of Mitsui and Kōnoike will suffice to
show the strength of the family association and the authority of its senior members and the
way in which merchants were able to use the warriors and their system as a means to their
own family prosperity.
Unlike the farmers, whose code of conduct was laid down by the warriors, the mer-
chants framed their own rules. Some extracts of a typical one can be paraphrased thus:
Merchants, unlike warriors, receive no salaries, but rely on their daily trading to
make money and keep their family going from one generation to the next. They
must practice economy in clothes, food, and dwelling-place, and provide for emer-
gencies, such as illness, fire, and earthquake.
Since they depend upon their customers for their livelihood, they must treat the
smallest transaction as of importance. They must not be discourteous even to maid-
servants or children.
The warriors have their code, the farmers their rules of planting and harvesting,
the craftsmen their methods of making things, and in the same way the merchants
must make up their accounts every day. The mouth is the gateway to misfortune,
the tongue the cause of disaster, says the proverb, and one must never use coarse or
insulting language to a customer.
