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- to convene those responsible for transport companies to bring
competent workers from other regions;
- to forbid buying and selling on the black market;
- to control the increase in the cost of goods and salaries;
- to install patrols of police officers ( yoriki and dôshin ) to assist the
population and supervise the measures for alleviating the disaster;
- to consolidate the legitimacy of the district officials ( chô ).
This ensemble of measures would function very well which, after
two months of considerable investments, enabled the government to
calm their critics [SMI 08, p. 10]. This point is important - i.e. the
financial engagement of the Japanese government - which would
be added to the framework of the general interpretation of the
catastrophe: the circulation of the “vital breath” ( ki ) of which the
riches formed a part.
Among the other damages that appeared remarkable, the Edoites
noted the almost systematic collapse of fortified granaries. With their
thick walls constructed to prevent theft, these buildings, because of
their rigidity, are very sensitive to earth tremors. Despite the supports,
which increased their resistance, many granaries collapsed. There too,
this destruction was not perceived as being a work of fate, but as
pointing the finger at a social class which, since the mid-19th Century,
had been the object of an intense envy and growing jealousy: the
merchants. The prints, that is to say the media of the era, made them a
laughing stock, showing them in the process of defecating their gold.
The captions that accompany the images give a cosmological
explanation for this scourge, which affected all the commercial class.
From the point of view of traditional Japanese society, the
merchants fulfilled their function from the moment when they
redistributed their richess and enabled them to circulate, especially the
gold coins ( ryô ). According to Japanese cosmology, gold is effectively
considered as “an essential element that should circulate”. By
accumulating it, the merchants were not only capitalizing their assets
but also causing the “vital breath” ( ki ) to stagnate.
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