Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/178

 was in the days when the fifth Shōgun, Tsunayoshi, lost himself in debauchery and extravagance, that a merchant called became famous for riches. His residence occupied a whole block in Yedo, and his manner of life rivalled that of a Daimyō. In Osaka a tradesman of even greater wealth, Yodoya Tatsugoro, had a garden of over eighty acres in the city; his dwelling-house covered three acres; his warehouses numbered forty, his villas four, and his domestic servants one hundred and fifty. At a later period of the Yedo epoch, Zeniya Gohei, having been convicted of secret trading with foreigners, suffered the penalty of death, and his property when confiscated was found to amount to nearly four million riyo.

On the other hand, cases of extreme indigence were numerous. It was always the custom in Japan for families to follow from generation to generation the profession adopted by a progenitor. This conservatism created for such employments an air of respectability which, in its turn, imposed conventions easily satisfied in times of simplicity and economy, but irksome and onerous when the standard of living rose more rapidly than the rewards of labour. It thus happened that, owing to the great economical changes of the eighteenth century, the rapidly increasing cost of sustenance, and the growth of luxurious habits, many of the old families in the middle classes fell into indi-