Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/23

 ever small fraction remained after these various outlays. The Shōgun himself did not, on abdicating, hand over to the sovereign either the contents of his treasury or the control of the lands from which he derived his revenues. He contended that funds for the government of the nation as a whole should be levied from the people at large. Matters were further complicated by the fact that the impecunious Ministry had to engage in campaigns which, though they placed the treasury in command of some limited sources of revenue, had also the effect of augmenting its liabilities.

The little band of men who had assumed the direction of national affairs saw no exit from the dilemma except an issue of paper money. This was not a novelty in Japan. Paper money had been known to the people since the middle of the seventeenth century, and at the moment of the mediatisation of the fiefs, no less than sixteen hundred and ninety-four varieties of notes were circulating in the various districts. There were gold notes, silver notes, cash notes, rice notes, umbrella notes, ribbon notes, lathe-article notes, and so on through an interminable list, the circulation of each kind being limited to the confines of the issuing fief. Many of these notes had served a useful purpose in tradal transactions, but those officially issued by the feudal chiefs had in some cases ceased to have any purchasing power, and must in every case have become valueless when the fiefs ceased