Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/160

 these cash, which were strung on ropes of straw with knots dividing them into hundreds and thousands. It will readily be conceived that the coins themselves were not high specimens of minting technique. The ideographs entering into their superscriptions had generally the honour of being moulded after a copy traced by some renowned or princely calligraphist, but the mint appliances were rude, and from time to time merchants exercised their judgment so far as to reject defaced coins, or accept them at greatly reduced values,—discrimination which the Emperor Saga (820 ) checked by flogging the fastidious trader, his Majesty's theory being that the tenderer of a coin was not responsible for its condition or quality, and should not be exposed to the risk of a reduced dinner or a curtailed coat because the disc of the token happened to be serrated or its superscription illegible.

Probably in the Government's defective and dishonest coinage is to be found one of the causes which contributed to blunt what philosophers have called "the commercial conscience" in Japan. In the realm where strict integrity was conspicuously essential to the safe conduct of tradal affairs, an example of selfish unscrupulousness was set by those to whom the people were naturally entitled to look for standards of morality. Incidentally history here pays a tribute to the Chinaman's superior appreciation of the value of commercial probity, for the copper coins obtained