Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/203

RV 177 least two mansions and sets of barracks, where a host of retainers sojourned, supporting their lord's reputation by the fashion of their lives, so that the city rapidly became a centre of unparalleled prosperity.

It was, indeed, under the shadow of feudalism that the Japanese merchant flourished, and his greatest representative may be said to have been a direct outcome of that system. The feudal chiefs received the bulk of their income in rice, and it became necessary to make arrangements for getting the grain to market, disposing of it and transporting the proceeds to the fiefs, or to cities, whence the latter drew their supplies. These objects were originally achieved by establishing in Ōsaka "store mansions" (kura-yashiki), under the charge of samurai, who received the rice and sold it to merchants in the city, remitting the money by official carriers. But from the middle of the seventeenth century the business of these store-mansions was placed in the hands of trustworthy merchants, who took the name "kake-ya," or "agent" The kake-ya had large responsibility and was the repository of much confidence. For not only did he dispose of the rice and other commodities forwarded from a fief, but also he held the proceeds, sending them by monthly instalments either to Yedo or to the fief, rendering accounts at the end of each year, and deducting from two to four per cent as commission. He had no special licence, as was the case with