Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/208

RV 182 bad harvests. Similar scrutiny extended to the productions of saké, which is brewed from rice, and occupies in Japan much the same place as that held by beer in England or Germany. Official restrictions were consequently imposed on its manufacture whenever a scarcity of rice threatened.

It has been shown that the system of organised companies had its origin in the Kamakura epoch, when the number of merchants admitted within the confines of the city being restricted, it became necessary for those not obtaining that privilege to establish some method of coöperation. The Ashikaga Shōguns developed the idea by selling to the highest bidder the exclusive right of engaging in a particular trade, and the Tokugawa Administration perpetuated the practice. But whereas the monopolies instituted by the Ashikaga had for sole object enrichment of the exchequer, the Tokugawa, though their manner of applying the system was not free from the taint of favouritism, regarded it chiefly as a means of securing worthy representatives in each branch of trade. Thus the first trade licences were issued in Yedo to keepers of bath-houses, in the middle of the seventeenth century. The Japanese bath-house was often a haunt of immorality. In the upper storeys of these buildings vices were practised which the authorities found themselves unable to control without enlisting the assistance of the bath-keepers themselves by means of the licence system. As the city grew in dimensions,