Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/215

RV 189 the vouchers of the guild served instead. It was in Ōsaka, however, that the functions of the exchanges acquired fullest development. That city has in all eras exhibited a remarkable aptitude for trade. Its merchants, as already shown, were not only entrusted with the duty of selling the rice and other products of the surrounding fiefs, but also became depositories of the proceeds, which they paid out on account of their owners in whatever sums the latter desired. Such an evidence of official confidence greatly strengthened their credit, and they received further encouragement from the second Tokugawa Shōgun (1605—1623) and from Ishimaru Sadatsugu, who held the post of Governor of the city in 1661. Ishimaru fostered wholesale transactions; sought to introduce a large element of credit into commerce by instituting a system of credit sales; took measures to promote the circulation of cheques; inaugurated market sales of gold and silver, and appointed ten chiefs of exchange who were empowered to oversee the business of money-changing in general. These ten received exemption from municipal taxation and were permitted to wear swords. Under them were twenty-two exchanges forming a guild, whose members agreed to honour one another's vouchers and mutually to facilitate business. Gradually they elaborated a regular system of banking, so that, in the middle of the eighteenth century, they issued various descriptions of paper,—orders for