Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/216

RV 190 fixed sums payable at certain places within fixed periods; deposit notes, redeemable on demand of an indicated person or his order; bills of exchange drawn by A upon B in favour of C (a common form for use in monthly or annual settlement); promissory notes to be paid at a future time, or cheques payable at once, for goods purchased; and storage orders engaging to deliver goods on account of which bargain money had been paid. These last, much employed in transactions relating to rice and sugar, were generally valid for a period of three years and three months, were signed by a confederation of exchanges or merchants on joint responsibility, and guaranteed the delivery of the indicated staples independently of all accidents. They passed current as readily as coin, and advances could always be obtained against them from pawnbrokers. All these documents, indicating a well-developed system of credit, were duly protected by law, severe penalties being inflicted for any failure to implement the pledges they embodied. A peculiar form of voucher may be mentioned here. Cut out of cardboard, a foot long and about three inches wide, it had a hole for stringing it on a cord after the manner of copper cash. Merchants frequenting the provincial markets for silk fabrics often carried a number of these vouchers suspended from their girdles.

The merchants of Yedo and Ōsaka, working on the system of trusts here described, gradually