Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/217

RV 191 acquired great wealth, and fell into habits of marked luxury. It is recorded that they did not hesitate to pay five pounds for the first bonito of the season and eleven pounds for the first egg-fruit. Naturally the spectacle of such extravagance excited popular discontent. Men began to grumble against the so-called "official merchants" who, under government auspices, monopolised every branch of trade; and this feeling of umbrage grew almost uncontrollable in 1836, when rice rose to an unprecedented price owing to crop failures. Men loudly ascribed that state of affairs to regrating on the part of the wholesale companies, and murmurs similar to those raised at the close of the nineteenth century in America against the trust system began to reach the ears of the authorities perpetually. The celebrated Fujita Tōko of Mito took up the question. He argued that the monopoly system, since it included Ōsaka, exposed the Yedo market to all the vicissitudes of the former city, which had then lost much of its old prosperity. Finally, in 1841, the Shōgun's chief minister, Mizuno Echizen-no-Kami, withdrew all trading licences, dissolved the guilds, and proclaimed that every person should thenceforth be free to engage in any commerce without let or hindrance. This recklessly drastic measure, vividly illustrative of the arbitrariness of feudal officialdom, not only included the commercial guilds, the fishmongers' guilds, the shipping guilds, the exchange guilds, and the land-transport guilds,