Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/227

RV 199 The laws for protecting commercial transactions against fraud were very severe. A few of the principal provisions will suffice to convey a general idea of the whole:—

Many rules were enacted to restrain usury. Compound interest was illegal, and the courts had no competence to entertain a creditor's suit after a bond had been frequently renewed. The latter restriction did not apply to blind creditors, however, and the results of the exception made in their favour have already been described. To fall into the clutches of a blind usurer was proverbially worse than the sharpest penury.