History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004
2004 /11/10

History of Japanese Economic Thought
Lecture No. 4

Winter Semester, 2004
Haruhito Takeda

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Haruhito Takeda

1History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

4. Market and Trade
A market constitutes a place where given goods andservices are exchanged with currency. And competition isconsidered effective as a means to realize an efficientexchange in a marketplace. This kind of idea of economics is
assumed for theoretical research and is totally separated froma generally accepted notion of what the word Ichi [fair ormarket] means in realistic societies.
Ichi is not only a place to trade a variety of merchandise, but
to a greater extent, is full of diversity and polysemy. It seem tobe appropriate to say that in a traditional society, Ichi was not
merely limited to economic activities, but also “carried out its
function as a place for people to make contacts in all kinds
forms.”

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４－１ Ichi as Place for Gala
Unity with festivity‡‡

Kite Ichi at Tokyo Oji Shrine‡

Home page of Kita-ward 「KISS」
http://www.city.kita.tokyo.jp/misc/kiss/spot40401.htm

New year’s Ichi in Yamagata city
Furnished by Yamagata Shimbun

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Fish Market, Street Vendor‡

Pictorial cut “Crowded Fish Market:
around the time of the SinoJapanese War” removed due tocopyright restrictions

Tsuneichi Miyamaoto, History of Bread-and-Butter Job,
Miraisha, 1993, p.214

Picture removed due tocopyright restrictions

Masaru Nakamura, Modern Age of Japan Narrated by Markets,
Soshiete Bunko, 1980, p.94

Masaru Nakamura, Modern Age of Japan Narrated by Markets,
Soshiete Bunko, 1980, p.164

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Morning Ichi in Wajima
Picture of “Morning Ichi in Wajima”
removed due to copyright restrictions‡‡‡

Source: 3 pictures taken from Wajima City’s HP
http://www.city.wajima.ishikawa.jp/kanko2/freepic/asaiti/asaiti.htm

5Morning Glory Ichi (Iriya Kishibojin)

Picture of “Morning Glory Ichi” removed
due to copyright restrictions

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出典：http://junko55.web.infoseek.co.jp/

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“Tori no Ichi” [Cock’s Fair]

Picture of “Tori no Ichi” removed
due to copyright restrictions‡‡‡
出典：http://junko55.web.infoseek.co.jp/

7Battledore Ichi (Sensoji Temple)

Picture of “Battledore Ichi” removed
due to copyright restrictions

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出典：http://junko55.web.infoseek.co.jp/

History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

Role of Ichi and Polysemy of Ichi
Toshio Kitami, Folk Custom of Ichi and Peddlery, Iwasaki Art, 1970, and new version in 1995

Some of Ichi strongly carry down a character of religious
ritual.
”Tori no Ichi” that decorates Tokyo’s yearend is customarily
pronounced as “Tori no Machi”, and which implies Ichi’smeaning connected to festival.
That “in Tohoku district, ‘kuchiyose’s miko’ is called ‘ichi-ko’,
and in some regions, female attendants of shrines are named‘ichi-ko’” demonstrates such character of Ichi .
Life in Mountain by Kunio Yanagida points out: “Down topresent, Ichi means females serving gods.”→Should a spontaneous area of exchange have beenoriginated out of a place where people congregated for a“festival”, then, festival and Ichi are in a harmonious
Haruhito Takeda
combination.
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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

“Kure Ichi and Bon Inchi“’Kure Ichi and Bon Ichi’ correspond to two important annual occasions
relative to the traditional ancestor worship,” and “those express
interesting aspects as folk-customary practices in which twined are an
opportunity to run Mitama Matsuri [a festive ceremony held in memory of
the spirits of the dead] for ancestors and a time for settlement oftraditional business transactions.”
Kanjyo Ichi in Sengoku, Kita-azumi County, Nagano Prefecture
In Sengoku, Ichi is opened on 20th and 25th of the yearend, and “it ispassed down that, one on 25th was called Kanjo Ichi, where merchants inthe neighborhood showed up and made annual settlements of debit andcredit, interest, tenant-farming rent, rent for store, payment to workman,
doctor’s prescription charge, and down to invocation fare of shrine/monk.
Thus, even doctors and monks came out to this Ichi to receive payments
so as to leave off time and effort for going round each door.”
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4–2 Business at Ichi in Extraordinary Status
Information provided from the outside world
Peddlers and “Brides’ Ichi”
Information exchanged together with business

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Visit of Peddler
Peddlers brought a variety of information into feudalisticrural communities. Though mixed with falsehood sometimes,
this played a great stimulant role to the thirst for knowledge
on the part of villagers so eager to learn about the outside
world.
In Nakakanbara County, Niigata Prefecture, peddlers being
named Tabeto used to come over to purchase a small
amount of goods such as eggs and miscellaneous cereals,
which constituted the supplier of pocket allowance and news
to local housewives until the early years of Meiji period.
In earlier villages, so much new knowledge was provided bypeddlers, and while subscription to newspaper started a little,
it was by persons like members of village assemblies andward heads; thus, there was a great deal of phase thatvillagers were enlightened by peddlers.
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Visit of Peddler 2
Peddlers getting into villages frequently provided such cares as
introducing maidservant jobs and arranging on sending girls into factories.
And some villagers are said to have often lost money in markets, andtheir initial motives seem to have been influenced by peddlers’ stories.
Except some aspects of bringing about bad influences, peddlers offered
many advices regarding, e.g., improvement of farming implements andencouragement of handicraft industries.
... There is an expression of “to sell oil”, used even today, to describe an
act of spending time engaging in idle talks, or wasting time more thannecessary along the way of some errand; It must be that salespersons ofhair oil slowly conducted business in long talks.
An example of a sickle salesman in Shinshu was that, while doing
business, he spent an evening with village folks having pleasant chats,sang jyoruri [ballad drama] and naniwa-bushi [recital of stories of loyalty
and human feeling to samisen accompaniment] and played go.
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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

“Brides’ Ichi” in Suburbs of Tokyo
Once every year, there were Oeshiki held at each of the following temples located in thevillages in Kita-toshima County, outer area of Tokyo, and visual scenes which Saburo
Yasunari named “Yome Ichi”[Brides’ Ichi” were unfolded whereat: Sanpo-ji [-temple] inShakujii on Apr. 15, Chomei-ji at Yahara in the same village on Apr. 21, Honryu-ji at Seki inthe same village on Dec. 10, Myofukuji in Oizumi village on Nov. 20 and Nyoirin-ji in Hoya
village on Mar.15.

It is said that on the days Oeshiki were held, farming implements fairs were also
conducted in the temple compounds, where old-clothes dealers and gardeners set
up their stores, and village people had a custom to prepare all items to be used in
the following year at those occasions.
Religious events were being tied to Ichi. The reason the naming of “Yome Ichi”
was given was in accordance with the custom that, on the days of Ichi, “Newbrides who married into farming houses surrounding the temples came out to thesites attired in the same formal dress as on the days of wedding accompanied bymothers-in-law and other in-laws. They paraded slowly through clouds of fairs.”
While a patrimony defines that the parade was once for young males to choose
their brides, later in the early Showa period, it developed into a custom to
introduce brides, as in the following appraisal: “ On the surface, the purpose forbrides to come out to Ichi can be interpreted as showing off of their formal
dressing to many people, and simultaneously, as a sigh of saluting to the cloudthat they have become the same villagers.”
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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

4–2 Business at Ichi in Extraordinary Status
Information provided from outside world
Stuff that was exchanged was not limited to “information”
constituting subject of business. In case of “Yome Ichi”, forexample, it is easy to imagine that village people not only got
to know new brides having married into neighboring families,
but also exchanged recent events of that familiy and this family.
Noneconomic aspect of Ichi
From the viewpoint of a developmental history, Ichi contains
a considerable variety of functions, and it is sufficient to clarify
that Ichi had another significance of “opportunities for people to
make contacts” not intended for economic trading per se. Ichi
was a site not just for goods and services, but also for various
information to come and go accompanying businesses thereof.
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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

4 – 3 Configuration of Trade
Limiting the scope to Ichi’s economic role, this function came to be clearly
identified in inverse proportion to fading of religious aspects with the times.
Furthermore, from the early phase to middle of modern times in Japanese
history, Ichi as a place for commercial trade rather headed down to thecourse of decline, and gradually business at stores became themainstream of commercial trading in castle towns around the country; Sogoes a commonly accepted theory of the history of commerce.
With frequent occurrence of merchandise trading,. merchants with storescame to flock in downtown areas as their sole engagement in suchbusiness adequately afforded their livelihood.
It is purported that, in the first half of modern times, “regular Ichi started
showing retrogressive signs in prominent castle towns, and a general trend
was that they evolved into Toshi Ichi which was held a few times a year.”
Although some Ichi were still prosperous in Kanto and Tohoku districts,
they were showing the signs of decay in early modern times in Kinai which
was the central area of Kinki district that is said to have been economicallydeveloped, and on a nationwide basis Ichi entered into a decline phasearound the mid-Meiji period.
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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

With such transition in mind, let us consider what kind offunction Ichi/marketplace carried out, and what its
mechanism was.
It is not that mechanism to be discussed here meanscompetition. For, mechanism that works in actual
marketplaces cannot be simplified into competition,
and.
competition is just a means to actualize Ichi’s function.
In light of function that commerce/exchange carried out
in marketplaces more broadly, various informationexchanged along with merchandise was indispensable tosmooth daily life in individual society. As seen already, intimes when degree of dependence on commodity economy
was small, Ichi carried out a significant function in that
aspect.
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This function to intermediate information is not actualized by
way of competition.
Further, with a view to an area that draws interest of cultural
anthropology and folklore such as “Zoto [gift-giving]” or“Goshu [reciprocal gift-giving]”, one-dimensional descriptionof mechanism of marketplace becomes more
and more.
difficult. Therefore, historically speaking, market mechanism
and competition are not synonymous.
In that case, one of the important points is that such wereoccasions in extraordinary space like festivals, and were
implemented as exceptional incidents in extraordinarinessand extraordinary life; Hence configuration of such trading
was largely different from our daily purchasing behavior.
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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

Ichi as Place for Commercial Transaction(1) Scene at open-air Ichi near Okunitama Shrine in Musashi-fuchu
according to folklorist Tsuneichi Miyamoto:
Ichi held once a year was quite busy as a variety of goods were placedon show. But things were enormously leisurely, as in the following
episode:A customer called to a hardware store, ”I want a pan.”The store person responded, “I don’t have any.” But he promised, “I’llbring one next year.” Waiting for a year was nothing.
Next year, the merchant brought a pan, but it was too large.
So he made another promise, “Then, I’ll bring a good-looking one next
year.”
Another year later, the customer came to the same store at Ichi again、and there was what he wanted in the first that the merchant brought in.
Tsuneichi Miyamoto, History of Bread-and-Butter Business, Miraisha, 1993, p.185
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Central Market in Modern Era
Among the tens of thousands those who come in and out of the central
market, ones directly tied to this place are, starting with pullers and pushers ofcarts, merchants of the market, bamboo-basket shop, tobacco-pipe
fixer/cleaner, sign-painting shop, tiny shop of sweets, wooden-clog shop, oldclothes store, and other small earners who cater to laborer. And others
indirectly related are various types of peddlers carrying goods on ashouldering pole like Hogakushi or Miyamonoshi as named in downtown or
Norenshi named in uptown, who buy and sell odd lots that get daily poured outof the market; they buy in excessive cheap goods at giveaway prices and hawk
these everywhere. Back in the slum quarters they live, scenes that seem justlike the mid-day central market continue all hours of the night, as thefollowing: A fish market opens at a crossroads of a tradesman’s house; lined
up on a door panel of a small green grocery shop are rubbishes of egg plants,
cucumbers, potatoes, taro plants, devil’s tongues and lotuses; a handy-shop
dealing dried fish of salted salmon, cod, squid, mackerel and horse mackerel,in addition to skewered persimmon; a vendor of household goods and baked
sweet potatoes; a pickles shop showing old pickled radish, crushed egg plant,
shallot, pickled plum in a lot priced at 100 Mon; a neighboring pub bakes at its
store front chicken on skewers, dried squids and corns on the cob, filling the
spot with their smell.

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Central Market in Modern Era 2
Why were such evening fairs busy in slum quarters? Thequestion leads directly to the state of livelihood Ichi. And thatis: only in the evening can a daily cash income in hands
bring relief to their hungry mouth and belly. Their purchasing
power changes in many ways depending on weather, though,in general, 30% of the money is allocated for day-part and
70% for evening. Whatsoever, it is not until a master of thehouse comes back home that his wife dashes outside andcan procure daily necessities.
(Masaru Nakamura, Modern Age of Japan Narrated by Markets, Soshiete Bunko, 1980, pp.102-3)

Pictorial cut removed
due tocopyright restrictions
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Masaru Nakamura, Modern Age of Japan Narrated by Markets, Soshiete Bunko, 1980,
p.101

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Business Backed by Trust

History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

“Age Ichi” in Omachi, Kita-azumi County, Nagano Prefecture(1)”In mountain villages in this local region, there is a custom that horses
are rented to farm houses during busy farming seasons. Lenders arevillage people in the mountains of Omachi, who take out horses they
regularly employ for transportation in mountain paths, and borrowers arefarmers on a plain land who need horses to prepare rice paddies forplanting. When lenders get together leading their horses to the road on aset date, borrowers shop around for easy-to-use ones and fix up rents. As
soon as a promise gets made, borrowers quickly take off with horses
without leaving their names or deeds, which is said to be a traditional
system. A procedure to return horses is called Age Ichi; both parties get
together at the same place where they made lease arrangement earlier,and a portion of the rent is paid in straw laden on horses being returned tolenders. Cash part of the rent gets settled at the evening Ichi on the 10th
where they have a rendezvous again. At this occasion, according to old
examples, lenders take their horses to the site, and if they come and visit
borrowers’ homes, these horses are treated with mochi [glutinous rice jelly]
cooked from the rice transplanted back in May aided by themselves.”(Toshio Kitami, Folk Custom of Ichi and Peddlery, Iwasaki Art, 1970, pp.66-67)

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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

4 – 4 Ethics of Business
A key point in the example of Age Ichi is that, albeit a once-a-year
chance of business, there was an implicit contract between sellers andbuyers.
This sort of relationship of mutual trust was important for coming-off ofbusiness smoothly. In fact, looking at functions of Ichi in historicalcontext, it is obvious that there is a great significance in the frameworkof “trust” which was built over a long time period. .
Such a state of business leaves a great influence in the concept ofcommercial trading to Japanese people.
In case of trades conducted repeatedly, an act of dishonesty or an“outwitting each other” that my be passable just once could beprecluded in the medium and long terms. Otherwise, one’s
opportunistic behavior was highly likely to strangle oneself with own
hands. Under the business perspective to seek for permanence of afamily business, as observed in the proceeding chapter, it was
important to secure customers with a long-time relationship based ontrust, not on an immediate gain.
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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

Trust in Business in Sale at Store“A quick-fix line as seen in farmers’ life won’t be allowed.
Simultaneously, a capacity beyond a full-fledged level will be
required. And, as all production is up to manpower, an
improvement of skills will be demanded ever stronger, while
merchandise per se could not enhance its production infinitely.
(Tsuneichi Miyamoto, History of Bread-and-Butter Business, Miraisha, 1993, p.212)“Not many articles that craftspeople make are ones forgeneral populace anyone buys, and most of them are made toorders. Despite a saying that ‘merchandise is free,’ it wasnever free. At the same time, there was a close relationshipbetween consumers and producers. So, matual trust was the
top priority among merchants because it was no product unlessthat should catch customers’ fancy.”(Tsuneichi Miyamoto, History of Bread-and-Butter Business, Miraisha, 1993, p.213)

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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

Historical Personality of Kyoto Merchant(From Shigeaki Yasuoka, Management Philosophy, System and Employmentof Modern Merchant Families)“Stores of long standing in Kyoto are not strong in their
aspiration for a large-scale operation, and lukewarm about
the expansion of their operational scale. So, their business
transaction is in ‘the style of order production ’”.
“A characteristic of made-to-order is that when a producer
faces an orderer, both know each other. Clearly aware of theuser, the producer cannot make a stuff irresponsibly. While
buying and selling products are economic behaviors, they on
the other hand constitute extremely humane relationships.”
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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

Historical Personality of Kyoto Merchant
In Kyoto, a relationship between merchants and consumers, and one
between manufacturers and consumers (or merchants sometimes), is
heavily tinged with the one in the style of made-to-order, which now ofcourse has become a market production. The mental posture ofhandicraftsmen in made-to-order is not a hunt for profit: It is a consistent
trade not to be talked about behind one's back. Basically it’s suffice to havean income for maintaining lives of self, family and employees, and which isin a configuration of a family business. Even now it is not rare that
confectionary stores and delicatessen shops close up as soon as
produced/scheduled quantity gets sold out. They do not strain to boost up
the production or expand their scope of business. It was the old style of
Kyoto merchants to secure their family business obscurely, dealing withthose who adequately assess the value of own goods, and still now there is
not negligible number of merchants and manufacturers that maintain thesame value. Such is observed in many restaurants and inns that do notreceive customers they don’t know.
(Shigeaki Yasuoka, Management Philosophy, System and Employment of Early
Modern Merchant Families, Koyo Shobo, 1998, p.13)
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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

Ad Hoc Trade
Of course, it is not true to say that Japanese merchants
never behaved opportunistically. Many of merchants thatgrew in early modern times were from Omi and Ise, whowere purported contemptuously as “Omi thieves, Isebeggars” behind their back, and merchants of Osaka who.
managed kitchens of the whole country got
laughed at as
being called “squirts of the Kyoto-Osaka area.” Nominal
designations as such were not only based on people’sviews on merchants or commerce (an idea that commerce
is a shameless business) nurtured by the social standingorder of Shi-no-ko-sho [the four social ranks: warriors,
farmers, craftsmen, and merchants], but were also
indicative of their suspicion about ways those merchants
conducted their business.
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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

Ad Hoc Trade“Omi thieves, Ise beggars”“Merchants and folding screens don’t stand unless twisted.”“Lie is a part of the seed money.”“Merchants firm up with lies.”
Selective ranking “Crop of lies of all ages and cultures”“A merchant who says, ‘you lose money.’” “A merchant
who says, ‘it’s beneficial to you.’”
Ichi in Hirakata, Osaka on Aug. 12:“Folks flock here from the neighborhood further than one Ri [some 3.9km], and they name this Ichi as a ‘Blind Ichi’ because, thoughmerchandise at the fair are all cheapies, the merchants try to deceive
customers with high prices. As customers know that, voices at dealings
are said to be very loud.”(Toshio Kitami, Folk Custom of Ichi and Peddlery, p.66)

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Ad Hoc Trade

History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

Craftsmen, “unable to live properly by dealing with a limited number ofcustomers, made products aiming at the consumption by people in an unknown
world, but which were all inferior stuff. And inferior stuff were turned over at Ichi
and by local peddlers.”(Tsuneichi Miyamoto, History of Bread-and-Butter Business, Miraisha, 1993)

・Example of Kotsuma merchant, Osaka“Kotsuma located in south Osaka produced many peddlers, who were called
Kotsuma merchants. They were known to hit on poor-quality goods tactfully, andin the mountains of Nara and Kyoto Prefectures remains a pun, ‘There is nothing
above Kotsuma’s mosquito net.’ Local people were nearly forced into buying themosquito nets by Kotsuma merchants saying, ‘There is nothing above Kotsuma’smosquito net’, and upon hanging these nets the people found no tops to them.
When the merchants returned following year, the people pressed hard with theclaim for the defect, to which Kotsuma fellows’ cool answer was, ‘We told you,there’s nothing above.’ That is why the phrase, ‘There is nothing above
Kotsuma’s mosquito net’, came to be employed when referring to stuff one can do
nothing about.”(Tsuneichi Miyamoto, History of Bread-and-Butter Business, Miraisha, 1993)

・Vicinity of Nihonbashi Horidome Izumibashi“In the vicinity of this bridge was the so-called Yanagihara, where Ichi for cheap
and coarse old clothes was held, as in a satirical poem, ‘Yanagihara where a pullat textile tangles up thread.’”(Takashi Shiraishi, Historical View on of Textile Wholesalers of Nihonbashi Horidome Tokyo, p.67) Haruhito Takeda
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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

･Mercantile Society of Yokohama in 1862
Hugh Cortazzi, VICTORIANS IN JAPAN: In and around the Treaty Ports,
translation by Tetsuro Nakasuga, Chuo Koron Sha, 1988)”Dunghill of Europe” = Yokohama“・・・goodly crowd of people crossed the sea, with no fund toearn a living, or not having some reserve fund desirable on
top of it , and plunged into achieving their objectives without
self-reproaching hesitation.・・・”
Pictorial cut of “Opening of
Yokohama Port” removed
due to copyright restrictions

Illustrated History of Japan, vol. 13,
Shueisha Inc., 1976, pp.82-83

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･Mercantile Society of Yokohama in 1862
Nevertheless, majority of those Japanese they dealt with
were crowd of speculators having no funds, no knowledge ofinternational trade; Cancellation of contracts and fraudulent
transactions were not unusual at all. Although foreigners
advanced a large amount of moneys to those Japanese withno funds in order to purchase goods, none was everdelivered. Or, when foreigners passed orders of products totheir native countries for those Japanese, if market rates
declined, Japanese rejected to receive such products
incurring losses to them.

Illustrated History of Japan, vol. 13,
Shueisha Inc., 1976, p.82

Pictorial cut of “Mercantile
Society of Yokohama in
1862” removed due tocopyright restrictions
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･Mercantile Society of Yokohama in 1862
Raw silk was mixed with sand and was put into packages
with heavy paper twines, so foreigners had to inspect insidebundles of silk one by one before paying the money. Likewise,
tea in packages could not be judged on trust to be as goodas its samples. Sometimes Japanese merchants wereretaliated with similar tricks, but in weighing both sides in abalance, Japanese were worse by far. With that, a conviction
got around incorrigibly among foreigners that Japanese weresynonymous with dishonest merchants; hence no chance forfriendly affections between the two parties.
Immoral in the extreme were customs officials who rigged
an amount of payoffs from foreigners trying to be rid of importtaxes.”
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Buy Cheap and Sell High
Merchants could stock up cheap and sell high because prices were
not the same everywhere. But even if a higher profit could be earned
by selling higher, this occurrence itself has nothing to do withenhancing productivity of that society, or increasing social wealth.
Needless to say, in case commercial trading expands in a format tocorrect a regional bias in demand and supply, the. production of
specialty goods of each region gets stimulated, and the production
quantity in that society increases as a whole. Accordingly, produces
that could be marketed in other regions were quite important to eachindividual society.
However, in the process a modern society was being formed,
outstanding as its economic mechanism were that, amid developmentsof division and collaboration of labor, the utilization of machines
progressed, productivity expanded, and uniform products came to be
produced in large quantities.
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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

･ What classical economics focused attention on was this kind ofcharacteristic of a new economic system. They took notice of emerging
industrial capitalists who, utiliging modernmachinery, actualized an
upswing on labor productivity to the extent that could not have beenrealized in the prior history of mankind.
･ Business method of “Buy Cheap and Sell High” = Merchant-capitalistic.
activity
Business method pursuing source of wealth in the improvement of
production methodology that actualizes upswing on productivity =Industrial-capitalistic activity
To distinguish these two, the latter modus constitutes the source ofeconomic growth. Competition is a means to promote such activities.

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When viewed from such criteria, opportunistic behaviors of merchantslacking commercial ethics, in terms of means to accumulate wealth,should have gradually lost their stage along with the development ofmodern society.
But an actual economic development did not necessarily happen thatway.
For example, in case of cotton spinning business that belonged to aleading sector of the industrial revolution in modernization of Japan,
many of business entrepreneurs were obsessively devoted to finding
how to earn much mercantile profits in activities pertaining
the.
purchase of material in raw cotton and sales of product in cotton yarn,
which has been revealed by a research on the history of spinningbusiness by Mr. Naosuke Takamura.
(Preface of History of Japanese Spinning Business, Hanawa Shobo, 1971)

Because of the merchant-capitalistic activities of those spinning
capitalists, some point out that spinning business of Japan “was not
spinning industry, but was rather spinning commerce.” Inasmuch aseven the industry that represented modern industrial developments
was in this sort of modality, it can be easily imagined that Japanese
corporate activities in Meiji period were full of such opportunistic
behaviors.
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Nonetheless, such phenomena was not particularly limited to Japan:
Researches on the English spinning business in the post WWI period
point out that spinning-business capitalists amid an unprecedented
boom exerted themselves to increase their wealth by taking advantage
of methods to be criticized as “capital watering” to sponsor business
firms and to buy and sell them. This status signified that capitalists asinvestors sought immediate gains having abandoned the responsibility
for managing their capital, and an aggravation of financial standing
after the war which was brought about thereby was one of the factors,
and that was the most important one, that caused spinning business,the central industry for England as the world’s factory, to lose its
international competitiveness, according to Hidaka’s indication.
(Chikage Hidaka, The decline of the British Cotton Industy, University of Tokyo
Press)In China where the operation of spinning business blossomed undercapitalists of the ethnic origin during the same period, the inside of its
management was criticized as “heavy on commerce, light on factory.”
Which was a straightforward expression depicting Chinese managing
executives of the spinning factories who prioritized trading activities incotton and cotton-yarn markets and slighted improvements ofproduction in factories.
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History of Japanese Economic Thought 2004

Summary
Merchant-capitalistic activities were observed everywhere inmodern economic developments. Opportunistic behaviors ofmerchants were as old as commercial activities throughout
the ages, and at the same time, the more modern economic.
institutions increased their reliance on businessin markets,the more such behaviors broadened arenas for theiremergence.
In addition, amid economic development involving an
expansion of market business, there were some phases toenlarge the roles of merchants. For, craftsmen who used toearn their livelihood with the weapon of their proficient skills
dealing with fixed customers became unable to operate in
traditional scanty ways they ran things.
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Summary
For example, in an interview research in a village of Furuma where thetraditional facture of sickles was conducted, SanejiroTerada, craftsman
who succeeded the tradition, said, “Striking sickles in one-man operation
cannot keep up with wholesalers’ pace , so I lose business.”“Wholesalers don’t deal with blacksmiths who cannot provide productsof a certain level of uniform quality in a given quantity, namely, a quantity
within a period that wholesalers want. Even if they. are sickles that man
and wife stroke elaborately, or however good the quality is, if small inquantity, those cannot constitute wholesalers’ business,” points out
Kiyoshi Mori, noting that craftsmen lost their independence as the resultof an expansion of markets.
(Kiyoshi Mori, Back-Street Factories, 1981, pp.16-17)

institutionalization of small-sized operations by wholesalers came topress forward, and which signified that wholesale merchants found their
new role under economic developments.
Haruhito Takeda

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