JAPAN
holder's family, and might also be sold, but in the latter case the consent of the confederation had to be obtained. The usual market value was £1,600. On the other hand, they had always to take into account the risk of official interference, as when (in 1789) the Shōgun's chief minister drew his pen through all debts owed by feudatories to fuda-sashi; or when, in 1841, the celebrated Mizuno Echizen-no-Kami, desiring to succour the bannerets and restrain the extravagance of the fuda-sashi, decreed that all moneys owing to the latter should be paid by instalments spread over twenty years without interest.
Rice, of course, always constituted the chief staple of commerce in Japan, but since the fief products, which formed the bulk of the crop, were disposed of by tender at the places of storage, neither Ōsaka nor Yedo possessed a regular rice exchange until the second half of the sixteenth century. From the use of tickets, the grain being held in store until it suited the purchaser to take delivery, sales of rice to arrive soon came into vogue, and further, instead of paying cash for tickets, the custom was established of merely registering a transaction, and deferring any transfer of money until the rice came to hand. A so-called "exchange," but really a bank, was established to deal with these tickets, making advances against them, and in that way purely speculative transactions were conducted on an extensive scale. It need scarcely be said that
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