By the early nineteenth century, several merchant families had amassed great fortunes. One family, the Mitsui, which in recent times built the greatest economic empire in Japan, was even then an important factor in the nation’s economic life. A genuine capitalist class had appeared, and a large group of experienced business men. The stage was set for the amazing economic modernization of Japan which was to take place once the doors of the country were thrown open again to trade and intercourse with the rest of the world.
The merchants, not the warrior-administrators, obviously dominated Japan economically, but their real supremacy in Tokugawa times is perhaps best seen in the cultural field, for the arts and literature of the period were more an expression of a city bourgeoisie than of a feudal warrior class. The cities clearly dominated Tokugawa culture, and in the cities the gay amusement quarters were the centers of social life. Here the geisha, a professional female entertainer, carefully trained in the arts of singing, dancing, and amusing conversation, reigned supreme. To her came the tired business man and the “slumming” warrior-aristocrat for the free social contact with women, denied them by the overly formalized patterns of society, which confined women of breeding strictly to their own homes.
To a surprising degree the art and literature of the time revolved around the geisha and the amusement quarters. Artists of the Tokugawa period loved to portray the streets of these quarters and the famous geisha beauties of the time; and the great seventeenth century novelist, Saikaku, made the demimonde the normal