even the building of junks above a certain size was interdicted. From that instant, the movements of the native seafarers were curbed and their spirit was broken. A dribble of trade with the Dutch at Nagasaki, on the furthest confines of the empire, was all that remained. Internal trade itself, just springing into vigorous life after centuries of civil conflict, was hampered by the very perfection (along certain lines) and thoroughness of the feudal system. Not only did the central government at Yedo behave towards commerce as a stepmother; each Daimyō drew a cordon round his Daimiate. Sumptuary laws, rules, restrictions innumerable, monopolies, close guilds, an embargo on new inventions, the predominance of aristocratic militarism and of the artistic spirit,—all these things together formed an overwhelming obstacle to trade on a large scale. The Japanese merchant, relegated to a rank below that of the peasant, became a poor, timid creature with unbusinesslike methods, paltry aims, and a low moral standard.
Of course such an outline of a state of society, drawn with three or four rapid strokes, must not be accepted as a finished picture. Details would modify the impression. The Japan of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did possess some few important business houses, notably that of Mitsui, with whom the government formed a sort of left-handed alliance, borrowing money from it and employing it in sundry ways, much as our mediæval kings were wont to make use of the Jews and the gold smiths. The memoirs of those times preserve also the names of a few individual speculators,—for instance, Kinokuni-ya Bunzaemon, who made a fortune in oranges and squandered it in riotous living. Some of our Western business expedients, or at least adumbrations of them, were known, such as clearing-houses, bills of lading, and bills of exchange. The two commercial centres were Ōsaka and Yedo. Here was conducted the sale of the government rice; for the peasants paid their taxes in kind, not in money, then a scarce commodity. Around these official rice transactions all other business revolved. It varied little
