ABSTRACT

THE KAMIGATA PEOPLE COMPARED WITH THE FUGGER FAMILY.-After the great victory at Sekigahara secured to the Tokugawa family complete power over the whole country, the age of peace and prosperity continued for two and a half centuries, during which time the merchants accumulated wealth and acquired power side by side with the feudal lords and other samurais. The stories ofthe large merchants such as Yodoya Tatsugoro, Suetsugu-Heizo, the Mitsui and Konoike families, and Tennojiya Yohei, who were most prominent in the class, remind us of the great German house of Fugger, whose business descended from father to son, and who, beginning with merchant business pure and simple, gradually took up banking and exchange and lent enormous sums to Emperors, and even to the Pope, for in just the same way our Osaka merchants were receiving large quantities of rice from the feudal lords as security for the money they advanced to them. Jacob Fugger, grandson of the founder of the family, an Augsburg weaver, extended his business all over Europe, and in 1529 the wealth of the family was reckoned at about 3,000,000 florins.