ABSTRACT
What the Fudasashi merchants were doing for the Hatamoto samurai in Edo, the Kuramoto merchants were doing for the Daimyo in Osaka. In Edo, the Shogunate had its own rice godowns, to which the Fudasashi merchants were attached, and so were the Kuramoto merchants attached to the godowns, where the different clan Daimyo kept their rice. The Kuramoto merchants financed the Daimyo, as the Fudasashi financed the Hatamoto, and each resembled the other in functions, influence, and position in the economic system of Japan in those days. Toyotomi Hideyoshi had made Osaka a prosperous business town, which outranked all others in financial power. Besides, the city was located so as to command the markets in the wealthy provinces of Shikoku, Kyushu, and Chugoku, and their products were all brought up to Osaka for distribution, which made the city the then commercial centre of Japan. The Daimyo were the big land-owners who lived mostly upon the rice raised as taxes from the people in their respective territories, which they disposed of to meet the necessary expenses of the year. This rice and other products they then sent to Osaka for disposal. At first they entrusted the merchants of Osaka with the work for them, but in later years they had their own Kurayashiki, where they had godowns to store their produce and where they lived as well as transacted their business, for on their way to Edo they used to stop at these Osaka residences. Around these places of business there grew up certain special classes of merchants who did business with the Daimyo in Osaka, as the Fudasashi did with the Hatamoto in Edo. They were called the Kuramoto and the Kakeya, the Kuramoto being in the same relation to the Daimyo as the Fudasashi to the Hatamoto. In those days Japan was divided into individual states, and each Daimyo held sovereign legislative power, and his financial and economic policies were as entirely for the advantage of his own domain as those of France, Italy, or Spain in Europe to-day. These independent states, including the Tokugawa Shogunate, the biggest of all, all looked to Osaka as the centre of their financial policies, and, of course, Osaka became the commercial centre of Japan.
