The Merchant's Tale

by Simon Partner

  After the end of 1872, there is no longer any mention of the inn or its guests, and it seems that the operation was shut down sometime in 1873. It is not clear whether this was because of financial problems or just because Chūemon was getting older and found it hard to keep up with the work. Certainly, the financial downturn of 1871 and 1872 greatly reduced the number of merchants visiting Yokohama, and this may have impacted the business.

  Beginning in 1873, Chūemon and Naotarō seem to have gone their separate ways, although they still shared a presence in the Honchō shop. From this point on, Chūemon entered a period of drifting from one new enterprise to another, none of them very successful. Again, it is unclear whether this was because of financial difficulties or because the main business had been taken over by Naotarō.

  One challenge that Chūemon had always faced, and which now became harder and harder to meet, was finding and exploiting competitive advantages. During the 1860s, he had correctly identified and exploited two major advantages, his extensive network of business contacts and investors in the Kōshū region as well as in Edo and his access to firsthand information on developments in the Yokohama market. But those advantages had eroded. Seeing the enormous profits being made in egg cards, huge numbers of merchants from all over Japan had jumped into the business, sending their agents to roam the countryside in competition for new supplies. As a major player in the business Chūemon retained his advantage in egg cards, but after that market declined, it was perhaps hard to find another product where he could apply similar advantages. Indeed, once newspapers began publishing market information, timely information on market conditions became widely accessible. In the early 1870s the telegraph began spreading rapidly throughout Japan, and information that had taken days to arrive could now be transmitted instantaneously. In this increasingly technology-intensive environment, the competitive advantage tended to shift to the largest and best-capitalized companies, companies that were able to offer the most competitive pricing, outbid their rivals, buy out weaker players, and grasp new technological advantages as they became available.

  By the turn of the 1870s, just three merchants—Hara Zenzaburō, Mogi Sōbei, and Yoshida Kōbei—controlled more than 50 percent of Yokohama’s sales of silk thread. By the middle of the decade these men were among the wealthiest in Japan, while Chūemon was perhaps little better off than when he began in 1859.

  These men came from backgrounds similar to Chūemon’s. Zenzaburō was from an elite farming family in Watase village, in the mountains bordering the Kantō Plain and close to the silk-producing district of Maebashi. Like Chūemon, Zenzaburō’s family were both farmers and merchants. Sōbei was a merchant from Takasaki, in present-day Gunma prefecture. As a younger son he grew up without the prospect of wealth, and he had to make his own way in the silk business through apprenticeships, talent, and luck. He was eventually adopted into the family of Ishikawaya Heiemon, a Yokohama merchant whose operations in silk, hair oil, tea, konbu seaweed, and sundries sound very similar to those of Chūemon. Of the three, perhaps Kōbei is the only one who had significant advantages of birth and background. Born into a wealthy merchant family in Ōmama town in what is now Gunma prefecture, by his late teens Kōbei was already buying up hundreds of ryō worth of silk cocoons from around the countryside, processing it and selling it as silk thread or cloth. With the opening of Yokohama, Kōbei began buying up silk thread in large quantities from throughout central and northern Japan and transporting it to Yokohama for sale. He was helped in this by the large amounts of capital to which he had access—from his family and also from members of the local community, who were eager to invest in the growing Yokohama market.177

  Zenzaburō, Sōbei, and Kōbei had experienced many of the same challenges and weathered many of the same crises as Chūemon. It is hard to say what magic propelled them to the top among the hundreds of aspirants with similar backgrounds. All were clearly highly entrepreneurial and able to respond flexibly to new market opportunities as well as changing political and economic conditions. But the same might be said of Chūemon. What is clear, though, is that their success became self-reinforcing. By the middle of the 1860s, these three were part of a privileged elite with access to loans from the wealthy Mitsui. Through this system, Sōbei was said to be borrowing at least forty thousand ryō per year. Chūemon, too, was apparently a part of this circle thanks to his friendship with the Mitsui branch manager, Senjirō, and all the merchants had to deal with Senjirō’s sudden arrest and the cutting off of Mitsui funding. But in the restructuring that followed, Mitsui—with government backing—gave privileged financial access to an elite group of silk merchants that included Zenzaburō, Sōbei, and Kōbei—but not Chūemon. Like the ton’ya guilds that operated in Tokugawa-era Edo, these merchants benefited from government patronage in exchange for accepting a certain amount of government influence over their business activities.

  Another key difference between these men and Chūemon is that they specialized mostly in silk thread, and they tended to trade on commission and not for their own account. Their access to large supplies of silk thread from their provincial bases, and the very high value of silk shipments, enabled them to prosper even on a commission of only 2–3 percent. By contrast, Chūemon never had a large enough business to survive only on commission, and he continued to depend on risky, highly leveraged direct investments.

  Whatever the causes, by the early 1870s Chūemon was struggling to find a profitable place in the Yokohama market. In October 1872, he informed Shōjirō that he intended to open a tailor’s shop. “I am planning to start a shop selling foreign clothes, and I would like to take an apprentice. If you should know of someone fourteen or fifteen years old who would be willing to work from three to five years, please send him here. I will provide for his daily needs, and I will teach him a trade. Please mention this to Shiroemon, too.”178 The shop opened in the Honchō premises in November, and for a while, Chūemon could report that “the tailor’s shop is prospering.”179 He even tried once more to persuade Shōjirō to abandon the family farm and come and join him in this new venture.180 However, in June 1873 Chūemon wrote, “The number of Western-clothes tailors at present is growing. There is not enough business to go around. I, too, feel the decline. It is worrying. However, I am hoping that there will be work after August.”

  It also appears that Chūemon tried his hand at selling live animals from his premises. Several foreign visitors to Yokohama commented on the streets of stores devoted to this trade, so it was certainly an established business in the town. The evidence for this is only circumstantial: around the middle of 1873, Chūemon began commenting in detail on the prices of different animals. For example,

  There has lately been a craze for Nankin-Watari chickens. They are selling for three to five or even sex ryō. These chickens will lay from forty to as many as a hundred eggs, which sell for two bu each … Rabbits are slumping. Best quality are five ryō each. There are only a few buyers. Many Chinese own them, and that is a problem … White mice are slumping. At present a pair is selling for one ryō, but there are few buyers. The price will certainly keep dropping … Pigs are declining. Best quality are ten ryō. Ordinary families are not allowed to keep them. They must be kept in the fields or mountains. The rules are strict, so I expect the price will decline.181

  At this point, the collection of letters comes to an end, and with it the substantive record of Chūemon’s life. Beyond that, only scraps of information can be found. According to the Isawa town history, in September 1873, after fourteen years of continuous business, Chūemon was forced to sell the Honchō premises, both buildings and land, in order to meet debt obligations.182 According to this source, Chūemon moved to other premises that he owned in Miyozakichō. It is unclear whether this is the same premises where Naotarō was operating. Then, in 1874, Chūemon left Yokohama for good, settling in Hachiōji. For a while he was involved in relief work for the poor, then in 1878 he moved to Kami Tsuruma village in Sagamihara city,
where he developed some forty-five acres of new agricultural land that, according to the Isawa town history, Naotarō managed. At the time of his death on December 24, 1891, at the age of eighty-two, Chūemon was back in his home village of Higashi-Aburakawa.183

  What became of Chūemon and his family? The physical evidence is there to see. Fifty yards from the Shinohara home in Higashi-Aburakawa is the small temple of Senryūji. It contains the graves of perhaps twenty families, on a tiny plot of land. Many of the graves are old, although all have been set in new landscaping of concrete and gravel. Near the middle of the graveyard is the Shinohara family plot. It contains a dozen tombstones, but it is dominated by the large, heavily lichened monument to Chūemon, sitting atop a double plinth. At the bottom, it is deeply scored with the name 原篠 (Shinohara) written right to left in the old-fashioned way. The monument contains an elaborate inscription, now difficult to read with the heavy discoloration and fading of 125 winters.184 But there is no doubting the respect in which this man was held at the time of his death—nor the money his family was willing to spend to commemorate him.

  The Shinohara house is standing more or less as it was during Chūemon’s lifetime. It is a large, solid house, the dark wood interior softly glowing with centuries of polish and wear. The tatami mats are old and faded, and on a hot summer afternoon the screens are all wide open, allowing a little air to circulate through the house.

  Shinohara Yukio—Chūemon’s great-great-grandson—is a living witness to the history of his family. Much of what he has to tell a visiting researcher is family lore that probably resides only within the walls of his home. On a visit in May 2014, he tells me of the exploits of various family members—a famous scholar; an Olympic runner. He fills me in on Naotarō’s children—Asa, who married and moved away, and Kōshirō, who attended Tokyo Imperial University, only to die at the age of twenty-five. He tells me that to the best of his knowledge, Naotarō’s family stayed in the Yokohama area—where, he thinks, their descendants still live.

  FIGURE 4.1  Chūemon’s grave, Senryūji, Higashi-Aburakawa. Photo by author

  In the living room of the house, the walls are covered with portraits of deceased family members. Some died in the war—they are portrayed in their uniforms. Others have never left their childhood. In the center of the wall is a photograph, flanked by a pair of framed certificates on each side. It is clearly an old photo—the people in it are still wearing the style of the Tokugawa period: hair tied in a topknot, dressed in formal hakama [wide trousers] and haori [jacket]. One member of the group has a sword thrust in his belt.

  The people in the photograph are identified by several large sheets of paper that have been stuck to the wall of the studio in which the photo was taken. It identifies them as Chūemon, Shōjirō, Naotarō, Katsusuke, and Naotarō’s two children, Kōshirō and Asa. The photo was taken in March 1872, when Chūemon was sixty-three years old. How long have they been sitting quietly in that frame on the wall of the Shinohara house? Since the photo was taken? Or perhaps since Chūemon’s death? In any case, for as long as Mr. Shinohara can remember—and he is well into his eighties.

  FIGURE 4.2  Shinohara family, March 1872. On chairs from right to left: Chūemon, Shōjirō, Naotarō. On floor from right to left, Asa, Kōshirō, Katsusuke. Studio photograph, Yokohama. Courtesy of Shinohara Yukio

  The photo is a remarkable witness to Chūemon’s final years in Yokohama. What does it tell us about this man, his family, and their eventful decade in Yokohama?

  At first glance, the photo might seem to be a silent testimony to a world that has all but vanished—except in the fantasy universe of glamorized television dramas. These men in their formal clothes, with their Tokugawa-era topknots and stern expressions, might be living refutations of Japan’s sudden embrace of modernization. The family patriarchs sit gravely in a row, their faces unsmiling, looking out in evident disapproval at this brave new world of modernization and Westernization. The children kneel in rigidly formal pose, the little girl powder faced and chignoned, the boy with head shaved and looking sullen (undoubtedly suffering through the long, still poses required by the photographic technology of the 1870s), their older brother Katsusuke in a half-kneeling pose suggesting his liminal status between childhood and full acceptance into the world of adult male privilege and responsibility. Shōjirō (the middle figure in the back row) in particular seems to embody the pride and defiance of Japan’s samurai era. As he looks directly at the camera, his left hand grips his sword with casual assurance.

  His carrying a sword is itself a holdover from the Edo-era status system. Farmers were not normally permitted to carry swords, but as a sign of wealth and local prestige (and often in return for a significant money payment), the samurai government of the Tokugawa granted some village leaders the special privilege. But at the time this photo was taken, the sword was in its twilight years. No longer valued as a weapon of war, it was also considered a threat to Japan’s new social order. In August 1869, shortly after the abolition of the domains, the national government dissolved the former division of society into warrior, peasant, artisan, merchant, and outcast, creating instead the status categories of nobleman, former samurai (shizoku), commoner (heimin), and “new commoner” (shinheimin, meaning former outcasts). Even the status of shizoku was reserved for samurai above a certain rank, and Chūemon’s family would certainly have been classified as commoners. In February 1871, commoners were explicitly prohibited from carrying swords—so Shōjirō’s grasp of his weapon is indeed a small gesture of defiance. Former samurai, too, were increasingly forced to abandon the markers of their Tokugawa-era privilege. Beginning in September 1871 they were no longer required to carry swords or wear their hair in a topknot; and in March 1876, swords were outlawed even for the former samurai. Henceforth, only government officials such as policemen and army officers had the right to carry swords.

  In contrast to Shōjirō, Naotarō is staring off into a corner of the room, his posture a little slouched, his hakama-clad legs placed wide apart. Naotarō had come to Yokohama as a young man, only too happy to escape from the limited opportunities open to a younger son in his home province. In Yokohama he had experienced many ups and downs and incurred his father’s displeasure time and again. Even now, in his mid-thirties, one can sense something of the family dynamic—the upright, proud older son and his shiftless younger brother. Like his brother, Naotarō maintains the formal appearance of the Tokugawa era, but with a casual neglectfulness that suggests discomfort with its oppressive social strictures. Naotarō is, after all, a product of Japan’s new era of globalization. One senses his greater comfort in the hybrid world of the Yokohama merchant district rather than with the strict formality of the Tokugawa-era status system.

  And indeed, the most striking feature of Naotarō’s pose is a direct reference to that hybridity: the pocket watch that he holds up to the camera with his right hand. Naotarō is holding the shiny face of the watch so that it reflects the lights of the studio, a beacon of incongruity in this otherwise traditional family portrait. What is the meaning of this gesture?

  For historians of Yokohama photography, the pocket watch is a hint that the photo was taken in the studio of Shimooka Renjō (for more on Renjō, see chapter 3). Shimooka often used pocket watches in his studio photographs, apparently to emphasize the exotic location of Yokohama as a center of East-West hybridity and a place of free-flowing goods and technologies. The conspicuous display of the watch seems to make a statement about the comfort of the photographic subjects with Western technologies and lifestyles, even though they might also choose to retain many of the trappings of traditional Japanese culture. In other words, Naotarō’s gesture shows his embrace of technological modernity even as he continues to live in a world bounded by traditional status hierarchies and social expectations. It is easy to see how, for this young man who had so often been upbraided for his inadequacies and failures, the watch might have represented an alternative space of freedom and opportunity.<
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  But of course, the watch is only a part of the double message of this intriguing photograph. The entire setting—the carpeted floor, the chairs on which Chūemon and his sons are sitting, the floor-to-ceiling glass mirror or window, and indeed the photographic medium itself—speaks to the hybridity, the comfortable embrace of modernity, as well as to some extent the exoticism and novelty that the photographic studio represented. In 1872 it was still necessary to travel to Yokohama or Tokyo to have one’s photograph taken. Most villagers in the Kōshū region might never have seen a photograph. For Chūemon’s family and friends in Kōshū, the studio photographic portrait with its trappings of modernity may well have symbolized their extraordinary embrace of Western trade and technology and the affluence that these had brought them.

  The inscriptions stuck to the wall add to the fascination and mystery of this portrait. It is almost as though the photograph is intended to memorialize its subjects—to fix them forever in their liminal pose between tradition and modernity and to label them for future generations. To the right, over Chūemon’s head, a florid inscription and poem celebrate Chūemon’s attaining the age of sixty-three. The cursive script, formal phrasing, and celebration of Chūemon’s age suggest homage to Japan’s patriarchal traditions. But the placing of these paper inscriptions also suggests an awareness of the passing of an age. The subjects of the photographic are being memorialized for the future, and the photograph itself embodies the knowledge of transformations to come.