To make matters worse, the reforms of the 1870s varied widely from prefecture to prefecture and were punctuated by frequent about-turns and changes of policy, spreading confusion and anxiety about just how the villages were to be administered. In Kanagawa prefecture, for example, there were no fewer than eight separate reforms of the village administrative system. It was not until 1878 that systems of local government were standardized nationally.151
In Kōshū, while the number of officials permitted to each village was drastically reduced, the duties of those officials increased as they were required to implement a series of important reforms. These included the implementation of the land survey, the issuance of title deeds to individually owned land, the introduction of elementary schools in every village and the enforcement of compulsory education for all children between the ages of six and ten, and the implementation of a new system of military conscription. Chūemon worried about the effect of these duties on his son’s health. As one of the few remaining officials in his small village, Shōjirō was responsible for the implementation of a wide range of complex and time-consuming reforms. He also had heavy farming duties, especially during the busy silkworm season. “You must be busy with the business of land deeds. It is impossible to do that and help with the farming. If the matter concerns the villagers, you have to undertake it with sincerity … However, if you are going to put your heart into village duty, you must not work so hard that it will affect your health. You must understand this and plan to succeed in your farming business even if you have to stop your official work for a while.”152
Chūemon tried more than once to persuade Shōjirō to lay down his village duties and come and live in Yokohama: “Since the government has announced it would like to decrease the number of village officials, you should consider giving up your position in the village and taking up trade as the basis for your family’s future. Here in Yokohama, we have been approved to start a lending and money-exchange business, but we are unable to start it because of a lack of manpower. We have forty to fifty people staying in the inn each night. In these happy circumstances, you could start up here without any anxiety.”153
More than two years later, Chūemon again urged, “At present, here as in the villages of Kōshū … the number of officials in each village is to be reduced. If that is to happen in Aburakawa, I think it would be a good idea for you to resign your position and come here … You could let Seitarō make his living from farming.”154
The government’s reforms, particularly those relating to taxation, caused severe unrest in Kōshū (now officially Yamanashi prefecture), culminating in 1872 in some of the worst disturbances the region had seen in decades. While the central government’s goal was to keep the overall burden of taxes roughly unchanged during the switchover to the new land-tax system, it singled out regions that it felt were lightly taxed—including Yamanashi—and targeted them for increases. In Yamanashi, this measure came on the heels of two consecutive years of cold summers and poor harvests. When, in 1871, prefectural governor Shigenoi Kinhisa responded to farmers’ distress by distributing one hundred seventy-six thousand yen in government funds to the needy, the central government sentenced him to thirty days of house arrest. The following year the Ministry of Finance implemented its tax increase, prompting a month of protests culminating in an attack on Kōfu by more than six thousand protesters.155
The disturbances in Kōshū are the only time in the entire fifteen years of his residence in Yokohama when Chūemon felt the roads were too unsafe to send money and goods: “I sold 104 cards for $187.20 in silver, of which I am still owed $0.20 … I exchanged this money on the twenty-seventh. I will send it to you with my seal attached. However, I am getting reports from here and there of great disturbances in Kōshū … so I will wait till I am assured that conditions there are stable. In the meantime I am taking care of the money. Please send me your views on how things have developed to this point, and how you think they will turn out.”156 He further commented, “It will calm down in heaven’s time. We must adapt ourselves to the times.”157
While Chūemon seems to have been concerned by many of the reforms he saw enacted during these years of rapid change, his attitude was mainly that such matters were the concern of those “on high” and there was nothing people like him could do but submit. The implication, which has been well documented for the urban commoner class as a whole, is that the goings-on of the great lords were none of Chūemon’s business.158 He had watched the government that he had grown up considering more powerful than gods now being hunted down as rebels. The old certainties were all gone, and there was no telling what the future would bring. Prior to the enactment of the land reform, Chūemon even reported on a rumor that “Japan will be given to France. They say that the French flag is flying from Edo Castle. The emperor left on the twenty-third of the fifth month on a ship to go to Satsuma. From there, he will go abroad. People are saying that there is no doubt about this. Here, with the stroke of a brush, the government offices will determine the value of the land in all the villages and hand out titles. There is no knowing how it will turn out.”159
STRUGGLING TO ADAPT
In spite of his deep misgivings about the new government and its reforms, for some time after the Meiji Restoration Chūemon’s business continued to prosper. Silkworm egg cards maintained their strong demand, with prices continuing to rise. Chūemon’s inn opened in March 1869, and its flourishing business seems to have met all Chūemon’s expectations.
However, Chūemon’s very success carried the seeds of his decline. Ever the optimist, Chūemon seized on every opportunity to expand his business, making larger and larger purchases and diversifying into a variety of additional business activities. By the early 1870s, he was severely overstretched. His borrowings increased with every new purchase and business venture. And although he had benefited from the opportunities thrown up by distant global events, he was also deeply vulnerable to sudden movements in faraway markets—perhaps more so than he himself understood.
Chūemon’s vulnerability is foreshadowed by an unfortunate—and perhaps, with hindsight, ominous—incident that occurred in the middle of 1869. With the opening of Chūemon’s inn, the family could no longer manage its business affairs without help. As Chūemon focused on managing the day-to-day operations of the inn, Naotarō took over more of the trading operations. By this point Chūemon seems (perhaps unwisely) to have overcome his doubts about Naotarō’s business capabilities. In any case, at sixty, Chūemon had to recognize that capable or incapable, his son would need to take on more responsibilities.
In response to the expanding scale of the family business, Naotarō hired a man called Rinzō as an assistant manager. Rinzō must have come with good qualifications: unlike the young men from Kōshū who rotated in and out of positions in the business, he was given significant responsibilities from the beginning. On June 10, 1869, Rinzō wrote to Shōjirō telling him that the prospects for egg cards were looking very poor in Izu, where the firm had established suppliers. “The silkworm rearing was poor, and only a few chrysalises developed.” Rinzō therefore proposed to travel to Kōshū to see if there were better prospects there.160 Rinzō set off a day or two later with one hundred forty ryō to be used for silk card purchases and as well as for incidental expenses.
He never arrived.
On June 23, Chūemon wrote to his son Shōjirō: “Naotarō says he gave one hundred ryō to Rinzō and forty ryō to Kenzō. But it seems that Rinzō has fled with this entire amount.”161 Four days later, on June 27, Naotarō informed his brother that Rinzō had been arrested.
On the sixteenth [June 25, 1869] he visited a place called Wada village near Ōiso, and on the eighteenth he returned to his own home. There, he was apprehended and examined. He had spent thirty ryō of the money. An additional thirty-five ryō three bu three shu was found on his person. Of the remaining money, he had given seventy-five ryō to his relative Shōhei of Iwasaki village in Ōiso. That person then han
ded it on to Okuemon of Rinzō’s village. Rinzō’s guarantor, Shinzō, has sent a letter to the town hall via his assistant, begging that if he can raise this amount [i.e., the missing seventy-five ryō], he might be excused the rest.162
On July 17, Chūemon updated Shōjirō on the Rinzō affair. “Currently the affair is with the town hall, which is investigating. Apart from the thirty-five ryō we got back, we may have to write the rest off. Rinzō has been sentenced to death. I sent a letter to Rinzō’s relatives by messenger service on the fourth. If his brothers can come up with the money, I will ask for mercy for Rinzō. Beyond that there is nothing I can do. If he is executed, then our money is lost.”163 The amount stolen, incidentally, had increased by fifteen ryō to a total of one hundred fifty-five ryō.
It seems that Chūemon had low expectations of the guarantor, and these turned out to be justified. On July 30, Naotarō sent a further update:
Of the 155 ryō that Rinzō stole, we have got back 35 ryō 3 bu 3 shu. Moreover, when his possessions were sent to the town hall, his pockets were found to contain 3 ryō, so the total we have received is 39 ryō 3 bu 3 shu [sic]. He says that he spent the rest. The [officials at the] town hall [are] threatening him violently, but he is not saying any more. Once the official documents are complete, the matter will be sent to the court. There is a guarantor, and this man had begged for more time to raise the money. Today the guarantor came here with another man to talk to us. He is asking us to accept a loss of 55 ryō out of the original 155. Of the remaining 100 ryō, he would like us to allow him 25 ryō to cover his expenses in this affair. Of the remaining 75 ryō, we have already received 38 ryō 3 bu 3 shu, which leaves 36 ryō 1 shu. He said that we could realize 10 ryō of this by selling Rinzō’s clothes. In addition, Rinzō’s mistress would pay us 10 ryō as a fee for severing her ties with him. As for the remaining 16 ryō 1 shu, the guarantor would pay us that by the last day of the seventh month.”
Naotarō concludes, “If he would give me 100 ryō now, then I would consider calling the matter closed. However it ends up, I am going to accept it as one of this year’s disasters.”164
There is much that remains unknown or unexplained about the Rinzō affair. Unfortunately, there is no record as to whether or not Rinzō was in fact executed, nor as to whether Naotarō and Chūemon got any more of their money back, from the guarantor or from other sources. Nor is there any explanation as to why Rinzō’s mistress would be willing to pay ten ryō to end a relationship that, with Rinzō sentenced to death, would seem to have had little future anyway. It seems clear, though, that Chūemon’s family suffered a significant loss from this incident. Moreover, although Chūemon remains largely silent on the matter, it cannot have given Chūemon much reassurance about his son’s management capabilities.
Luckily, silk egg cards were still selling well. Chūemon and Naotarō absorbed the losses from the Rinzō affair, and indeed they continued to prosper for another year or so.
Then, late in 1870, a much harsher blow struck Chūemon and his son. On September 30, Chūemon wrote of a battle that had taken place six thousand miles away and almost a month earlier: “The Prussian army has defeated the French army in a great battle and taken the French king prisoner. It is said that sixty thousand French troops were killed in the battle. Here in Yokohama, yesterday there was a fight between the nationals of the two countries and one Frenchman was killed. As a result, it is said that the market for egg cards will plummet.” And indeed, “I still have not been able to sell all the egg cards and the price is falling … All the merchants in Yokohama are suffering. I don’t know how this is going to work out, but at present the business conditions are very poor.”165
Chūemon is referring to the Battle of Sedan, one of the climactic moments of the Franco-Prussian War. The battle was indeed a great Prussian victory, at which seventeen thousand French soldiers were killed and Napoléon III was taken prisoner. The battle took place on September 1 and 2. If it had been just a year earlier, the news would have taken three months or longer to reach Chūemon. But in November 1869, after ten years of construction, the Suez Canal had opened, drastically reducing travel time from Europe to Asia. Communications were further enhanced with the extension of telegraph service from London and Paris to Suez. The news of the defeat at Sedan reached as far as Singapore by cable. From there, it traveled to China and Japan by steamer, taking a total of twenty-eight days to reach Chūemon. Jardine, Matheson received a strong hint of the defeat as early as September 26, via a company steamer from San Francisco carrying telegraphic news up to August 31. From this source, the company’s manager, Herbert Smith, concluded that “it would appear that the safety of Paris was greatly endangered.”166 The definitive news of the battle reached the Jardine, Matheson office on the twenty-eighth, giving the company a day or two to consolidate its position ahead of the rest of the market.167
Although Chūemon did not spell out the connection between the European war and a collapsing egg card market, he clearly understood the importance of these distant events. The vast majority of egg card exports had been going to France and Italy, which had been struggling to rebuild their silk industries after the devastating blight of the early 1860s. France, in particular, was the capital of the European luxury-clothing industry. Lyon was the greatest manufacturing center, and Paris was the continent’s great center of fashion and retail sales. By January 1871, with Paris in its fifth month under siege by the Prussians, the Parisians were eating dogs, cats, and rats. They had little need for silk.
The egg card market, which had been booming for so long and had carried Chūemon and Naotarō with it to success and prosperity, went into a steep decline from which it never recovered. By June of 1871 top-quality cards that a year earlier had been selling for as much as four ryō per card were now selling for just half a ryō. The egg card market dragged other commodities down with it: top-quality silk was under five hundred dollars a picul (down from $800 a year earlier), and tea was down from a high of forty dollars to only twenty-five dollars a picul.168 In August 1871, Chūemon wrote, “I’m relieved that you will not make any egg cards this season. They say that this year, some two to three million cards will be shipped to Yokohama. The price is sure to continue dropping. The merchants here have consulted with the authorities, and one-third of the cards will be burned or otherwise disposed of. However, the regional merchants refuse to accept this arrangement, and it remains undecided. But they are certainly not salable, and truly, this is hurting everyone’s hearts. My livelihood is affected, too, and I am suffering.”169
In the midst of all this gloom, Naotarō wrote of the forthcoming Benten Shrine festival, a lavish and expensive celebration that in better times had celebrated Yokohama’s extraordinary prosperity, “We have been told that the great shrine festival will be held on the fourteenth and fifteenth of next month. Everyone is at a loss what to do. I, too, want to tell them that they should not hold it.”170
In spite of these severe setbacks, Chūemon and Naotarō struggled on. The family production of silk—which remained a valuable commodity in spite of price declines—was a major support during these years. In 1871, Shōjirō sold all his cocoons in their raw state, but in 1872, the price of egg cards recovered a little. Although Chūemon remained cautious about trading in this commodity, he was happy to sell the cards his own family had produced. In July 1872, Chūemon wrote, “Understood that you made 103 egg cards. This year we will have a big profit. I am delighted.”171 Three months later, Chūemon reports selling the cards for $187—nothing like the large sums he had been dealing in two years earlier but a very welcome addition to the family income.172
At the same time, he was excited about the prospect of selling Kōshū-grown cocoons to the new Western-style silk factory that had opened in Gunma prefecture. In 1870 the government had contracted with a Frenchman, Paul Brunat, to build a state-of-the-art silk-reeling factory as a model for national development of a mechanized reeling industry. With Brunat, the government selected th
e village of Tomioka, near the silk-producing region of Gunma prefecture, as the site for the factory. The cost of construction was enormous, since Brunat insisted—and the government consented—to build a European-style factory in this relatively remote and mountainous location. This necessitated the import and transshipment not only of expensive and complex machinery but also of the very bricks and glass needed to build the factory. The factory opened in October 1872, with one hundred fifty silk-spinning machines operated by a staff of four hundred female workers, many of them the daughters of unemployed samurai. In anticipation of the factory’s opening, Chūemon commented in a letter to Shōjirō, “I think they may want to buy Kōshū cocoons. If you have the manpower, depending on the price it might be profitable to dry the cocoons. If they are still fresh, then you have to sell through an official buyer.”173
Meanwhile, “About forty or fifty or sixty people are staying in our inn every night. I am very happy about this. We have had some sickness in the house. I am fine right now, but since I am getting old, I feel a little weak; however, there is nothing at all to worry about. If I have any trouble, I will let you know.”174
Entrepreneurial as ever, Chūemon and Naotarō continued to explore new business possibilities. Late in 1871, they tried their hand at dealing in imported sugar. In October 1871 Naotarō shipped twenty-eight sacks of sugar to Shōjirō, together with detailed instructions on how to distribute it to retailers in Kōshū. “In the future,” said Naotarō, “I would like to send you three shipments a month. Please discuss this with possible buyers.”175 However, a sudden drop in the market the following year seems to have put them off this business.
In spite of all the setbacks, Naotarō remained optimistic about the future of his business. Indeed, in March 1872 he embarked on an ambitious new construction project, to build a much larger shop than their existing premises. The shop was opened on November 26, and two weeks later Naotarō reported, “We are offering many products. At present we have seven people working for us. Okamura Yasuke’s people are also helping us. We also have four family members working here: a total of fourteen people. I am now going every day to our new shop. I am leaving Katsusuke [Naotarō’s younger brother, now nineteen] to manage the Honchō shop. But of course I am available to consult in the event of any difficulties. I would love for you all to come and visit.”176 It seems that, at least in his own eyes, Naotarō was now fully in charge of the family’s business affairs.
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