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The Making of Modern Japan

charity could bring benets, but religious fervor could be as dangerous to the house as government service. At the same time, the Buddhist priesthood could provide a useful repository for incompetents. The Mitsui house was founded with dry-goods stores in Kyoto and Edo in 1673. A decade later it added services in money exchange and money lending; an Osaka branch appeared in 1691. That year, by appointment to the sho nin), Mitsui was authorized to send bakufu receipts of funds shogun (goyo from Osaka to Edo. This role as scal agent of government could be, and was, turned to good advantage; funds could be transferred in the form of goods sold at a prot in the consumption center of Edo. As the house interest and activities grew, a governing council made up of heads of branch families was established in Kyoto. Family heads were brought up to place the good of the lineage ahead of personal considerations. Like the heads of warrior houses, generations of Mitsui family chiefs were drilled in the importance of the house and taught to regard themselves more as stewards than owners of the properties they administered. ). One expression of this was the house instructions (kakun) and laws (kaho These had always been standard for aristocrats in the Heian period, and great warrior houses also prized them from an early point. Asakura Toshikage (1428 1481), who fought his way to dominance in the province of Echizen, for instance, left seventeen articles to guide his descendants. He warned them to value ability more than seniority in the selection of aides, and went on to stress sobriety, frugality, and the avoidance of ostentation. House heads were to carry out systematic observation and inspection of the domain, and they were warned that public opinion mattered. When passing in front of monasteries, shrines, or dwelling houses, rein in your horse, he counseled; if the place is pretty, praise it. If it is in poor condition, express your sympathy. This will have a good effect.13 The Mitsui rules and procedures were formalized in the early eighteenth century by descendants of Mitsui Takatoshi (1622 1694), who headed the house during its formative decades. In old age he dictated his recollections for his grandson, Takafusa (1684 1748), who, as head of the northern house, played a central role in regularizing Mitsui house management. Takafusa renin ko ken roku, worded and wrote out the stories he had been told as Cho Some Observations on Merchants. The collection was copied by hand for heads of each of the nine branch families and not published until the nineteenth century. These observations concern the rise and fall of about fty wealthy Kyoto merchant houses. It was the fall of those houses that most interested Takafusa, and he posed their cases as guides for future Mitsui heads. Over half of the houses he wrote about failed because they made the mistake