Seto Inland Sea, Osaka Bay, Japan.
The castle town of Osaka Castle was developed during the era when "Saru Seki White" Toyotomi Hideyoshi ruled Japan. This humble Japanese ruler was different from those feudal lords who regarded land as the basis of their rule. He integrated industry and commerce that could provide a large amount of tax revenue. Consider it the foundation for your rule over the world.
Therefore, after clearing up the foundation left by the old owner Oda Nobunaga, this Japanese man of the world chose the land of Ishiyama Honganji Temple near Sakai, the industrial and commercial center of Japan at that time, to build a city in 1583 AD. Construction of Osaka Castle began on the ruins.
The construction project of Osaka Castle was extremely large. After the completion of the Main Maru (which took a year and a half), large-scale projects such as Ninomaru, Sannomaru, moats and canals were constructed. Until Toyotomi Hideyoshi died of illness, the project was still not completed.
While Toyotomi Hideyoshi was building Osaka Castle, he also built an unprecedented scale of castle towns and ports along the Yamato River and Yodogawa River outside Osaka Castle. He also ordered all the big merchants who originally did business in Sakai, south of the Yamato River, to be relocated. Osaka.
Thanks to the efforts of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was good at managing territory, Osaka Castle Town prospered rapidly and soon became the industrial and commercial center of the Kinai region of Japan. It also became the largest industrial and commercial city in Japan. Even in the Edo period after the fall of the Toyotomi regime, the industry and commerce in Osaka Castle Town continued to develop.
By the time of Shomitsu, the third generation of the Tokugawa shogunate, the population of Osaka Castle Town had exceeded 300,000, and tens of millions of goods were bought and sold through Osaka every year. The tribute rice collected by the feudal lords and the domain's specialties had to be sold through Osaka merchants, so Osaka Castle Town was nicknamed "The Kitchen of the World" and "The Warehouse of the World".
However, compared with the status of "Tianxia Kitchen", the situation that can really make "Osaka's wealthy businessmen angry and the world's princes frightened" was developed by relying on the convenient conditions of "Tianxia Kitchen" and "Tianxia Warehouse" "Two substitutes for business".
The so-called yangdai merchants are actually merchants engaged in currency exchange. The Tokugawa shogunate implemented a three-currency system of gold, silver, and copper coins. In addition, many feudal clans issued their own clan letters, and the currency circulation was relatively chaotic, so this contributed to Great development of money changers. After these two generations of merchants accumulated a certain amount of capital, they soon began to develop into remittances, money transfers, credit, etc. In addition to lending money to merchants for turnover, they also developed the lords who ruled various places in Japan into themselves. customer of.
The Japanese feudal lords were often unable to make ends meet due to various reasons (their own luxurious life, too many samurai under their banners, and the payment of pilgrimage fees was too high), so they had a great need for loans. By the time of Iemitsu's reign, most of the feudal lords were in debt, except for some of the feudal lords who were more responsible and the famous poor feudal clans.
Therefore, Osaka Castle Town is not only the kitchen and warehouse of the world, but also the creditor of the world.
This is where the saying goes, "When a wealthy businessman in Osaka is angry, all the princes in the world are frightened"!
Of course, the princes of the world can also default on their debts... The shogunate will sometimes help them default on their debts. In order to prevent the imperial family or farmers from going bankrupt, the Kamakura shogunate and the Muromachi shogunate have repeatedly issued virtuous government decrees to exempt debts. .
However, during the Edo period, it was not easy to default on your debts. Because once you default on your debt, you will be blacklisted by Osaka's "Ten-person Liangdai", and you will no longer be able to obtain financial services from Liangdai merchants... This is no small matter! Because in the Edo period, the big merchants in Osaka, Kyoto, Edo, and Nagasaki could no longer do business without yangdaishang.
The feudal lord's business (selling tribute rice and specialties) was a big deal. How could this business be done if there was no exchange, remittance, deferred payment or advance payment credit available? Moreover, it is impossible for ten people to blacklist 300 vassals at the same time. They blacklist one or two vassals at a time. The other vassals can use the financial services of Liangdai merchants normally, but the one or two blacklisted vassals cannot. Who can do this with them? Buy or sell? Even if someone is really willing to do it, the price will be exorbitant...
If a domain is blacklisted by a rival organization called Liangdai, the operation of the domain will be extremely difficult. The domain owner will not necessarily be frightened, but will definitely have a headache.
As for sending people to kill all ten people... Osaka Castle Town is the leader of the shogunate! Where can a poor feudal lord be allowed to kill people casually?
And it goes without saying that those who can serve as two substitutes for ten people have a backing...
The so-called ten-man ryotai merchants are the ten most financially powerful ryotai merchants in Osaka, namely Tennojiya Gobei, Shinya Kyūemon, Kagiya Rokubei, Sakamotoya Zenemon, and Tennojiya Sakubei, Shinyakaemon, Izumiyabei, Yutaya Sunemon, Konoikeya Zenemon, Sukematsuya Ribei - these ten names are so-called merchant names, which are passed down from generation to generation. The name is not just one person, but the bosses of two different companies. And those houses are the names of the businesses. Two of them, Shangsenya and Konoikeya, developed into Japan's six largest chaebols in their original history!
Among them, Izumiya became part of the Sumitomo Zaibatsu due to marriage and inheritance. The Konochi House developed into the Konochi Zaibatsu.
However, these ten-person pairs, which can cause headaches to all the princes in the world, encountered a bigger and more ferocious crocodile during this period!
In the center of Osaka Castle Town, near the Yodogawa River, a courtyard that looks similar to a prince's mansion is where the Osaka Ryodai Nakama Gyo (guild) is located. On weekdays, the door of the house is always open, but today the door is closed, and the house is heavily guarded inside and outside. All the people are dressed in gorgeous clothes and are on guard.
Anyone who knows anything about the Ryotai merchants in Osaka knows that with such a large formation, ten big bosses from the Ryotai trade must be gathering here - the net worth of these ten people together is greater than that of the Tokugawa Shogun. They are several times richer, and of course they have to hire some ronin to protect themselves.
What if someone kidnaps me?
But it is impossible for people in Osaka Castle Town to imagine that these ten big businessmen are sighing together now.
The reason why they lament is that the price of rice in Japan has fallen again and again in the past year or so... This is incredible!
It's clear that the world is in chaos, but rice prices not only haven't risen, but are still falling!
At the official rice market in Dojima, Osaka, the price of one stone and one hundred meters (Japanese stones are larger than Ming Dynasty stones, about 180 kilograms) has dropped from 8 jin a year ago to 4 jin now, and it continues to drop. fell. Within a few months, the price of rice in Osaka dropped by half... This was really a catastrophe for the two merchants!
Because Japanese feudal lords and samurai are "rice-based", their income is calculated in meters. Japan's large-scale transactions and credit are priced in "one or two cents" (gold coins)... In the decades after the opening of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the exchange rate between gold, silver and copper coins was Basically fixed, because the Tokugawa Shogunate had the ability to control the price ratio between gold, silver, and copper. The price of gold against silver has remained around five taels. Until Emperor Komu came from Korea and occupied Sado Island, the largest gold and silver producing area in Japan!
Since the occupation of Sado Island, there have been huge purchases of gold in Nagasaki, Osaka, Kyoto and other places... All the gold stored in the Ryodaiya has been exchanged in a short period of time. . In the spring of this year, after Kobuin's troops captured Iwami Ginzan, the price of gold rose even more. Because the shogunate lost the Sado gold and silver mine and the Iwami silver mine, it could no longer control the surge in gold prices. The exchange price for silver rose directly from about 1:10 to about 1:15!
As the price of gold skyrocketed, the price of rice priced in gold naturally plummeted... A financial crisis that was enough to cause the collapse of all Osaka Ryotai Bank has actually broken out!
