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- merchants often held expensive dinner parties inviting samurai, scientists, writers and poets like Shokusanjin (1749-1823) as their guests to show off who they knew.
Merchants, artisans, entertainers and service people tended to form a single group known as townsmen (chonin) and began to take the lead in many aspects of cultural life in Japan. They were squeezed into a small section of the cities, especially in Edo, where a half million of them occupied as little as one-fifth of the city. In looking for diversions from the rigidness of the Tokugawa system, they frequented the entertainment districts of the cities, which were filled with restaurants, Kabuki theatres, public bathhouses and brothels. These businesses became the centres of social life and aesthetic activity, where the different classes could meet and intermingle, and where money was the common denominator. The samurai who wished to take part in the festivities sneaked into these areas incognito. The city of Edo, in particular, gained a reputation as being a decadent, boisterous, rowdy, lawless city of pleasure. Colourful seasonal festivals were celebrated throughout the year, and on the streets of Edo there was a wide range of performers, jugglers and musicians ready to entertain. There were around one million people in the city of Edo by the 18th century, and several hundred thousand each in the cities of Osaka and Kyoto. Since these were the three largest cities of trade and made up the economic heartland of the shogunate, the merchants enjoyed some protection from excessive taxation and were able to make large and long-range investments of capital. As a result, a number of important large retail conglomerates developed, like the wealthy merchant house of Mitsui, which specialized in dry goods, sake brewing, pawnbrokerage, moneylending and, eventually, banking, and would survive into modern times as one of the largest private economic enterprises in the world.
OPPOSITE
21. Edo Gold and Silver Coins / Pieces d'or et d'argent de la periode Edo (1603-1868)
Most urban merchants were extremely hard-working and developed business codes of ethics similar to the samurai. They began to organize themselves into monopoly guilds to keep prices high and to work collectively to ensure their security. As a result, Edo Japan became a fairly well-developed capitalist society. Long arcades of small shops with open fronts on either side of the street could be found in cities and towns. Most of these were little more than stalls two to three metres wide and three to five metres deep. Passersby could easily get a glimpse of the types of goods offered for sale. In certain quarters, some streets became known for shops selling specific products. Some shops sold one item exclusively, such as umbrellas, pottery, mats, lanterns, buckets, sandals, clogs, cotton and silk textiles, kimonos, books and fans. Artisans who produced similar crafts tended to reside in the same areas. For example, there were neighbourhoods of blacksmiths, and of cloth dyers and weavers.
22. Hiroshige Ando (1797-1858)
The Timber Yard, Fukagawa /
Le depot de bois, Fukagawa Woodblock print
This snow scene is one of Hiroshige�s most famous prints. He has beautifully illustrated the scene with strong verticals and diagonals, as seen in the poles of lumbers combined with the zigzag of the river. The print gives a strong sense of distance. The logs were delivered to the yards in the form of rafts, poled up and down the river. The wood was used for the construction of the city of Edo, which at that time was the world�s largest wood-built city.
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