The Moneylenders of Late Medieval Kyoto

Chapter One The Business of Lending Money

C h apt e r O n e The Business of Lending Money Moneylenders of unknown number do a flourishing business; the wealth of the country is all in their storehouses. —Fujiwara Teika, Meigetsuki The poet’s diary notation of the early thirteenth century suggests there was already a large community of moneylenders in Kyoto. A burgeoning demand for credit was met by these merchants, primarily through the medium of coinage imported from China. Some started as storehouse keepers (mikura) for aristocratic families and gradually extended their activities to include moneylending.1 Others began as creditors like pawnbrokers offering small loans and in time added the safekeeping of valuables to their services. As pawnbrokers, these small-scale moneylenders were regarded as reliable not only because of their sturdy storehouses but because in the event that items were stolen they would compensate the owner.2 Even during a large peasant invasion of the city in 1441, for example, the aristocrat Fujiwara Tokifusa, who lived in Kyoto’s outskirts, recorded bringing his valuables to a moneylender in the city for storage, fearing that the shogun’s forces would be unable to protect him.3 The more successful of this type of moneylender offered another convenient service: handling not only storage but receipt and disbursement of an overlord’s tax income, some of it in kind. Moreover, accustomed as they were to dealing in cash, in hard times these lenders would grant loans exceeding the debtor’s worth, and in good times would pay interest on cash entrusted to them, like a bank. The most prominent among them were employed by the imperial court and aristocratic families not only as the lives of the moneylenders 38 creditors but as managers of property. Moneylenders themselves sometimes borrowed capital on which they paid interest and in turn loaned out to others, presumably at higher rates of interest.4 To satisfy customers with a large appetite for credit, medieval lenders, most of them only family operations, had to have a large and steady source of capital, and sometimes brewing alone may not have sufficed. The source of loans to moneylenders was likely to be Zen temples or other wealthy townspeople.5 Moneylenders begin to appear in documents from 1234 as “dosō,” after their sturdy fireproof earthen storehouses erected to safeguard pawned items.6 (That such a practice was not seen in the Heian period may have been partly a function of architectural limitations: Heian storehouses were simple structures made of wooden boards that any family might have. The word “dosō” appears for the first time in the Kamakura period, indicating a sturdy building with earthen walls.) The storehouse usually had a porchlike entrance with a thick outer door and an inner wooden lattice door, making penetration by fire or thief difficult.7 The moneylenders’ activities gradually expanded to include the functions of primitive banks, and they became a common fixture of everyday life in medieval Kyoto. In addition to A medieval storehouse. After a fire destroyed their main house, a fourteenth-century Kyoto family takes shelter temporarily in their sturdy storehouse, like those used by moneylenders. Detail from Kasuga gongen genki, collection of Tokyo National Museum. Reproduced with the permission of the Tokyo National Museum. the business of lending money 39 lending money, they stored and protected cash and valuables in return for a deposit fee. They also managed their patrons’ landed income, performing such services as tax farming and transporting goods from distant estates.8 Some of them managed shogunal finances.9 The greatest moneylenders even helped finance the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century trade missions to Ming China, providing capital for ships and goods for export.10 “Pawnbroker ” or “moneylender” may be too modest a term for an occupation that embraced so many functions. “Financier” or “financial house” is perhaps a more suitable word for the larger dosō. Nevertheless, it was through their moneylending activities that lenders large and small had the most impact on medieval society in general, both as providers of capital and as subjects of taxation. The main source of capital for moneylenders often came from another line of business. Zen monasteries had institutional wealth to draw on, but individual lenders used the proceeds from the production and sale of a commodity—sake, primarily. The popularity and, presumably, lucrative nature of their product is attested to by their large number, about 350 in the early fifteenth century. In good times...