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C h apt e r T h ree Transcending Subordination At the end of the fourteenth century the moneylenders occupied a position fraught with complexity as well as potential. At this point they were indeed victims of multiple taxation—Enryakuji, the imperial court, and the shogunate were each getting a piece of their profits. At the same time, however, they were merchants of great worth: not only did they provide credit, but their business acumen produced revenues for several overlords and their leading members’ management skills were sought after as well. They parlayed their usefulness into a relationship of interdependence with the overlords that the latter could not upset without harming themselves. To put it more bluntly, exploitation characterized both sides of the relationship in the decades to come: multiple taxation was met with tax avoidance; incidental levies were imposed to fill the void but were offset by exemptions in return for bribes; monopolies were unenforced; and guild rules were flaunted. This state of affairs evolved gradually over the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, enhancing the moneylenders’ prestige as leading townspeople who were indispensable to the elites. Shogunal Patterns of Taxation and the Declining Ability to Collect The shogunal laws of 1393 made provision for the collection of 6,000 kanmon annually from the moneylenders to be used to cover the operating expenses of the shogun’s Board of Administration. Some historians have concluded automatically from this decree that the shogunate added this amount from the moneylenders to its coffers each year, but this is no transcending subordination 91 more than an assumption. It is more strictly correct to conclude only that in 1393, at least, it was the intention of the Muromachi Bakufu to extract this amount from the moneylenders. Beyond that, other sources must be analyzed to determine real levels of revenue received, and this can only be done imperfectly because of an imperfect record. Nevertheless, it is worth making an attempt, for the result may shed light on a number of issues: the relative importance of Kyoto to Bakufu finances; the actual level of shogunal control over the city; and, finally, from the point of view of the city’s commoners, whether the moneylenders were indeed successfully coerced on an annual basis and over an extended period of time to pay a large, new tax. If the latter can be proven, then it would indicate that the shogunate made a successful intrusion into a still-thriving overlord system. If not, then shogunal control of commercial groups in Kyoto will be proven to have been more limited than is usually assumed. The analysis that follows is heavily dependent on the records of the Ninagawa family. As vassal of the Ise family, the Ninagawa held the hereditary position of deputy head of the Board of Administration (mandokorodai ), while the Ise was its actual head (shitsuji).1 The deputy head tended to handle day-to-day affairs as the Ise’s representative; thus the Ninagawa collection is useful as a record of the actual administration and execution of decrees rather than merely as statements of policy or intent. Furthermore, after the Ōnin War, the Board of Administration was the most vital Bakufu office—indeed, it was the only one that retained any real function and authority over time; hence the Ninagawa collection touches on a great range of shogunal matters.2 The Ninagawa records on the moneylender tax are a combination of amounts received and disbursements over a period of ninety-eight years, 1441–1539. (See Table 1 for a summary of the documents discussed here.) Amounts received are more relevant to this analysis, but disbursement records at least give an indication of minimal levels of tax income, if not necessarily of total amounts available to disburse.3 Starting with the Muromachi shogunate’s 1393 annual target of 6,000 kanmon from the moneylenders , the record yields nothing specific on collection of the tax for nearly fifty years.4 Two factors may account for this gap: the haphazard survival rate of medieval documents and the uneven nature of shogunal record keeping. In the eleventh month of 1441, a tax on 327 brewers is recorded to have yielded 880 kan, 600 mon.5 Because the latter half of this document lists the disbursement of these funds over a period of three months, the tax itself may be interpreted as being for a three-month period, or roughly one-fourth of the annual tax. If the annual tax were [3.144...

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