The Moneylenders of Late Medieval Kyoto

Chapter Five Urban Affairs

C h ap t e r F i ve Urban Affairs By no means were the last two centuries of the medieval age in Kyoto merely a time of unrelieved chaos. Even as they endured periodic attacks by peasant leagues and the strife of warriors, many moneylenders thrived in the late medieval city. With their wealth and status they were at the forefront of neighborhood self-governing efforts, advancing collective aims in the face of weak overlords and often nonexistent city administration. As financiers and participants, the wealthiest of them played a prominent role in the urban cultural efflorescence of the late medieval period, mingling easily with elites and other townspeople alike. Indeed, the pleasing eclectic blend known as Muromachi culture was the product of a commitment to culture at all levels of Kyoto society, and moneylender glue helped set the bond. Defying overlords in matters of taxation and internal neighborhood affairs, the moneylenders nevertheless kept the old links in good repair, recognizing the value of elite connections for financial and cultural prosperity. As leading urban commoners, they buttressed the autonomous stance of the townspeople and simultaneously enabled cultural synthesis in late medieval Kyoto. Self-Governance The moneylenders were merchants operating individual businesses in Kyoto, but along with other townspeople they also behaved collectively in several capacities. One was through occupational guilds, in varying degrees of distance from the overlord. Another was as residents of neighborhoods (machi) that increasingly assumed responsibility for security and internal urban affairs 173 governance. Finally, the late medieval proliferation of religious movements affected moneylenders along with most townspeople, and in the early sixteenth century some were swept into the Lotus movement, a popular Buddhist organization exhibiting paramilitary characteristics. These three collectives overlapped temporally but were functionally distinct. Each was a means through which townspeople learned self-reliance and autonomy. Adversity like peasant invasions and warrior battles in Kyoto further promoted these qualities. Considered by some a sixteenth-century phenomenon , self-governance by townspeople, defined broadly, can be detected in various forms throughout the late medieval period. Precise definition of the moneylenders’ role in urban self-governance is problematic. A position of leadership is often assumed from their wealth and status and from their prowess in self-defense efforts against peasant invasions of Kyoto. On the other hand, we have seen signs in the record of resentment by townspeople toward these creditors and their harsh practices . Identified with the elites, especially as tax agents, the moneylenders nevertheless were, by the sixteenth century, secular townspeople whose interests generally corresponded with those of their neighbors. Moreover, lenders came in all sizes, some probably leaders and others followers. At any rate, the historical record is mostly silent on the matter of individuals’ participation in neighborhood governance and in religious movements, but implicitly the range of known activities by moneylenders connotes their full participation in city life. In some Japanese scholarship the investigation of moneylenders as townspeople has been dominated by an ideological tendency to invoke a class-based analytical model. According to such a mode of analysis, the moneylenders are usually defined in one of two ways: (1) as natural enemies of the townspeople because of their credit function and wealth, and in this sense as an extension of the rulers into local affairs; or (2) as the leaders of the townspeople, aided by their great wealth and status in elite organizations like Enryakuji and the shogunate. The two views have been combined into the assertion that the moneylenders, initially at odds with other townspeople, were successfully absorbed into the emerging bourgeoisie in the late medieval period, thereby enabling the townspeople as a whole to wield considerable economic power.1 Another result of this class-based approach has been a determination to find instances of popular self-governance in the sixteenth century, specifically the “free city” model of early modern Europe. This prize is usually awarded to midsixteenth -century Sakai and, to a lesser degree, Kyoto, especially in the 1520s and 1530s when the Lotus movement was at its height.2 This is by the lives of the moneylenders 174 no means an insignificant historical observation: in Sakai, with its relative absence of traditional overlords and a strong merchant community tied to the port’s flourishing trade, a comparison to early modern Europe is particularly apt. In sixteenth-century Kyoto, too, home of the declining elites, issues of commoner rule can be fruitfully addressed. A rigid class...