Can someone tell me about the economic instability that occured as a result of the feudal era in Japan...

Can someone tell me about the economic instability that occured as a result of the feudal era in Japan? How often did the currency change and what were the consequences? How bad did it get by the time of the warring states period?
Pic not related just too lazy

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_coinage
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dōjima_Rice_Exchange
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Bump to fucking bury all the b.s. threads going on right now.

Until Tokagawa finally managed to take over everything, Japan was a collection of warlords that constantly battled for supremacy. People identified much more strongly with their locality than with the "nation." This is part of the reason why the Imperial Japanese were so fanatical about stressing national spirit, they were trying to actively dissolve local identities in favor a new national identity.

So we're their kind of local currencies all over the place?

Were*

The Sengoku era was actually associated with a period of economic growth across all parts of Japanese society. The civil wars of this era weren't really similar to the Thirty Years War, in that they were often decided quickly in pitched battles and usually did not devolve into raiding. Agricultural techniques and other technology was spread by the movement of armies and refugees.

The currency of Feudal Japan was rice, and the copper coinage issued by the Heian emperors had long fallen into disuse. Therefore, changes in government did not really cause any direct impact to peasants or merchants.

Without central authority, there was nothing preventing individual Daimyo from interacting and engaging in trade with China, Korea, and newly arrived European states such as Portugal and the Netherlands. Lack of trade barriers actually spurred economic growth far more than war could have diminished it.

Rice

Literal rice? You serious? When did the Mon and ryo become a thing then?
So did the Jap economy remain a barter system?

Technically, the Sengoku era was a perfect example of Anarcho-Libertarianism.

There's a reason why the wealth of feudal retainers are measured in Koku- or the amount of rice a person eats for a year.

>Warring States
>States
>Anarcho Libertarianism
K

Yes, so did the other 2 currencies I mentioned spring up in the Edo period then?

Currency came back when Hideyoshi and Tokugawa made a central government.

But during the warring states period, the local lord would just pay his samurai and foot soliders in rice.

As rice didn't really rot, it was kind of like Roman salt and you could store it and feed armies with it.

As having an army was the most important thing and you could just pay your army in rice to take the other lord's gold if you wanted.

However, when the Europeans came, you need gold and silver to buy the guns, but the actual currency itself was unimportant to the Euros other than what it was made out of.

Dude. The lords were the business owners. The Samurai were private security forces and there was no central government regulating the economy. The peasants were employed by the lords for the most fair prices the economy would bear.

So yeah. It was basically Anarchy-Libertarianism in pratice

Yes, most grain products can be mass produced and stored untill ready to prepare. That's also why bread was so important to Rome.
So this gold the Lord's had were just igots of gold or were they actual gold ornaments/coins and such?

Yeah. Tokogawa put the end to the freedom of the lords and centralized government.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_coinage

Its also worth noting he outlawed peasant mobility in society (well Hideyoshi did that because he was a peasant that became a general and feared other peasants) and tried to get rid of personal weapon ownership, private armies, and gun ownership.

A "koku" was the standard unit of currency, which was roughly enough rice to feed one grown man for one year.

Yeah. Even though rice was important for the armies, the lords kept plenty of gold around (especially to buy guns from the Euros).

If they were a large clan, then they'd probably have their gold smith put the insignia of the family on it, but I tried google searching for Date and Hojo coins but not sure if they did it or not. I know Oda Nobunaga made attempts ate currency, but he was the largest warlord in central Japan and occupied Kyoto (ancient capital of Japan before Edo) so he was trying to restore a central government.

According to another page in wiki article you linked, Takeda had gold mines so they had an easy time minting such gold into koshukin.

Wasn't salt also valuable to the Japs as well?

Yeah. Gold mines were a thing, but again, the lords really only cared about the fact it was gold and not some standardized currency.

Oh I see.
What about the time before the sengoku period (Kamakura and ashikaga shogunate). Chinese coins and bronze or was rice still dominant?

T*kugawa Ieyasu was a mistake
If it was up to Oda or Toyotomi the Jap would've open up much sooner

0. Rice is a type of food that can be stored for FUCKING AGES, and doesn't need special means to transform into food.
Rice is the perfect means of Barter or Currency, when there exists no decent fiat.
1. Salt
2. Anything you can barter
3. Coins or valuables look good, until you realize almost nobody accepts them as valid barter.
Currency not being valid as barter is a common thing in all pre modern societies, and even more so the weaker any form of central power gets. So you might be able to have higher classes trade with currencies in a city state, but outside of that there is no such thing.

Currency requires massive state investment, to force people to start using it. But once its used in mass form, it tends to quickly supress barter, because its a form of forced convenience. Or the civilized version: Bank/claim notes
If you want to read more about it, any source talking about American currencies is a good starting point. Even more so in the US frontier, Spanish trade, or the Caribbean

Think of it in practical terms: You can trade in Rice if you want to, because anybody accepts it.
But if you want a lot of metal items, trading to a foreign state/lord, at some point metal currency is far more compressed than rice.

Even into the late Tokugawa era, Samurai retainers were paid in rice despite the existence of other currencies. There were several major "Rice exchanges" where merchants made huge sums essentially extending payday loans to Samurai and Daimyo.

Payday loans in rice exchange? Almost like "stocks" or shares or something?
Good thread btw, really appreciate it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dōjima_Rice_Exchange

It was kind of a crude futures market and currency exchange combined into one institution. Samurai would sign away the rights to the share of the rice harvest they were entitled to in advance in exchange for paper currency issued by the rice merchants which could be used in the market.

Nice! Thanks alot for the info.

Can you imagine the sheer hassle of a rice based currency?
"How much for the horse?"
"100 koku"
"Okay I'll have 2780 kg of rice shipped to you right away!"

Naw, I don't think a house would cost 100 koku. It's not guaranteed that they would use rice for such a purchase anyway.
Like user said, Koku was mostly in terms of paying soldiers and Samurai.
There was also salt too anyway.

I remember watching a great documentary on something similar to this. I forgot the name of it though. If anyone can remember one, I would be super greatful.

Besides the fact the example was only too illustrate a point, how many koku would a good horse cost, in your professional opinion?

I think they would use a different currency , as peasants wouldn't really be buying horses anyway, unless they had lots of wealth.

You wouldn't buy a horse with Koku. You would buy a bundle of horses + 1-2 generations of prime breeding.
Or you would, but you need to think how much Rice ~28kg of Rice is, how long that lasts for 5-10 people.
So about 120 portions, or 12 people for 10 days.

So: Koku is a practical unit. You are just nto used to what it measures.

No, it's not. You have no clue about what you're saying. It's not anarchy nor libertarianism. It's feudalism on it's prime.
Stop projecting your modern regressive ideology invention to history.

He has a point though.
>individual power players rebuild the economy in the near total power vacuum left by the collapse of the Ashikaga Shogunate
That's anarchy, bruh.

In fact, Oda Nobunaga's rakuichi rakuza policies would strike us as distinctly free-market style reforms, since they did things like abolish and prohibit monopolies, open up privileged trade unions to new entrants, and developed tax exemptions and ease regulations on money lending.

He also built networks of roads and castle-towns in order to transition Japan -away- from an agrarian feudal state and towards a mercantile one dominated by large population centers and the manufacturing and service sectors which define them

A koku is equivalent too 278 kg of rice, once again the horse example was merely to illustrate a point, once again having to move that sheer amount of rice would have been extremely difficult from a logistical point of view.