They Were Too Proud to Touch Money. Someone Kept the Books.

In 1843 a retired samurai in Edo sat down and made a list of what he owed. The warrior class of Japan was raised to despise money — and financed by the men who counted it. This is the story of how a salary paid in rice turned into paper, how a market in Osaka started trading rice that did not exist yet, and how the debt of an entire class was cancelled with a stroke of a pen — twice. A word on how to read this: the sums here are converted, not exact — a koku of rice was a measure of grain before it was a measure of wealth, and its price moved. Where the record is disputed, it is said so. Sources: Tokugawa financial records and the standard economic histories of the period; the Dōjima rice exchange (est. 1697, licensed 1730) is documented in the shogunate's own decrees. Images: public domain (Metropolitan Museum of Art open access, Wikimedia Commons). CHAPTERS: 0:00 The list a samurai made in 1843 0:48 A salary made of rice 2:38 The men at Kuramae 3:36 The arithmetic of nobility 4:38 Dōjima: betting on rice that didn't exist 6:41 The debt that vanished 9:35 Cashed out 11:29 Written in English 12:59 The house that kept the books HASHTAGS: #history #japan #samurai #money #goldfiredust