Japan's Entrance into the International Financial Community.

The article reports on Japan's entrance into the international financial community. A money economy although a primitive one, existed for several centuries before the post-1868 breakthrough into a modern economic society. Rice brokerage thus became an essential feature of this mixed economy--and here the merchants were in their glory, for by wielding the tremendous resources they had accumulated by catering to the needs of the free-spending upper classes they were able to profit from the wild speculative gyrations in the rice market, to the distress of the moneys income townspeople as prices went up and to the distress of the rice-income nobles and peasants as prices went down. Paper money came into wide circulation after the seventeenth century, when the daimyo, who were generally forbidden by the Shogunate to mint coins, began to resort to the printing presses to meet their expenses. Some issues had sound backing arid were accepted outside the territories of the issuing authorities, but the majority were issued recklessly and were thus practically worthless.