Vol. 17 | Demise and edamise Part 2

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Before diving in — Vol. 2 sets out the author’s framing and caveats.

To do business across the whole of Japan, the Ohmi Shonin drew on the following three methods.

Peddling
Demise and edamise
Joint-stock trading

Continuing on from the previous instalment, this volume takes up demise and edamise.

Roles and organisation in a Japanese merchant house

The Ohmi Shonin and sanpo yoshi are more often than not spoken of as a pair. In Vol. 7 of this series we noted that one reason the Ohmi Shonin set store by sanpo yoshi was this: doing business across the whole of Japan, they were outsiders wherever they went, and it was their secret for trading smoothly without earning the dislike of local people.

The Ohmi Shonin sometimes set out peddling alone, but, as we are now discussing, they also established demise and edamise beyond Ohmi and did business in an organised way. And the members of those demise and edamise were, without exception, men from Ohmi.¹ This, too, can be read as a consideration towards the communities in which they opened shop.

Why should that be? Before answering, let us look at what kinds of posts were found in a Japanese merchant house during the Edo period (the 17th to 19th centuries). On this point the Ohmi Shonin differed little from merchant houses elsewhere in Japan. Organisations varied in size, but the hierarchy of the honke and the demise was much alike. The edamise, by contrast, was in effect a forward base — close to what a modern company would call a sales office or a satellite office — and so was probably not organised as fully as the honke or the demise.

The owner and manager of a shop was called the shujin, the master. In the case of a demise, the master might come out from Ohmi to run it in person, or a single master might circulate between several demise. In other cases, a person whom the master of the honke had allowed to branch off under the house name — a practice known as norenwake — whether a relative or an employee, took up the post of master of a demise.²

The post ranking just below the master was the banto, the head clerk.³ It is no exaggeration to say that the banto, like the master, knew every part of the shop, and at times he ran the whole operation in place of a master weighed down with outside affairs. Where, as noted above, a master circulated between several shops, the banto would in practice have been the overall person in charge.

OHYASHIMA has, as it happens, written before about the banto of Toyota Motor Corporation. In other words, present-day Japanese companies too can have someone described as a banto (though, as at Toyota, it is rare for this to be a formal job title). It is seen above all at owner-run firms: the banto may act as the overall head of operations, or, where the owner is committed to the core of the business, may take on something close to the role of a CFO. As with the merchants of the Edo period, then, the master and the banto stand in a relationship in which each complements the other’s work.

Below the banto came the tedai. He was, in effect, a salaried regular employee — which is what set him apart from the decchi, the apprentice we turn to next. Though his standing within the shop was modest, he was an employee acknowledged as fully fledged; and because tedai tended to be young, a master with no son of his own would sometimes take a promising tedai as a husband for his daughter and make him the wakadanna, the young master.

A case close to this, and connected with the Ohmi Shonin, is that of the first Shinshichi Iida, founder of the present-day department store Takashimaya. Shinshichi was born into the Nakano family of Tsuruga and served as an apprentice at a shop in Kyoto. Impressed by his work, Gihei Iida — an Ohmi Shonin — married him to his own daughter, Hide, and Shinshichi entered the Iida family as an adopted son-in-law.⁴ He later branched off on his own and founded what is today Takashimaya.

Last, the decchi was someone who entered a merchant house at roughly the age of a present-day lower-secondary pupil (lower-secondary education in modern Japan is provided for children aged 12 to 14) and worked without pay. Unpaid though he was, his meals were provided, and twice a year he was given pocket money and clothing. He was still an apprentice, not yet recognised as a full-fledged merchant.

Raising discipline and teamwork through an organisation of men from the same province

Let us return to the earlier question. Why did the Ohmi Shonin staff the demise and edamise entirely with men from Ohmi?

First, as for women: they took part in the business at the honke back in Ohmi. We will come back to this point in a later volume. That said, it cannot be denied that women also did work at the demise and edamise — preparing the members’ meals, and serving customers when the tedai alone could not manage. In such cases it is conceivable that, besides women from Ohmi, there were, exceptionally, women taken on locally.

It should be added that, viewed through a modern lens, these roles for women would be seen as a problem, as narrowing the field in which they could play a part. There is no denying that they look that way from a present-day standpoint. At the same time, keeping a firm grasp of the historical facts also matters if we are to understand society and business. And, as will be explained in a volume that returns to the role of women, it is likewise a fact that the master’s wife and others carried responsible work. That volume is due to appear shortly.

A reason the demise and edamise on the commercial front line were staffed with men from Ohmi is that, the members being of assured background, any trouble one of them might cause was easier to handle. Those who entered a merchant house as decchi or tedai secured their positions by relying on ties of locality or kinship. That being so, they could not lightly cause trouble in the first place. Japanese has the expressions kao o tsubusu and kao ni doro o nuru — to “crush someone’s face” and to “smear mud on someone’s face” — which mean repaying with injury the kindness of a person who has looked after you or done you a favour. Merely conducting himself badly from day to day was enough for a tedai or decchi to crush the face of whoever had found him his place. Discipline, therefore, was inevitably kept from slipping.

And building an organisation that was well-conducted and easy to communicate within also meant not becoming a nuisance to the district where the shop had opened. To staff the demise and edamise with people from Ohmi, in other words, would — like sanpo yoshi — have served as a method for not being resented by the local community.

Kunitoshi Suenaga also notes that the communal life led by people from Ohmi nurtured a spirit of solidarity. That aspect, the author too believes, was surely part of it.

OHYASHIMA is seeking information about the Ohmi Shonin

In connection with this series, OHYASHIMA welcomes information about the Ohmi Shonin. The author would be particularly grateful to hear from:

Museum curators and archivists — in Japan or elsewhere — who hold collections related to the Ohmi Shonin
Those who work for companies with ties to the Ohmi Shonin, or whose own ancestors were Ohmi Shonin
Those who know of Ohmi Shonin merchants who conducted business outside Japan

OHYASHIMAは近江商人に関する情報を求めています

本連載にあたり、近江商人に関する情報を募集しています。たとえば、下記に該当する方はぜひご存じの情報をお寄せください。