Isshusai Kunikazu: Dojima Rice Exchange 堂じま米市 (RESERVED)
Artist: Isshusai Kunikazu (1848-1868)
Title: Dojima Rice Exchange 堂じま米市 Series: One Hundred Views of Naniwa (Osaka) 浪花百景 Naniwa Hyakkei Date: ca. late 1850s
Why are these men at the top of the stairs lined up so tightly and with such focus that a tobacco pouch and pipe have been dropped without anyone picking it up? The cropped figures in the queue are also wearing patterned leggings, a sign of wealth during the pre-Meiji era. We see an arm straining from the right to pick up a dropped fan amidst the crowd. Our view is from the top of a set of stone steps, and we see men looking with some concern as they are about to enter the fray as they ascend the steps to reach to the hall. It is the Dojima Rice Exchange, the world’s first organized commodities and futures exchange, which was first authorized by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1730. In the Edo period, taxes were collected in the form of rice by the lords of each domain, so rice receipts representing stored rice became a type of substitute currency. The rice receipts at the Dojima Exchange were sold by registered rice brokers through auctions and were often backed by promissory notes that were essentially used as bank notes. These rice commodity receipts for rice that was delivered to and stored in Osaka were actively traded and used as money. The use of rice commodity receipts and the Dojima Exchange declined in importance as coinage became a more viable alternative, and following the Meiji Restoration, Japan adopted a formal monetary system based on the yen. Many see the Dojima Rice Exchange as representing one of the earliest organized futures and commodities markets, with price discovery, settlement and clearing and financial derivatives. The rice prices set by the Exchange were transmitted by couriers and flag signals (and apparently even carrier pigeons) across the country, to reach Edo and other major cities. The Osaka-Dojima Rice Exchange was abolished in 1939. Ukiyo-e artists rarely showed the brazen mercantile side of Japan in an obvious way as in this print, so it is a fascinating view indeed, also for the severity of the cropping of the figures at both top and bottom.
Condition: Some discoloration to margins and hinging remnants, verso, along with areas of minor thinning. Dimensions: chuban (25.2 x 18.8 cm)
Signature: Kunikazu ga
Literature: Kubo Tsunehiko and Sons Collection Ukiyo-e Hanga (2004), #23-16; Osaka Castle Museum, Tokubetsuten Naniwa hyakkei (1995), #16 and MFA impressions 11.35735, 11.41866, 11.41881.
SKU: KNZ010
