''Kabunakama'' (株仲間) were merchant guilds in

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

, which developed out of the basic merchants' associations known as '' nakama''. The ''kabunakama'' were entrusted by the

shogunate , officially , was the title of the military dictators of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, though during part of the Kamakura ...

to manage their respective trades, and were allowed to enjoy a monopoly in their given field. Some ''kabunakama'', known as ''gomen-kabu'', were even allowed to set prices and manage the operations of other ''nakama''. Though the shogunate originally opposed monopolies, they eventually gave in to the increasing numbers and organization of merchants' associations, and decided to make an attempt to control them by officially licensing them. In 1721, the government began to authorize individual ''nakama'' to become ''kabunakama'' (''kabu'' refers to "

shares In financial markets, a share is a unit of equity ownership in the capital stock of a corporation, and can refer to units of mutual funds, limited partnerships, and real estate investment trusts. Share capital refers to all of the shares of ...

", though these were themselves not tradeable), and to oversee the organization and trade within given fields. The goal was to encourage cooperation, not competition, and always to work towards the goal of advancing the economy. It is said that these groups became quite social and merchants' moral codes thus developed to a significant degree. Those who were not following ethical market behavior, behaving uncooperatively, or encouraging competition, were shunned by their ''kabunakama'' comrades, and likely by the larger market community. The structure was originally created to replace older guilds, known as '' za'', and by 1785, there were over one hundred ''kabunakama'' in

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...

alone, including a number granted special privileges by the shogunate, but taxed heavily in exchange. Some of these were groups entrusted and authorized to control the nation's trade in precious metals, iron, and copper. In the 1840s, '' rōjū'' Mizuno Tadakuni attempted to do away with the ''kabunakama'', in order to combat monopolies, but this and many of his other reforms were resisted so strongly by the merchants of Osaka (and others) that he was forced to abandon his efforts. The ''kabunakama'' were all dissolved, however, in 1870 as the economy modernized and new forms of business associations appeared.

References

*Frederic, Louis (2002). "Japan Encyclopedia." Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. *Sansom, George (1963). "A History of Japan: 1615-1867." Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. {{Authority control Economy of feudal Japan Cartels Guilds in Japan Japanese stock traders Types of business entity