, called ''toiya'' outside of

Edo Edo ( ja, , , "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a ''jōkamachi'' (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the ''de facto'' capital of ...

, were trade

broker A broker is a person or firm who arranges transactions between a buyer and a seller for a commission when the deal is executed. A broker who also acts as a seller or as a buyer becomes a principal party to the deal. Neither role should be con ...

s in Japan, primarily

wholesaler Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers (wholesale businesses) and related subordinated services. In ...

warehouse A warehouse is a building for storing goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial parks on the outskirts of cities, ...

manager Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activities ...

s, and shipment managers; the term applies equally to the traders themselves and to their shops or warehouses. First appearing as early as the 12th century, ''ton'ya'' came to serve a crucial role in the economy of the

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 ...

(1603–1867).

History

The earliest record of a ''toi-otoko'' (問男) may be one from 1175, in which a number of Court officials hire an outside boatsman to transport them down the

Yodo River The , also called the Seta River (瀬田川 ''Seta-gawa'') and the Uji River (宇治川 ''Uji-gawa'') at portions of its route, is the principal river in Osaka Prefecture on Honshu, Japan. The source of the river is Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefect ...

. As he was not a servant or agent of the Court, or any manor, but rather a man hired out privately, this represents the emergence of the sorts of private enterprises which would come to dominate the economy centuries later. The ''ton'ya'' of the Edo period were little different, essentially acting as independent agents for specific elements of the domestic trade; most often they were shippers, but many were local handlers, middlemen, or warehousers. They would be hired by a firm (a merchant, a shop, etc.) which operated out of one of the big cities to manage or handle the firm's goods in some other portion of the country. Wholesale freight shippers operating out of

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 ...

, transporting goods to Edo, numbered at least 24 in 1700, and a great many "guilds" existed specializing in the handling of individual types of goods, such as cotton, sugar, or paper. In addition, there were groups such as the Satsuma Tonya and the

Matsumae clan The was a Japanese clan that was confirmed in the possession of the area around Matsumae, Hokkaidō as a march fief in 1590 by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and charged with defending it, and by extension the whole of Japan, from the Ainu "barbarians" ...

Tonya, who specialized in the handling and transportation of goods within two of Japan's four great "gates" to the outside world; Matsumae, in Hokkaidō, governed the trade with the

Ainu Ainu or Aynu may refer to: *Ainu people, an East Asian ethnic group of Japan and the Russian Far East *Ainu languages, a family of languages **Ainu language of Hokkaido **Kuril Ainu language, extinct language of the Kuril Islands **Sakhalin Ainu la ...

and

Imperial Russia The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. T ...

, while Satsuma, in Kyūshū, controlled trade with the

Ryūkyū Kingdom The Ryukyu Kingdom, Middle Chinese: , , Classical Chinese: (), Historical English names: ''Lew Chew'', ''Lewchew'', ''Luchu'', and ''Loochoo'', Historical French name: ''Liou-tchou'', Historical Dutch name: ''Lioe-kioe'' was a kingdom in the ...

and, through them, trade with

Qing China The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

. Between the ''ton'ya'' and the numerous other types of groups in Osaka and Edo, including ''

kabunakama ''Kabunakama'' (株仲間) were merchant guilds in Edo period Japan, which developed out of the basic merchants' associations known as '' nakama''. The ''kabunakama'' were entrusted by the shogunate to manage their respective trades, and were allo ...

'', '' rakuza'', and rice brokers, Japan's primary urban commercial centers were extremely organized and powerful by the middle of the Edo period. Most of these groups would dissolve or evolve into something else entirely by the end of the Edo period, but they served an important role in facilitating the emergence of fully nationwide trade in early modern Japan.

References

* Sansom, George (1961). "A History of Japan: 1334-1615." Stanford: Stanford University Press. * Sansom, George (1963). "A History of Japan: 1615-1867." Stanford: Stanford University Press. {{industry-stub Economy of feudal Japan Road transport in Japan Edo period Japanese historical terms

History

See also

References