P7+Artisans+and+Merchants

=P7 Artisans and Merchants=

 Artisans & Merchants  By Mac H. and Tommy B.   The S ocial Structure was a big part of Japan because it put everybody in different groups and it put people in places that they belonged. The Edo period was very important because it was a time where people were happy and everything was peaceful and secluded. Fournier’s that left Japan were not allowed to land on Japan’s soil they were banned from Japan forever. The Edo period was between 1603-1868 but now they sometimes call it the Tokugawa period. The Tokugawa shogun established the city of Edo which they now call the Tokyo and is now their capital city. The Portuguese and Spanish missionaries took control over European and other traders of Japan and Nagasaki and Japanese citizens after leaving Japan were banned from ever returning. At the top of the Social Structure was the Shogun, then the daimyos, and then the samurais because they are most respected because they work for their Daimyo. The next is the farmers because they produce the food for people to eat; the Artisans were ranked fifth because they made goods and offered services. The bottom ranked person is the Merchants because they do not produce any goods they just traded and got money. One thing that the Merchants were good at was in the Arena of Arts where the Merchants did theater, music, and visual arts. Merch ants can never be a Samurai unless their parents were samurai’s also.

As said before, merchants were the lowest classed people even though they were the wealthiest. They were considered parasites by others because they benefitted from work that they did not create. No one expected much of merchants because they were known for being greedy and selfish and only cared about themselves. Merchants sold items created by Artisans and food grown by farmers, as well as other products. Monks were also helping to trade with china on their journeys to and from Japan. When people bought things from merchants, they paid with coins of copper, iron, silver, and gold. The //zeni,// which was introduced in //1636,// is a circular copper coin with a small square whole in the middle. These were strung up to make “a string of cash” which came in strings of 100 and 1,000. Soon the 1,000 coin string of cash was replaced with a gold coin called the //Ichibu Kin//. The Ichibu Kin is a coin that is shaped like a rectangle and it is worth 1,000 zeni. There is another, larger gold coin called the //oban//. At the end of The Kamakura Period, The economy had become decentralized which means that some of the regions became more independent. But in the Early Modern Period, the economy became more centralized around urban areas such as Edo and Osaka and those were great places for merchants to trade. In conclusion, even though the artisans and merchants were lower ranked, they still provided an important service for Japan

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 * 1) Dunn, Charles J. "Everyday life in Traditional Japan" Print.