(^362) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
payers always need more. (Which is why debtor nations today prefer to
negotiate deals; they still need money.) Just because they can repudi
ate debt does not mean than they can afford to. The news of default
gets around, and soon no one wants to lend. So daimyd and samurai
heaped scorn on merchants in their absence but wooed them in per
son. In Japan, where every detail of etiquette and language signaled su
periority and inferiority, spendthrift warriors learned to bend their
head, to speak softly, to give seasonal gifts, to grant merchants the
right to wear a sword (but only one), and to confer commercial privi
leges (better than bows and smiles and gifts).
So merchants lent, and many grew rich. But others, hundreds of
them, foundered on the rock of bad faith. The samurai were ready to
die for their lord and master, yet their word was notoriously worthless,
and not just to merchants. Often the merchant was caught in a no-win
situation; he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. The case
of Yodoya Tatsugoro became legendary. The family had made an enor
mous fortune by being useful, among other things by undertaking
public works in Osaka; no house did more to make that city the com
mercial center of Japan. But Tatsugoro, fifth-generation head of the
house, was too rich for the public good. So many daimyd owed him
money that state interest and Confucian morality required he be cut
down to size. In 1705, the Bakufu confiscated his fortune and canceled
his claims on the pretext that he was living beyond his social status.^12
So much for gratitude.
(That is not so bad as what happened to Nicolas Fouquet, from
1653 superintendent of finance in the government of Louis XIV of
France. Grown too big and rich too fast, Fouquet was already marked
for doom when he invited Louis to visit him in his new chateau and put
on a welcome so lavish, indeed royal, that the king became implacably
jealous. No functionary could afford such display except by cheating
his master. So after the pretense of a trial, accompanied by the usual
painful questions, Fouquet was condemned in 1661 and sentenced to
prison for life.)
In the long run, in spite of all manner of constraints and betrayals,
Japan's merchant class prospered, courted by the powerful and pro
gressively exempted from restrictions. These businessmen developed
their own ideology and sense of function and importance; also rules of
prudence and tactic designed to shelter them from the men of the two
swords. The key lay in single-mindedness, an ingrained suspicion of
outsiders, fanatical thrift, and nerve. Above all, thrift and its reward, ac
cumulation. "The samurai seeks fame and sacrifices profit, but the
nora
(Nora)
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