(^366) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
advantages over Europe: (1) two hundred fifty years without war or
revolution; (2) cheaper and more accessible water transport; (3) a sin
gle language and culture; (4) the abolition of old trade barriers and the
prohibition of new; and (5) the development of a common merchant
ethic.^26
Division of labor and specialization fostered closer ties between
country and town, a precocious "urbanization" of the countryside that
was found in Europe only in England and, to a lesser degree, Holland.
The remotest rural areas were crisscrossed by a network of peddlers,
ready to sell for cash or on credit. The so-called Toyama drug sellers,
for example, would leave a stock of their goods with farmers and return
later on to be paid for whatever had been used. That says something
about Japanese neatness (no small matter) and honesty (even more
important).^27 More densely settled areas warranted the establishment
of fixed outlets. We have the inventory of a village "general store" in
- The variety of goods is astonishing, some of them distinctive
markers of an economy in an advanced preindustrial stage: thus a large
range of manufactures, including hardware and garments that farm
households had once made for themselves; and writing implements
and paper in a country where literacy was not easy to come by.^28 One
could not at that date have found such a store in the Continental Eu
ropean countryside, except perhaps in the watchmaking districts of
Switzerland.
So busy, moving, and changing a society would not be caged intellec
tually. In spite of strenuous restrictions and controls, European knowl
edge seeped in, mostly by personal contact with the Dutch at Deshima.
By the mid-eighteenth century the Japanese called this foreign knowl
edge rangaku; the ran is the lan of Holland (Japanese Oranda; Japan
ese has no letter "1"). This in itself signaled a new attitude: they had
been calling it bangaku, "barbarian learning."^29
One consequence of this awakening was the beginning of discrimi
nation between helpful and harmful, acceptable and unacceptable.
Christianity and its writings were still seen as undesirable and taboo.
But some Japanese caught on that Japan had much to gain from West
ern secular knowledge.
So, in 1720, the first breach was made: the Bakufu agreed that non-
Christian books could be imported; and while this relaxation had its pe
riods of constriction and reaction, the way was open now for some few
Japanese to study the new learning and to publish on the subject. This
development led to a clash between the new learning and the dominant