New Businesses Emerge
|Ships dropping off rice. Ships being laden with rapeseed oil. The sun has barely risen, yet the wharfs in front of the han (domain) warehouses, stretching from the tip of Nakanoshima up the riverfronts, are already bustling with laborers packing cargo and merchants supervising the loading and unloading of goods.
Osakahome of Sumitomois crisscrossed by canals that connect to the Yodogawa, a river that flows into Osaka Bay to the citys west. In the early 17th century, after regular maritime transport to Edo (now Tokyo) began and shipping routes were opened to the cities along the Japan Sea coast, Osaka grew in importance as a supplier of goods to Edo. Edo was becoming a major demand center, making Osaka more prosperous with each passing day.
Taking over from Toyotomi Hideyoshi (15361598), who built Osaka Castle, Tokugawa Ieyasu (15421616) established a new shogunate in 1603. A mere 10 years after he first set foot in the isolated village of Edo, it had blossomed almost overnight into the center of government. Edo continued to expand rapidly, and by around 1700 it had grown into the worlds largest city, with a population of over a million.
Edos growth was so rapid that the agricultural regions surrounding it could not possibly support its burgeoning population. The Osaka region filled the gap, and grew in importance in peoples minds as it supplied Edo with staples like soy sauce, oil, and sake. Before long, recognizing how Osaka was supporting Edo, people began to call it Japans kitchen.
Of course, Osaka was much more than a distribution center. As we discussed in Part II of this series, the shogunate decreed that copper produced in any region of Japan had to be refined in Osaka if it was to be exported. Osaka became a center not just for copper refining, but for a number of other processing industries as well. These included working rapeseed into lamp oil and turning raw cotton into fiber for use in cloth.
As Osakas economy expanded in its role as Japans kitchen, some of its merchants also rose to prominence, accumulating both reputation and capital. Sumitomo is by no means the only major Japanese firm that traces its origins to this period of Osakas history: Konoike invented sake brewing and then moved into money changing; Mitsui started in dry goods; and Takeda started in medicine trading, all at around this time.