being paid in rice, it follows that there is a large and influential
class throughout the country who are interested in keeping up the
price of the staple article of food. Hence the opposition with which a
free trade in rice has met, even in famine times. Hence also the
frequent so-called "Rice Riots."

The amounts at which the lands formerly held by the chief Daimios, but
now patriotically given up by them to the Mikado, were assessed, sound
fabulous. The Prince of Kaga alone had an income of more than one
million two hundred thousand kokus. Yet these great proprietors were,
latterly at least, embarrassed men. They had many thousand mouths to
feed, and were mulcted of their dues right and left; while their mania
for buying foreign ships and munitions of war, often at exorbitant
prices, had plunged them heavily in debt.




A STORY OF THE OTOKODATÉ OF YEDO;


BEING THE SUPPLEMENT OF

THE STORY OF GOMPACHI AND KOMURASAKI


The word Otokodaté occurs several times in these Tales; and as I
cannot convey its full meaning by a simple translation, I must
preserve it in the text, explaining it by the following note, taken
from the Japanese of a native scholar.