Japanese modern municipal retail and wholesale markets in comparison with European markets

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article seeks to assess the relevance of market ideas outside the European context. In pre-modern Japan, there was neither street market nor retail market but wholesale markets in cities. Feudal lords permitted wholesale dealers to operate in the market as long as the dealers paid either tribute such as fish or tax money to their lords. The Meiji Restoration in the late nineteenth century brought an end to the feudal system. In modern Japan, the problem of food supply in the city arose after the Japanese-Russo War. The Rice Riots broke out in 1918, and drove many cities to open their own municipal retail markets in order to supply urban dwellers with food and daily necessities. Fixed and marked price and cash payment were the operating principles of those municipal retail markets. These principles represented the characteristic features of the modern retail trade. Such municipal retail markets played an important role in the modernization of the retail trade in Japan.