thanks you i am in the middle of desiging a game and need a gauge for wepons cost
any ideas on what a matchlock would cost and how much was an average samurai paid per year?
thank you again for taking out the time
wayne
Tom Helm <
junkmail@...> wrote:
Wayne-
It depends a great deal on what era you are talking about. While coin
was exchanged for rice for many years there was no standard really
until the late Muromachi, when powerful lords began minting their own
currency. It is at the time of Hideyoshi that something like a national
standard starts to take shape. It is also at this time that the idea of
swords as "treasure" starts to become widespread; Hideyoshi used them
in place of land, castles and rice as reward.
Prior to say 1500, the average samurai was probably provided swords by
his lord or master. Custom swords by well known smiths would have been
out of reach for most. Famous blades with long histories were well
recognized and usually already in the hands of privileged families.
Since the rice to gold or copper equivalents of these early times does
not seem to be well known it is hard to say how much a Sengoku period
Mid-level Bushi might have paid for his sword. It is a terribly
interesting question though, and one I want to look into further.
Once you get into the Edo period it is quite easy to see the costs for
an average sword represented about the same percentage of the average
annual income of the average Japanese then as it does now. For example
Tamiya Shigemasa is said to have ordered a sword from Hizen Tadayoshi,
a well known Keicho era smith. It took him four years to pay off the
sword which cost him 100 Kan which equals 25 Ryo or 25 Koku of rice or
200 man-en in todays money. This is the cost of a custom sword by smith
with quite a reputation so the average guy is paying anywhere between
10 to 25 Ryo for his sword, (my estimate). There aren't alot of
examples of what the "average" guy paid , but I am still looking.
If we look at the Hon'Ami family of appraisers we see that they did
not issue papers for anything valued at less than 5 Ryo as a rule but
the records that survive show that 30, 50, 100 and 150 Ryo blades were
the norm. There were 200 and 300 Ryo blades very rarely and only one
1000 Ryo blade; the famous Wakasa Masamune. At the end of the Edo
period a custom sword by Kurihara Nobuhide cost 38 Ryo 3bu, Ishido
Korekazu 31 Ryo and Koyama Munetsugu 27 Ryo. Thats 310 man-en, 248
man-en and 216 man-en respectively in todays money. Considerable sums
yes, but less than you'd pay for their works today and about what you'd
pay for work by someone like Yoshihara Yoshindo currently.
I am not so sure I made my case but if you extrapolate a bit, I think
you can argue that the everyday Edo Samurai wasn't investing in works
by the most popular smiths of his day, but was likely getting the best
the smith in his Han offered and that he could afford so 10 to 20 Ryo
or about a years salary...
IMHO,
-t
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