Dōjima Rice Exchange

It was first established in 1697, officially sanctioned, sponsored and organized by the shogunate in 1773, reorganized in 1868, and dissolved entirely in 1939, being absorbed into the Government Rice Agency (日本米穀株式会社)(cf.ja:食糧管理制度).

Over the course of the Edo period, the entire economy would not only shift from rice to coin, but would also see the introduction and spread of paper money initiated and facilitated by the men of Dōjima.

An incredible proportion of the nation's monetary transactions were handled through the private, independent, merchants of Dōjima, who stored rice for most of the daimyō, exchanging it for paper money.

Dōjima held what were in essence "bank accounts" for a great number of samurai and daimyō, managing deposits, withdrawals, loans, and tax payments.

Though the shogunate ultimately had little sense of modern economic theory, and thus would make some serious errors in their monetary and financial policy over the course of the following century or so, they nevertheless recognized the need for governmental control of such policies; exchange rates, monetary standards and the like had to be set by the government, and not left in the hands of an increasingly wealthy and powerful merchant class which was intended to be at the bottom of the neo-Confucian mibunsei class system.