Overview
- Is the first comprehensive account in English of the rules and practices—the microstructure–of the Dojima Rice Exchange
- Provides supporting evidence such as quotations from contemporary historical documents, which are difficult to read even for Japanese
- Presents an easy-to-access, comprehensive account of the microstructure of the world’s first organized market for futures contracts based on the state-of-the-art knowledge
Part of the book series: Advances in Japanese Business and Economics (AJBE, volume 51)
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Keywords
- Dojima Rice Exchange
- Dojima Security Exchange
- Tokugawa Japan
- futures contracts
- market microstructure
About this book
This book is the first comprehensive account of the rules and practices─the microstructure─of the Dojima Security Exchange (DSE), the world’s first futures market. Despite worldwide interest in the DSE and its relevance to modern financial markets, it is only briefly touched upon as the earliest example of a futures market in most of the existing literature in English. Until the publication of this book, there has been no comprehensive account in English of the rules and practices of the DSE.
The DSE emerged in Osaka, Japan, around the turn of the eighteenth century. In Tokugawa Japan (1603–1867), the shogunate and local lords levied taxes in rice and exchanged rice for currency in rice markets to finance their expenditures. Osaka had the biggest rice market in Japan throughout the Tokugawa period, and most local lords stored rice in their own warehouses in Osaka, selling rice at auctions. Successful bidders received “rice certificates” instead of rice itself, and each rice certificate could be exchanged for a pre-specified quantity of rice any time before its expiration at the issuer’s warehouse. These certificates were actively traded in the DSE.
The spot market in the DSE was the market for exchanging rice certificates. In turn, the futures market was the market for the trading of nominal rice derived from one of the representative rice certificates among about 30 brands. There is no physical delivery of rice in the spot market and there is no physical delivery of rice or rice certificate in the futures market—even on the maturity date. All the futures trades at the DSE should be settled by simply paying or receiving the payoff defined as the difference in price between the time of selling (buying) and buying back (selling back). The futures trade was called ‘Cho-Ai-Mai’, which literally means ‘the rice trades on the book’, and implies that there is no physical delivery of rice or rice certificate.
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Microstructure of the First Organized Futures Market
Book Subtitle: The Dojima Security Exchange from 1730 to 1869
Authors: Yasuo Takatsuki, Takashi Kamihigashi
Series Title: Advances in Japanese Business and Economics
Publisher: Springer Singapore
eBook Packages: Economics and Finance, Economics and Finance (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2025
Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-287-819-9Due: 11 September 2025
eBook ISBN: 978-981-287-820-5Due: 11 September 2025
Series ISSN: 2197-8859
Series E-ISSN: 2197-8867
Edition Number: 1
Number of Illustrations: 30 b/w illustrations, 10 illustrations in colour
Additional Information: The book is an English translation of a Japanese language book that won the Nikkei Prize in the autumn of 2012.