Numbers the Tool of Merchants
My father was really a scholar. And the scholars of the time, different from the Western scholars of today, disdained to spend any thought on money, or even to touch it. My father always longed for a quiet scholarly life with his books and the noble philosophy of the ancient sages. Yet he was forced to attend to the most worldly affairs, for it was his duty as treasury overseer to associate with merchants, and to count money, and to negotiate loans for his lord. Sometimes when his lord was in difficulty, my father had to bargain with the rich men like Kajimaya and Kōnoike of Ōsaka.
In this work he was unhappy, and so when it came to bringing up his children, he tried, it seemed to me, to give them what he thought was an ideal education. For instance, he once sent them to a teacher for calligraphy and general education. The teacher lived in the compound of the lord's storage office, but, having some merchants' children among his pupile, he naturally began to train them in numerals: "Two times two is four, two times three is six, etc." This, today, seems a very ordinary thing to teach, but when my father heard this, he took his children away in a fury.
"It is abominable," he exclaimed, "that innocent children should be taught to use numbers—the tool of merchants. There is no telling what that teacher may do next."
