umbrellas, old utensils, and other inconvenient articles, on which he charges twice or three times as much interest as on clothes. The regulation-interest is 2.5 sen per month on one yen; but the usual loans in these poor quarters vary from twenty to fifty sen, and the rate of interest is 1.8 sen or 3.6 per cent. on fifty sen, one sen or five per cent. on twenty sen, and 0.8 sen or 8 per cent. on 10 sen. Thus by lending out one yen in ten separate tickets of ten sen each, the pawnbroker gets 8 sen per month, or 96 per cent. per annum. The poor, however, do not leave their articles of daily use in pawn so long; they generally redeem them in a few days, and at most within a week. In some cases they redeem in the evening what they pawned in the morning, and pledge in the evening to take out early next
THE FRONT OF A PAWN-SHOP.
day. Thus they will in the evening redeem their rice-boxes with articles of trade, which they bring out next morning with a utensil as hostage. Their upper and nether garments also play hide-and-seek up the spout. For a day’s pawn they are compelled to pay a month’s interest as the pawnbroker does not recognise a shorter period; and for the use of ten or twenty sen for a day or even half a day, they pay from five to eight per cent. interest. Most pawnbrokers in these quarters
