Guilds and Za
Members of a trade gather, govern training and qualification and quality, and defend a local monopoly. The European guild had three tiers — apprentice, journeyman, master. An apprentice lived in the master's house for five to nine years. A journeyman could do independent work but could not keep a workshop, take apprentices, or vote in the guild. Becoming a master required a masterpiece proving skill, and also a steep entrance fee, the expense of entertaining the existing masters, and proof of capital. The staircase was, in other words, a device for keeping the number of masters down. Japan's za took a different shape: monopoly trading rights granted in exchange for dues paid to a honjo — a noble house or temple — so the privilege originated on the side of power. Skill guaranteed in Europe, trading rights guaranteed in Japan; the same ties of a trade, tilted differently. And the assessment of guilds still divides scholars. Sheilagh Ogilvie argues that what guilds actually did was protect members' interests at the expense of consumers and outsiders, with barriers to entry operating as discrimination against migrants, women and Jews. S. R. Epstein replied that guilds were themselves the carriers of innovation, through the transfer of technique between generations by apprenticeship and its spread across geography by journeymen on the road. The striking part is that the two cite the same figures from the same statistics for opposite conclusions. Data does not speak; interpretation does — a debate in which you can watch the reading of history itself.