Goyokin

• Other Names: 御用銀 (goyou gin)
• Japanese: 御用金 (goyou kin)

Goyôkin was a special type of tax, or levy, imposed by domains at times upon their subjects in the Edo period. In western parts of Japan where silver was the standard mode of currency instead of gold, this was called goyôgin.

While the special type of tax called kariage exacted funds chiefly or exclusively from retainers, and while the brunt of regular taxes was for the most part borne by the peasantry, goyôkin aimed chiefly at those who had money to pay: namely, the wealthy merchants. Like the kariage, it was ostensibly a mandatory loan, not a "tax," though in practice, the domain rarely paid it back. The amount needed was determined, and then the amount each townsman or rural retainer would have to pay was calculated. Wealthy merchants paid the most in goyôkin, but poorer people of various classes of society often bore the brunt of this special "loan" as well. Some of the wealthiest merchants, however, escaped the levy, as their status as village headmen or district officials within a city or town made them tax exempt.

References

• Luke Roberts, Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in 18th-Century Tosa, Cambridge University Press (1998), 95.