The shogunate confiscated Osaka's richest merchant house in 1705 for living beyond its station

Okamoto Jōan founded the Yodoya house in Osaka. He sided with Tokugawa Ieyasu at the siege of Osaka and was allowed to collect and sell the weapons left on the battlefield. The family reclaimed land at Nakanoshima, built the Yodoyabashi bridge, and held a rice market at its storefront that became the forerunner of the Dōjima rice exchange. It lent money to the shogunate and to daimyo and owned much land. The fourth head, Shigeto, reportedly had a glass ceiling filled with goldfish. In 1705 the shogunate confiscated all the property of the fifth head and banished him from Osaka. The stated reason was a way of life beyond a merchant's station. Other explanations given are his spending in the Shinmachi pleasure quarter and a forged seal; Japanese historical dictionaries call none of them certain. Popular stories named him Tatsugorō, a name that does not appear in the family genealogy. He lived his last years in Yawata, near Kyoto, under the name Shimomura Koan. The fall was turned into a novel in 1705 and a Chikamatsu puppet play. One account says Shigeto had foreseen the seizure and set up his head clerk, Makita Niuemon, with a branch in Kurayoshi, Tottori, which returned to Osaka in 1736^†. The fortune is often put at 200 trillion yen in modern money, a figure the same account calls a possible exaggeration. A monument marks the rice market site by the Tosabori River.