The evidence we have about Tokushichi Nomura I is skeletal but instructive. He is said to have been born in the Osaka district in about 1850. In 1854, Commodore Perry would make his second, crucial visit to Japan, but when Tokushichi I was born, Japan was a closed country, and the rigid stratification of society into hereditary classes - samurai, farmer, artisan, and merchant - remained. At about the age of 10, Tokushichi I was apprenticed to a money changer, a certain Yahei Osakaya, a member of Japans lowest-ranked and socially least respectable class.