増上寺の大門の内に床見世とこみせを並べたいと、小さな商人たちが願い出た

The petition puts it like this:

"Of late the residents have become few, the small merchants have become as if cut off from their own trade, and their livelihood grows ever more pressed."

Fewer people live here now, it says, and the small traders have drifted away from their business; their living is getting harder and harder.

Since Zojoji is a place where worshippers gather, they wanted to build stalls over the drains in front of the sub-temples, on both sides of the road inside the great gate, and rent them out.

Outside the main gate of the precinct, they wanted to set up tea stalls as resting places for worshippers.

Half of the ground rent, the petition adds, they wished to donate to the Youikusha now being established.

Tokyo Prefecture made an inquiry about the matter to the Navy Ministry.

The Navy Ministry answered that it had no objection, and asked that permission be granted.

A note in red dated the ninth day of the fifth month of that year asked whether the request might be granted as asked.

The reason given was that the place would not block the road, and it would help the small merchants make a living.

It added that a fixed rule for the ground rent would soon be set, and that the petitioners should be told so.

Among the names on the petition, besides Zojoji, are Senba Tokujiro of Shiba Shichikencho and Takahashi Tokusaburo of Shiba Nakamonzen.

Two years later, in the eleventh month of the seventh year of Meiji, two men with the same names asked to set up seven stalls within Minami-Matsubara in the Shiba park grounds.

The general affairs section of Tokyo Prefecture, in its own query, said that the place was narrow, and that allowing anything new would make it crowded and dirty and spoil the scenery.

The order handed down on the twenty-eighth of that month said that new stalls and reed-screen booths in the park grounds could not be permitted.