Beneath the veneer of honor provided by their traditional status as a lineage of hereditary village headman, the family was ravaged during TÅson's lifetime by mental illness, physical infirmity, financial incompetence, sexual impropriety, and a devastating house fire. Reduced to poverty in part by the profligacy of his troubled relatives, TÅson himself suffered from cramped quarters, embarrassing debts, and the torment of watching several of his loved ones succumb to hunger, sickness, depression, and premature death. Social historians have long understood that the fear of financial ruin constantly hounded the Japanese rural elite, whose positions in a competitive commercial order could be wrecked by a single dissolute heir or a string of bad luck in the market.