 By the end of the seventeenth century, the home of the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo (present-day Tokyo) had grown from a fishing village to a metropolis larger than any city in Europe, while Kyoto and Osaka were each close to the size of Paris. A nationwide economy flourished by means of a a network of roads and waterways accompanied by a system of mercantile laws with a unified monetary system. Literacy soared as the publication industry boomed. The effect on philosophy was profound as its center of activity shifted from the Buddhist temples to secular urban academies supported by student tuition. This commodification of knowledge led to sharp competition among schools of thought, fueling an array of new philosophies, each purporting to be an improvement on what was available elsewhere. See the entry on   Japanese Confucian Philosophy, section 3.)