Surely the blackest of black-market stories concerned the emerging market in Osaka, where a brisk trade quickly developed in blankets and clothing taken from the dead. Many such items came directly from sanitariums and were still stained with blood coughed up by tuberculosis victims. The Osaka entrepreneurs who dealt in such goods referred to them among themselves as oshaka—a ghoulishly pious reference, for shaka refers to the Buddha or buddhas.
