Japan and the Japanese

208 JAPAN. A. D. 1542 1 COO.
Though the Spaniards were never allowed to trade to Japan, at
one period, as we have seen, a considerable number of Japanese
junks frequented Manilla for the purchase of Chinese goods ; but
this trade was brought to an end in 1624, in consequence of the
facilities which it afforded for the introduction of Catholic priests
into Japan.
The Dutch trade began in 1609. We have seen that in a short
time it gained a very considerable extent; and it increased, as
the trading establishments which the Dutch gradually obtained
in India and Persia, and that on the island of Formosa, whence
they had access to China, furnishing them with a supply
of rich
silks, the great article of import into Japan. As the Portuguese
trade was carried on from Macao, so the Dutch trade was carried
on, not from Holland, but from Batavia. The year preceding the
shutting up of the Dutch in Desima is stated to have been the most
profitable of any. The previous average sales in Japan had been
about sixty tons of gold ; but that year the Dutch had imported
and disposed of goods to the value of eighty tons of gold (that is,
three million two hundred thousand dollars, a Dutch ton of gold
being one hundred thousand florins, or forty thousand dollars).
Among the exports were fourteen hundred chests of silver, each
chest containing one thousand taels, or near two million dollars in
silver alone.* About this time, however, owing to the comparative
* The tael, reckoning the picul at one hundred and thirty-three and one
third Ibs. Avoirdupois, contains five hundred and eighty-three grains Troy.
Our dollar weighs four hundred and twelve and a half grains; and supposing
the Japanese silver to be of equal fineness, the tael is worth just about one dol-
lar and forty cents. Kampfer reckons it as equivalent to three and a half
florins, which is precisely one dollar and forty cents, taking the florin at the
usual valuation of forty cents. This, however, was rather above the valua-
tion of the Dutch East India Company. There were, it seems, two kinds of
Japanese silver, known among the Dutch as heavy and light money, the latter
sometimes distinguished as bar-silver. Both kinds were carried to
account without distinction down to the year 1635, at the rate of sixty-two
and a half stivers, or one dollar and twenty-five cents per tael. After that
period the bar-silver was reckoned at fifty-seven stivers, or one dollar and
fourteen cents per tael. Reckoning the tael, as the Dutch commonly did, at
one dollar and twenty-five cents of our money, and the mas is precisely
equivalent to the Spanish eighth of a dollar. This statement is derived from