Japan and the Japanese

EXPORT OF GOLD AND SILVER. 209
exhaustion of the silver, or the comparative increase of gold, that
metal became a leading, as, indeed, it seems to have been before a
considerable article of export with the Dutch. The gold kobarig, the
national coin of the Japanese, weighed at this time forty-seven kan-
derins, that is, two hundred and seventy-four grains Troy, which is
sixteen grains more than our present eagle. But, if superior in
weight, the kobang was inferior in fineness, containing of pure gold
only two hundred and twenty-four grains, whereas the eagle contains
t\vo hundred and thirty-two grains. It passed in Japan and wag
purchased by the Dutch for six taels or less in silver, which enablec
them to dispose of it to good advantage on the coast of Coromande",
where the relative value of gold was much higher. In the two year;,
1670, 1671, more than one hundred thousand kobangs were exported,
at a profit of a million florins ; and down to that time the Dutch
sent annually to Japan five or six ships a year. In 1644, the
export of copper began, and went on gradually increasing. In 1671,
an edict was issued, prohibiting the further export of silver ; but
a Dutch memoir by Imhoff, quoted by Raffles (History of Java, Appendix
B), and found by him, it would seem, among the Dutch records at
Batavia. Of the chests of silver and gold, particularly the former, so often
mentioned in the old accounts of the Dutch and Portuguese trade, 1 have
met with no description, except in Montanus's Memorable Embassies.
Unreliable and worthless as that huge volume generally is, its compilers
certainly had access to valuable Dutch papers, and it is apparently from
that source that they have drawn what they say of the moneys, weights
and measures, of Japan. Of the chests of silver and gold they speak as fol-
lows : " Moreover, their paying of money is very strange ; for the Japanese,
having great store of gold and silver, observe a custom to receive their money
without telling or seeing it. The mint-master puts the gold in papers, which
contain the value of two hundred pounds sterling ; these, sealed up, pass from
one to another without being questioned. They also use little wooden boxes, in
which they put twenty sealed papers of gold, which is as much as a man
can handsomely carry ; every box amounts to four thousand pounds sterling;
and the like boxes, but of another fashion, they use for their silver, in every
one of which is twelve hundred crowns, and is sealed with the coiner's seal.
But doth it not seem strange that never any deceipt is found in that blind
way of paying money ? " " The silver, though weighed and coined, is of nc
certain value. The coiners put it together into little packs worth sixty
crowns " I suppose taels. Caron says, however, that these packages con-
tained fifty taels.
18*