Japan and the Japanese

246 JAPAN. A. D. 1690.
Japan, being sixty ma?, or six tads. But the Japanese having
obliged the Dutch East India Company to accept payment in gold
kobangs, each reckoned at sixty-eight mas, the sales of the Company,
though made to the amount of three hundred thousand taels
in silver, produced only forty-four thousand one hundred and
eighteen kobangs."
A chance was thus afforded, as Kampfer expresses it, "to make
the officers concerned in carrying on the Dutch trade some amends
for their trouble and hard usage, by allowing them to dispose of
goods on their own private account," to the value of five thousand
six hundred and eighty-two kobangs, equivalent, at the reckoning
of fifty-eight mas, to forty thousand taels, thus making up the fifty
thousand kobangs, to the amount of which the annual sale of Dutch
goods was limited ; and as this arrangement for private trade had
been made by the Japanese, the East India Company did not ven-
ture to interfere with it.
At the head of these officers stands the Director, or, as he is called
by the Japanese, Captain of the Dutch (C