Japan and the Japanese

384 JAPAN. A. D. 17751776.
thirty-six per cent. From this time the old kobangs passed as
double kobangs, being reckoned at twice their former
.weight. The
kobangs of the coinage of 1730 were about five per cent, better
than the preceding ones; but the Dutch trade continued rapidly to
decline, especially after the exportation of copper was limited, in
1714, to fifteen thousand chests, or piculs, and, in 1721, to ten
thousand piculs annually. From this time, two ships sufficed for
the Dutch trade.
For thirty years previous to 1743, the annual gross profits on
the Japanese trade had amounted to five hundred thousand florins
(two hundred thousand dollars), and some years
to six hundred
thousand (two hundred and forty thousand dollars) ; but in 1743
they sunk below two hundred thousand florins (eighty thousand
dollars), which was the annual cost of ment at Desima.
maintaining the establish-
Upon this occasion, a " Memoir on the Trade of Japan, and the
Causes of its Decline," was drawn up by Imhoff, at that time gov-
ernor-general at Batavia, which affords information on the change
in the value of the kobang, and other matters relating to the Dutch
trade to Japan, not elsewhere to be found.* It is apparent from
this memoir that the trade was not managed with the sagacity
which might have been expected from private merchants. The
cargoes were ill assorted, and did not correspond to the requisi-
tions of the Japanese. They, on the other hand, had repeatedly
offered several new articles of export, which the Company had
declined, because, in the old routine of their trade, no profita-
ble market appeared for these articles at the prices asked for
them.
The Dutch attempted to frighten the Japanese, by threatening to
close their factory altogether, but this did not produce much effect,
and, since the date of Imhoff's memoir, the factory appears not to
have done much more than to pay its expenses. That the Japanese
were not very anxious for foreign trade, appears by their having
restricted the Chinese, previous to 1740, to twenty junks annually,
and at a subsequent period to ten junks.
* Having been discovered by Sir Stamford Raffles among the public docu-
ments at Bivtixvta, he published an abstract of it in the appendix B to his
History of Java.