Japan and the Japanese

DRAIN OF THE PRECIOUS METALS. 385
The Dutch imagined that the above-mentioned changes in the
coins of Japan were made solely with a view to their trade and
to curtail their
profits. Raffles suggests, on the other hand,
that this degradation of the Japanese coins was the natural re-
sult of the immense export of the precious metals, which, in the
course of the two hundred years from 1540 to 1740, must, have
drained Japan of specie to the value of perhaps not less than two
hundred millions of dollars. The exports of foreign nations, as
we have seen, were almost entirely metallic, and the mines of
Japan were by no means so productive as to be able to withstand
this constant drain. The export of silver was first stopped. Then
gold was raised to such a value as effectually to stop the exportation
of that, and restrictions were, at the same time, put upon the
exportation of copper. This sagacious conjecture of Raffles is confirmed
by a tract on the Origin of the Riches of Japan, written, in
1708, by Arrai Tsikuyo-no-Kami Sama, a person of high distinc-
tion at the emperor's court, of which the original was brought to
Europe by Titsingh, and of which Klaproth has given a translation,
in the second volume of the Nouveau Journal Asiatique. The
author of this tract states, perhaps from official documents, the
amount of gold and silver exported from Nagasaki, from 1611 to
170G, as follows: Gold, 6,192,000 kobangs; silver, 112,268,700
taels. Of this amount, 2,397,600 kobangs, and 37,420,900 taels
of silver had been exported since 1646. The exports of copper
from 1663 to 1708 are stated at 1,114,446,700 lbs.(katties?).
This export is represented as having commenced in the time of
Nobunanga,* when the mines of Japan had first begun to be largely
productive, and, previous to 1611, to have been much greater than
afterwards, which is ascribed by this author in part to the amounts
sent out of the country, by the Catholic natives, to purchase masses
for their souls. Much alarm is expressed lest, with the decreased
product of the mines, and continual exportation, Japan should be
* Yet Pinto, "whose knowledge of Japan preceded the time of Nobunanga,
^ represents silver as very abundant there ; and, indeed, it seems to have been,
this abundance -which first attracted the Portuguese trade. On the whole,
one does not derive a very high idea, from this tract, of the extent or correct-
ness of the knowledge possessed by the Japanese of their own history, even
the more recent periods of it.
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