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The Formation of the Modern East Asian Economy
Yes, the silver exports which had fueled Japan's foreign trade with the rest of the world since the 1530s did decline, but only from the late 1660s and only when other Japanese goods, especially manufactured products, began to replace silver as the nation's principal money makers. For the decline of silver exports signaled a shift in the structure of Tokugawa economy's relation with the rest of the world. No longer would it essentially export primary materials and purchase manufactured good. It would instead do the opposite, thereby altering Japan's import and export relations with the rest of the East Asian in ways little comprehended by the nineteenth century, and certainly not the seventeenth century, term of "national seclusion."

     Furthermore, the political turbulence of the mid-seventeenth century saw the Chinese, not the Dutch, traders dominate the sea routes of East Asia. Surprisingly, this dominance was attained at the time of the coastal ban, a ban that was imposed far more successfully than any Ming ban. This achievement differed from earlier Chinese merchants' dominance of East Asian maritime trade form the eleventh to the mid-seventeenth century, and at the end of this lecture and also in my next lecture I will focus on this Chinese accomplishment.

     Despite the immediate political and intellectual success of the seclusion ban, the economic dimensions were slow in coming. In the view of one respected scholar of Tokugawa economic history: "Despite the expulsion of the Westerners and the suspension of the trading privileges of the Vermillion Seal Ships, the nature of Japan's external trade, basically an exchange of Chinese silk goods for Japanese silver, remained unaltered until the late 1660s. Secondly, the number of ships visiting Nagasaki in the years after the policy was implemented did not decline. In fact, they rose sharply. For the 30 years leading up to the implementation of the seclusion policy in 1639, between 30 to 60 Chinese vessels-and they would be the majority of ships-visited Nagasaki every year. Yet in 1639 the total number of ships visiting Nagasaki rose sharply to 93, and in 1641 to 97. Thirdly, over the seventeenth century, the variety of imported good entering Japan actually increased, from 63 in 1639 to 113 in 1659 and 142 in 1683. Fourthly, thanks to the strong demand for Japanese silver, imports of raw silk, made primarily in China, rose dramatically from 90,000 catties in 1640 to 130,000 in 1645.

     A clearer, more accurate understanding of Japan's economic relations with the rest of the world is evident in the fate of its principal export, silver, over the course of the first century or so of the so-called "seclusion policy."

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