Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/126

 assistance from the Ming rulers, then reduced to the last extremity by the Manchu. He forbade Japanese subjects to travel abroad under penalty of death. He interdicted the building of sea-going ships. He closed the country to all foreigners except a few Dutchmen, and even they were not allowed to continue their trade except on condition of living a life of degraded ostracism on a little island in Nagasaki harbour. In short, he arrested Japan's international development, which then seemed full of promise, and he deliberately diverted her from opportunities that would have opened for her a great career, had she utilised them boldly.

It is necessary to elaborate this last point; to show what were the opportunities upon which Japan turned her back in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and to what motives her suicidal policy is attributable.

When Occidental commerce first invited Japan's participation, the Japanese merchant laboured under two signal disqualifications for engaging in it successfully,—inexperience almost absolute, and a traditional habit of relying on official tutelage in commercial affairs. He was accustomed to exchange his staple commodities at prices fixed by law; he did not enjoy the privilege of discriminating between the intrinsic values of the coins issuing from the mint, but was required to render blind deference to their superscriptions; his commercial conscience had been