Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/178

 of gold, nearly one-half, and in the case of silver almost the whole, of the coins struck at the mint during the same interval. Dutch importers sold as much as three and one fourth million dollars (Mexican) worth of commodities annually to the Japanese at that epoch, and not rarely two hundred Chinese junks might be seen at one time in the harbour of Nagasaki. Yet no attempt was made to impose official restrictions upon the amount of these import transactions, or on the consequent exodus of specie, until the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and not before 1715 were drastic measures adopted to enforce such restrictions. The country's store of precious metals had by that time been greatly reduced, and financiers of mediocre acumen might be excused if debasement of the currency suggested itself as an easy, sufficient, and profitable method of checking the outflow.

Other unwonted phenomena that gave much concern to the Tokugawa rulers in the second half of the eighteenth century were the rapid growth of cities and the turbulence of agriculturists. The former was a natural result of the system inaugurated by Iyeyasu, which, by compelling the feudal magnates to keep establishments in Yedo, caused a multitude of tradesmen to flock to the capital, and thus produced a rapid centralisation of wealth. The Shōgun's ministers saw not only that the scale of living became constantly higher, with a corresponding apprecia-