Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/191



OTHING is more noteworthy in the commercial history of this epoch than the improvement that took place in the social status of the merchant during the second half of the sixteenth century. Much of the change was due to the liberal views of the Taikō y whose patronage of everything that could contribute to national prosperity was quite impartial. He strongly encouraged commercial voyages by his countrymen to Macao, to the Philippines, to Cambodia, to Annan, and to other places. Nine ships engaged in this trade every year. They carried licences bearing the Taikō's vermilion stamp, and their ports of departure were Nagasaki, Ōsaka (for Kyōtō), and Sakai. Associated with these enterprises were the names of some ambitious adventurers, who sought to persuade Hideyoshi to undertake the conquest of Formosa and the Philippines. There is evidence to show that they would have succeeded had not his mind been already fixed upon a greater pros-