Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/199

RV 173 attached with an extensive drying-ground. The goods were divided into ten grades, and the official examiners became so skilled that they could detect at a glance the provenance of any article, though fifty-nine districts contributed to the production. The chronicles of the eighteenth century gravely record that as the prices of all these goods were officially fixed, no special "business policy" was required in selling them, the whole question being limited to an endeavour on the part of the Chinese to get as much as possible of the best grades, and on the part of the Japanese to dispose of as much as possible of the inferior.

In order to conclude the subject of Japan's foreign trade in feudal times, it may be noted that one of the earliest acts of the Tokugawa Shōgun Iyeyasu, after he assumed administrative power, was to replace his country's relations with Korea on a friendly footing. In this matter he showed great patience, but his emissaries did not succeed in altogether overcoming the anti-Japanese sentiment that prevailed in Korea as a natural result of former settlers' lawless procedure and of the Taiko's armed aggressions. Korea agreed, however, that forty Japanese junks might annually visit Fusan, where a settlement was laid out for the use of Japanese merchants. It is highly probable that the system adopted by Korea with regard to this settlement suggested the arrangements made at a later date by the Japanese themselves for the control of the Dutch at De-