ABSTRACT
The opening of the ports in 1859 brought an influx of foreign textile goods into the Japanese market and 30 to 50 percent of the Japanese import trade was occupied by textile goods by the end of the nineteenth century. 1 This fact shows us that the textile trade was one of the main arenas in which Japanese merchants were linked into the commercial networks in East Asia. Given the central role of imported textiles in Japanese foreign trade it is important to explore the ways in which international and domestic markets were linked in this period.
