ABSTRACT
The sudden increase in the production of gold and silver, particularly of silver, after the sixteenth century, was closely connected with new developments in foreign trade. Anticipating the end of the Muromachi Bakufu’s system of trade in licensed ships, the daimyos of south-west Japan sought freer trade, but all their efforts were thwarted by the policy of the Ming Empire in China. The almost instantaneous increase in Japan’s output of precious metals paralleled the concurrent increase in world output. Japanese silver had been exported to China in particular, and to all the countries of South-East Asia. The trend of Japan’s production of precious metals is therefore closely related with the history of colonization and the Far Eastern trade of Europeans. The export of gold and gold dust to China is discernible since the time of trade with the Tang and Sung dynasties, became considerable from about the twelfth century, and continued in trade with the Ming dynasty.
