Japan's Economy by Proxy in the Seventeenth Century: China, the N ...

These groups ensured that, in exchange for Japanese precious metals, the Asian luxury goods that were in such demand in early modern Japan flowed uninterrupted. The central role of Japan in the Asian economy becomes particularly evident through an analysis of the quantity and variety of luxury goods imported into the country. That economic role, however, has been obscured by a number of factors, not least of which is the complex nature of the sakoku decrees. It is my goal in the final chapter, therefore, to address this phenomenon and to evaluate sakoku for what it really was: an effort on the part of the Tokugawa authorities to balance internal security concerns with a genuine desire to participate in the international economy of the seventeenth century.