d. Other vicissitudes
overtook them, and finally the Japanese concluded that the safest
course was to confine the Dutch to some position where, in a moment
of emergency, they could easily be brought under Japanese control.
Nagasaki was chosen as suitable, and there a Dutch factory was
established which, for a time, flourished satisfactorily. From seven
to ten Dutch vessels used to enter the port annually--their cargoes
valued at some eighty thousand pounds (avdp.) of silver, and the
chief staples of import being silk and piece-goods. Customs duties
amounting to five per cent, were levied; 495 pounds of silver had to
be paid annually as a rent for the little island of Deshima, and
every year a mission had to proceed to Yedo from the factory,
carrying presents for the chief Bakufu officials, which presents are
said to have aggregated some 550 pounds of silver on each occasion.
The Dutch traders, nevertheless, found their business profitable
owing to purchases of gold and copper, which metals could be procured
in Japan at much lower rates than they commanded in Europe. Thus, the
now familiar question of an outflow of specie was forced upon
Japanese attention at that early date, and, by way of remedy, the
Government adopted, in 1790, the policy of restricting to one vessel
annually the Dutch ships entering Nagasaki, and forbidding that
vessel to carry away more than 350 tons of copper.

EFFECTS PRODUCED UPON JAPAN BY THE POLICY OF EXCLUSION

Whatever losses Japan's policy of seclusion caused to the nations
which were its victims, there can be no doubt that she herself was
the chief sufferer. During two and a half centuries she remained
without breathing the atmosphere of international competition, or
deriving inspiration from an exchange of ideas with other countries.
While the world moved steadily forward, Japan stood practically
unchanging, and when ultimately she emerged into contact with the
Occident, she found herself separated by an immense interval from the
material civilization it had developed.

The contrast between the Japan of the middle of the sixteenth and
that of the middle of the seventeenth century has often been made by
the historian of foreign influence. In 1541 the country was open to
foreign trade, foreign civilization and foreign ideas and these were
welcomed eagerly and, in accordance with the remarkable natural
aptitude of the Japanese for adaptation, were readily assimilated.
Not only were foreig