Note 3 — Chapter XIX · JAPAN.

The effect of the commercial isolation of Japan on the value of general commodities was no less striking. The first foreign traders might have bought with eyes shut nearly every article that was offered to them, so great was the disparity of prices between Japan and her nearest markets. Mr Hunter gives an interesting example. "I had in go-downs," he says, "8000 piculs of sapan-wood imported from Manila unsaleable at one dollar and a quarter per picul, which was about its cost. Immediately that the opening of the port of Simoda to foreign trade was announced officially, an English vessel was chartered to carry it there. Brief—it was sold for 35 dollars per picul, and the proceeds were invested in Japanese vegetable wax at a cost of 6½ dollars, and sold for $17 the picul (133⅓ lb. English)," so that in the short voyage from China to Japan and back the capital multiplied seventy times!