EARLY TOKUGAWA TIMES
a remedy. Her feeble and ill-judged measures of retaliation served merely to provoke fresh aggression.
The interest of this chapter of Japanese history consists not merely in the materials that it furnishes for estimating the quality of Japanese enterprise and of Japanese fighting capacity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but also in the indications that it contains of the country's attitude towards foreign commerce and foreign intercourse at that epoch; that is to say, commerce and intercourse with China and Korea, for the time here considered was prior to the coming of Europeans. Foreign commerce was regarded, not as a factor of national wealth, but as a means of enriching a few privileged individuals. Its profits were, for the most part, confined to two great families, the Ouchi in the case of China, and the So in the case of Korea, and restrictions were imposed upon its dimensions solely for the purpose of keeping it within reach of the prescribed control. Speaking generally, it may be said that the patronage of one feudal chief or court noble involved the opposition, or aroused the jealousy, of some other, and not until the unification of the nation in modern times created a common interest in promoting factors of prosperity, did foreign commerce cease to be hampered by personal rivalries and political ambitions. As for foreign intercourse, its conveniences alone were considered, the obligations
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