MIDDLE PERIOD
of the colossal walls of the castle moats in Yedo. A conflagration followed, in which thirty-seven thousand lives were lost, and a tidal wave destroyed a hundred thousand people in the districts of Sagami, Kazusa, and Awa. In 1708 the mountain Fuji suddenly burst from quiescence into violent eruption, and vast tracts of country were devastated. It was in the year after this last event that the debauched student and slave of superstition, Tsunayoshi, died, bequeathing to his successor a legacy of fanatical laws and financial confusion; and it was then that the genius and wise statecraft of Arai Hakuseki saved the country from being flooded with another issue of coins possessing scarcely any intrinsic value. Six years sufficed to restore the currency to its old standard of purity and to bring prices to their normal level; but when Arai had to surrender his office in 1716, on the accession of the Shōgun Yoshimune, recourse was again had to debased coins, and economical troubles again ensued. Something of these embarrassments must be ascribed to the drain of gold resulting from the country's foreign trade. Japan, in the early days, had little to sell to foreign merchants, but found much to buy from them. The records say that from 1596 to 1638 the exports of precious metals amounted to six million riyo of gold (nine and a half millions sterling), nine million pounds (avoirdupois) of silver, and some three million pounds of copper. These figures represent, in the case
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