JAPAN
ury's fiat notes had suffered such marked fluctuations of specie value that sound or successful commerce became very difficult. Against the import merchant the currency trouble worked with double potency. Not only did the gold with which he purchased goods appreciate constantly in terms of the silver for which he sold them, but silver itself appreciated sharply and rapidly in forms of the fiat notes paid by Japanese consumers. Cursory reflection may suggest that these factors should have operated inversely to stimulate exports as much as they depressed imports. But such was not altogether the case in practice. For the exporter's transactions were always hampered by the possibility that a delay of a week or even a day might increase the purchasing power of his silver in Japanese markets by bringing about a further depreciation of paper, so that he worked timidly and hesitatingly, dividing his operations as minutely as possible in order to take advantage of the downward tendency of the fiat notes. Not till this element of pernicious disturbance was removed did the trade recover a healthy tone and grow so lustily as to tread closely on the heels of the foreign commerce of China, with her three hundred million inhabitants and long-established international relations.
In the main this trade was built up by the energy and enterprise of the foreign middleman. He acted the part of an excellent agent. As an exporter, his command of cheap capital, his ex-
210
