JAPAN
does state, "one may readily surmise that rare specimens of porcelain were among their exports." What Kaempfer wrote is as follows:—
Here I shall leave for a while the affairs of religion, to say a few words concerning the commerce and trade of the Portuguese. The merchants in their trade, and the priests in the propagating of the gospel, prospered equally well. The merchants married the daughters of the richest inhabitants, and disposed of their goods to the best advantage. The gold of the country was exchanged against European and Indian curiosities, medicines, stuffs, and other things of the like nature. Upwards of three hundred tons of this precious metal were exported every year, for at that time they had full liberty to import and to export what goods and in what quantity they pleased. At the time of their rising greatness they imported their goods in large ships, but upon the decline of their trade they came thither with only their galliots, as they call them, or smaller vessels. They first put into the harbours of Bungo and Hirado. Then they came only to Nagasaki. The gain upon the goods imported was at least cent. per cent., and they got not a little gain upon what they exported. It is believed that had the Portuguese enjoyed the trade to Japan but twenty years longer, upon the same foot as they did for some time, such riches would have been transported out of this Ophir to Macao, and there would have been such a plenty and flow of gold and silver in that town, as sacred writs mention there was at Jerusalem in the times of Solomon. It is needless here to enter into all the particulars of their trade, and I think it sufficient to mention, that even in the last years of their going to Japan, when their trade was in its greatest decline, I mean in 1636, 2,350 chests of silver, or 2,350,000 thails, were carried on board four ships from Nagasaki to Macao. In 1637 they imported goods, and exported money, to the value of 2,142,565 thails, on board six ships; and in 1638, to the value of 1,259,023 thails, only with two galliots. And I found it mentioned that, some years before, they sent away, on board a small ship of theirs, upwards of one hundred tons of gold.
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