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Ch'ing trade with Japan is well reported not only in familiar Japanese and Dutch sources but in a wealth of Chinese material as well. This chapter assembles a brief survey of the first century of Ch'ing intercourse with Japan, with special reference to the trade in copper and its relationship to the operations of the Chinese mints. Ch'ing China, for a period of nearly forty years, was totally dependent upon Japan for the copper which went into its currency issues. During this period the Chinese mints were consuming about 40,000 piculs of copper annually, all of which was imported from Japan. Though greatly shrunken in volume, the Chinese junk trade with Japan was to endure into the middle of the nineteenth century, when new conditions brought on by the activities of the Western trading nations forced a change in the relationship between the two countries. Keywords: Ch'ing China; Chinese mints; copper; Japan; Junk trade; Western trading nations

This chapter traces the formation and the evolution of the bakuhan structure of government from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. The political and social institutions that underlay the bakuhan polity had their origins in the unification movement of the last half of the sixteenth century, especially in the great feats of military consolidation and social engineering achieved by Toyotomi Hideyoshi during the last two decades of the century. The story of the rise of the Tokugawa family to become the foremost military house of Japan follows a pattern common among a whole class of active regional military families who competed for local dominion during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The structure of power over which the Tokugawa shogun ultimately presided was conceived as a balance among several classes of daimyo and the interests of the shogun.

INTRODUCTION The Muromachi bakufu, the second of the three military governments that held power in Japan from 1185 to 1867, was founded between 1336 and 1338 by Ashikaga Takauji (1305–58). The name Muromachi was taken from the district in Kyoto where the Ashikaga residence and administrative headquarters were located after 1378. The end of the regime is dated either 1573, when the last Ashikaga shogun was ousted from Kyoto, or 1597, when the ex-shogun died in exile. The period in Japanese history defined by the existence of the Muromachi bakufu has been judged in two quite contradictory ways. Measured on the basis of effective centralized rule, it has been seen as a time of political weakness and social unrest. Yet in cultural terms it has been recognized as one of Japan's most creative periods of artistic achievement. There is, of course, no necessary contradiction between political instability and cultural brilliance. And modern historians have tended to play down the apparent paradox. They stress instead the significant social and institutional changes of the time: when military government (the bakufu system) came into its own, when the military aristocracy (the buke or samurai estate) became the real rulers of the country, and when profound changes were wrought in the distribution of rights over land and in the organization of the cultivating class. Recent assessments have suggested that even with respect to government effectiveness, the Ashikaga should not be dismissed too lightly. After all, the Muromachi bakufu lasted for more than two hundred years.