Sakoku - Trade Under sakoku

Trade Under sakoku

Japan traded at this time with five entities, through four "gateways." Through the Matsumae domain in Hokkaidō (then called Ezo), they traded with the Ainu people. Through the Sō clan daimyo of Tsushima, they had relations with Joseon Dynasty Korea. The Dutch East India Company was permitted to trade at Nagasaki, alongside private Chinese traders, who also traded with the Ryūkyū Kingdom. Ryūkyū, a semi-independent kingdom for nearly all of the Edo period, was controlled by the Shimazu family daimyo of Satsuma Domain. Tashiro Kazui has shown that trade between Japan and these entities was divided into two kinds of trade: Group A in which he places China and the Dutch, "whose relations fell under the direct jurisdiction of the Bakufu at Nagasaki" and Group B, represented by the Korean Kingdom and the Ryūkyū Kingdom, "who dealt with Tsushima (the Sō clan) and Satsuma (the Shimazu clan) domains respectively."

These two different groups of trade basically reflected a pattern of incoming and outgoing trade. The outgoing trade flowing out from Japan to Korea and the Ryūkyū Kingdom, eventually being brought from those places to China. In the Ryūkyū Islands and Korea, the clans in charge of trade with the Ryūkyū Kingdom and Korea built trading towns outside Japanese territory—where commerce actually took place. Due to the necessity for Japanese subjects to travel to and from these trading posts, this trade resembled something of an outgoing trade, with Japanese subjects making regular contact with foreign traders in essentially extraterritorial land. Trade with Chinese and Dutch traders in Nagasaki took place on an island called Dejima, separated away from the city by a small strait; foreigners could not enter Japan from Dejima, nor could Japanese enter Dejima, without special permissions or authority.