“Of all the imported goods, raw silk is the best liked, though it yields the least profit of any. All sorts of stuffs and cloths yield a considerable and sure profit, and should there be never so much imported, the consumption in so populous a country would be still greater. Brazil wood and hides are also to be disposed of to very good advantage. The most profitable commodities are sugar, catechu, storax liquida, camphor of Borneo (which they covet above all other sorts), looking-glasses, etc., but only when they have occasion for them, and when the Chinese have imported in small quantities. Corals and amber are two of the most valuable commodities in these eastern parts; but Japan hath been so thoroughly provided by smugglers, that at present there is scarce fifty per cent to be got upon them, whereas formerly we could sell them, ten, nay, a hundred times dearer. The price of these things, and of all natural and artificial curiosities, varies very much, according to the number and disposition of the buyers, who may be sure to get cent per cent clear profit by them, at what price soever they buy them. “The yearly sum to the value of which the Dutch are permitted to sell goods imported by them is, by Japanese reckoning, three hundred chests of silver, each of a thousand taels, or in gold fifty thousand kobans; the highest value of the koban, as current in Japan, being sixty mas, or six taels. But the Japanese having obliged the Dutch East India Company to accept payment in gold kobans, each reckoned at sixty-eight mas, the sales of the Company, though made to the amount of three hundred thousand taels in silver, produced only forty-four thousand one hundred and eighteen kobans.” A chance was thus afforded, as Kämpfer expresses it “to make the officers concerned in carrying on the Dutch trade some amends for their trouble and hard usage, by allowing them to dispose of goods on their own private account,” to the value of five thousand six hundred and eighty-two kobans, equivalent, at the reckoning of fifty-eight mas, to forty thousand taels, thus making up the fifty thousand kobans, to the amount of which the annual sale of Dutch goods was limited; and as this arrangement for private trade had been made by the Japanese, the East India Company did not venture to interfere with it.