The Dutch attempted to frighten the Japanese by threatening to close their factory altogether, but this did not produce much effect, and, since the date of Imhoff’s memoir, the factory appears not to have done much more than to pay its expenses. That the Japanese were not very anxious for foreign trade, appears by their having restricted the Chinese, previous to 1740, to twenty junks annually, and at a subsequent period to ten junks. The Dutch imagined that the above-mentioned changes in the coins of Japan were made solely with a view to their trade and to curtail their profits. Raffles suggests, on the other hand, that this degradation of the Japanese coins was the natural result of the immense export of the precious metals, which, in the course of the two hundred years from 1540 to 1740, must have drained Japan of specie to the value of perhaps not less than two hundred millions of dollars. The exports of foreign nations, as we have seen, were almost entirely metallic, and the mines of Japan were by no means so productive as to be able to withstand this constant drain. The export of silver was first stopped. Then gold was raised to such a value as effectually to stop the exportation of that, and restrictions were, at the same time, put upon the exportation of copper. This sagacious conjecture of Raffles is confirmed by a tract on the Origin of the Riches of Japan, written, in 1708, by Arai Chikugo-no-Kami [Arai Hakuseki], a person of high distinction at the emperor’s court, of which the original was brought to Europe by Titsingh, and of which Klaproth has given a translation, in the second volume of the “Nouveau Journal Asiatique.” The author of this tract states, perhaps from official documents, the amount of gold and silver exported from Nagasaki, from 1611 to 1706, as follows: Gold, 6,192,600 koban; silver, 112,268,700 taels. Of this amount, 2,397,600 koban and 37,420,900 taels of silver had been exported since 1646. The exports of copper from 1663 to 1708 are stated at 1,114,446,700 katties. This export is represented as having commenced in the time of Nobunaga,[37] when the mines of Japan had first begun to be largely productive, and, previous to 1611, to have been much greater than afterwards, which is ascribed by this author in part to the amounts sent out of the country, by the Catholic natives, to purchase masses for their souls. Much alarm is expressed lest, with the decreased product of the mines, and continual exportation, Japan should be reduced to poverty. Titsingh ascribes the origin of this tract to the extravagance of the reigning emperor, which it was desired to check by good advice; but the exportation of the precious metals by foreigners is evidently the point aimed at. [Illustration: VIEW OF HAKONE; LAKE BIWA]