The Portuguese, who were the first Europeans to establish commercial intercourse with Japan, held a monopoly of the trade for some time, so that the Dutch settlers in the Indies were excluded from competing with them. Finally, however, in 1596, the Dutch managed to make their way to Hirado in the province of Hizen, in order to arrange the preliminaries of a commerce destined to continue for a long time. Among the persons who arrived in the Dutch ships were a Dutchman named Jan Joost and an Englishman, William Adams, the latter coming in the capacity of pilot. These two foreigners had an interview with Iyeyasu, who, much pleased with them, conceived the idea of trading with Western countries. Houses and lands were given to the two strangers, and they resided in Edo, the streets now known as Yayosugashi and Anjinchō being the places where they are said to have lived. The Dutch, eager to monopolize the trade with Japan, made another visit to Japan in a vessel of war, with a view to expelling the Portuguese merchants. They brought with them an autograph letter and presents from the King of Holland for the shōgun, and solicited permission to carry on commerce, to which Iyeyasu readily acceded. In 1612 the first Dutch merchantman arrived in Japanese waters and was soon afterward followed by a British ship, the coming of the latter being due to information furnished by William Adams to his country with reference to the state of affairs in Japan. Iyeyasu placed no obstacles in the way of British trade, but the relations between the Dutch and the English at Hirado were so inharmonious that at one time they were on the point of resorting to open hostilities. The Dutch finally prevailed upon the shōgun to impose as many restrictions as possible on the trade of the English, and the result was that although the friction between the British and the Dutch was ostensibly removed, the former, finding themselves unable to carry on business profitably, finally took their departure. About this time great numbers of merchants came to Japan from Annam, Siam, Luzon, and other places of the south, as well as from the southern districts of China and from India, while on the Japanese side wealthy traders of Kiushū traveled abroad to a great extent for business purposes, and Iyeyasu himself went so far as to dispatch people across the Pacific to New Spain in America in order to open commercial relations. The Japanese at that era possessed very strongly constructed vessels, measuring as much as 120 feet by 54, fully rigged with three masts, having dark-red lacquered hulls and capable of carrying a great number of passengers. In these ships were exported copper, bronze utensils, lacquered articles, umbrellas, fans, screens, sulphur, camphor, dyed textile fabrics, wheat flour, and so forth, and on their return voyage they brought to Japan silk cocoons, silk fabrics, woolen stuffs, sugar, drugs, incense, vermilion, quicksilver, glass, coral, whalebone and so forth.