Japan participates in the African slave trade.

Suppose that during the Edo period, Portuguese merchants start selling African slaves to the Japanese and continues to do so until the abolition of slavery in the West. How would this affect Japan culturally and economically?
 
Suppose that during the Edo period, Portuguese merchants start selling African slaves to the Japanese and continues to do so until the abolition of slavery in the West. How would this affect Japan culturally and economically?
Well, the Portuguese would soon run into the small issue of not being the Dutch and thus not allowed to trade in or with Japan...

The second question is why, since as far as I know Japan had all the people and workforce it needed, or even a small surplus
(and had been at the receiving end of slave trading in the preceding century.

This has something to do with Yasuke, right?
 
Issue is, well, how are they going to be able to get Africans over from East Africa, across the Indian Ocean, through the Straits of Malacca, and up the South China Sea to Japan in any timely and/or economically profitable way? The sailing distance from East Africa to the closest point in Japan is much, much further than the distance from West Africa to the Americas and a high number of African slaves died on the Atlantic Triangle Trade Route. The weather conditions too are much more variable in the Indian Ocean and the Straits of Malacca, with there being an ideal window to sail every year that, without high demand for the good (spices were that OTL) would discourage such a risky and time-consuming venture. It's not like Japan was lacking in manpower or rural population either (land being more the issue), while the American colonies needed manpower for the vast, unused lands. The cost vs the benefit ratio doesn't really justify the system, as it were.
 
The distance from Japan to Africa is so vast, that using slave labor from a place like Korea, China, and Southeast Asia, as the money from feeding the slaves across the long journey would be alot of money, so getting slave labor from Asia itself would be far more convenient.
 
I could see the Dutch bring a limited number, but between the high numbers of unemployed already living in Japan I cannot imagine them needing many.
 
Suppose that during the Edo period, Portuguese merchants start selling African slaves to the Japanese and continues to do so until the abolition of slavery in the West. How would this affect Japan culturally and economically?

Japan would have to be open to slavery on that scale, the problem with slave trading is that native Japanese would have to worry about competition for labor, and that could lead to even more conflicts with the feudal lords and their subjects. The last thing anyone wants is more social disorder after everything that happened.
 

Lusitania

Donor
Makes no sense. Slave trade operated no different than any other commodity which would only exist if it was profitable. There would of been no profit in transporting people that distance. If there was a market for imported slavers then they would of been sourced from close sources. Most have indicated China and Korea. If that was too difficult the Philippines or East Indies would of been used but Africa no.
 
Who he was?

Yasuke was an African Slave who was freed by Oda Nobunaga and made one of his retainers, and had accompanied Nobunaga on campaign and fought with his eldest son Nobutada during his stand at Honnoji, he only served for little more than a year and his fate afterward is unclear.
 
Why would slavery be economically viable in the Japanese home islands? It's not a tropical area with a cash crop economy like the Caribbean or the Southern United States.

Even if slavery made economic sense in Japan, wouldn't the Japanese slaveholders be pressing lower class Japanese serfs/agricultural laborers into indentured servitude, or buying slaves from somewhere else in the pacific?

There was a Western African slave trade that crossed the Atlantic to the Americas, and an Islamic slave trade that sold African slaves in the Arab world and the Indian Ocean basin. There may have been a small number of travelers back and forth between Africa and Japan, but mass migration between areas that distant seems uneconomical, whether it was voluntary or not.
 
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