Things it's very unlikely Tokugawa Japan would do

Of course. But early modern Spain's economy -- measured by imports + exports / population -- was just as open as England's, and Portugal's was more.

Hey, trade did have an important role in the Spanish economy. Not a beneficial one, perhaps. And skewed. But it did.

Moreover, Tokugawa Japan, ain't Spain. It ain't England or Holland, either. But I think we can guess which sort of foreign trade would more closely approximate to the level of the Tokugawa economy.

AFAIK they weren't running out of timber. Prices were going up, but that's a different thing.

I wonder if you also feel there is a limitless supply of oil? ;)

Rising prices means that demand is outstripping supply; even if deforestation wasn't critical....
 
Rising prices means that demand is outstripping supply; even if deforestation wasn't critical....
Well, it is possible to look at that from the angle that the Tokugawa were using their stranglehold on the sources of timber to artificially control the supply in order to inflate the price, whether or not there existed any particular degree of deforestation.

However, with the climbing price of timber still extant, the potential impetus still remains for someone ambitious and enterprising to try and use Hokkaido to break into the market.
 
Hey, trade did have an important role in the Spanish economy. Not a beneficial one, perhaps. And skewed. But it did.....

My point. What magically makes trade be beneficial (as it was to England) instead of destructive (as it was to Spain)? More to the point, what makes the answer intuitively obvious to a 17th century Japanese?


But I think we can guess which sort of foreign trade would more closely approximate to the level of the Tokugawa economy.

...note that the 16th century was a time of wide-open free trade for Japan.

It was also a period of constant war, famine, plague and misery, with income generally stagnant or falling.


I wonder if you also feel there is a limitless supply of oil? ;)....

Because oil grows on... no, wait.



Rising prices means that demand is outstripping supply;
...really? I have some diamonds to sell you.


Doug M.
 
However, with the climbing price of timber still extant, the potential impetus still remains for someone ambitious and enterprising to try and use Hokkaido to break into the market.

This is not a completely daft idea -- if the Tokugawa were going to expand anywhere, Hokkaido is the least unlikely candidate. However, there are some problems.

1) As noted upthread, the general reluctance of the bakufu to allow expansion anywhere ever at all.

2) If it's about timber... well, the Tokugawa family controlled a bunch of huge timber plantations, and made a lot of money off them. Why would they want a new competitor on the market?

3) OTL, Tokugawa Hokkaido was optimized not for timber but for fish. They had a huge herring fishery, which by the last decades of Tokugawa rule was economically vital -- they were turning the fish into fishcake fertilizer and distributing it all over Japan. It was a huge industry, employing very large ships and tens of thousands of fishermen -- but it caused the Matsumae domain to face out towards the sea, not inland towards the interior of Hokkaido.

N.B., this wasn't unique to the Japanese. Maine -- roughly similar in size and climate to Hokkaido -- was first settled in the early 1600s. But 200 years later, when it became a state, the vast interior of the state was still almost empty; 80% of the population was still living on about 10% of the land, in a narrow strip along the coast.


Doug M.
 
...note that the 16th century was a time of wide-open free trade for Japan.

It was also a period of constant war, famine, plague and misery, with income generally stagnant or falling.
Personally, I would attribute the conditions in Japan at that time to be much more to do with internal factors than to its engaging in free trade.
 
This is not a completely daft idea -- if the Tokugawa were going to expand anywhere, Hokkaido is the least unlikely candidate. However, there are some problems.

1) As noted upthread, the general reluctance of the bakufu to allow expansion anywhere ever at all.

2) If it's about timber... well, the Tokugawa family controlled a bunch of huge timber plantations, and made a lot of money off them. Why would they want a new competitor on the market?
Well, I would say that simply because the Tokugawa would likely be aligned against it does not necessarily mean that my aforementioned ambitious and enterprising individual isn't going to make a go of it anyway. What gain is there without risk, after all?

If they timed it well against a period of relative weakness or division in the bakufu (all regimes, in particular long ones, have them), they could conceivably set up a tidy little monopoly breaker and make themselves very wealthy before the bakufu do actually do much about it.
 
So would I -- but neither of us is a 17th century Japanese.

Much of the Tokugawa period snaps into focus when you realize that the Tokugawa state was set up by guys who lived through the Sengoku Jidai, turned, looked back, and said, "No. Never again."


Doug M.
 
N.B., this wasn't unique to the Japanese. Maine -- roughly similar in size and climate to Hokkaido -- was first settled in the early 1600s. But 200 years later, when it became a state, the vast interior of the state was still almost empty; 80% of the population was still living on about 10% of the land, in a narrow strip along the coast.


Doug M.

Of course, Maine ain't exactly the best place to grow crops nowadays, either.

What magically makes trade be beneficial (as it was to England) instead of destructive (as it was to Spain)? More to the point, what makes the answer intuitively obvious to a 17th century Japanese

Again, the structure of the Tokugawa economy doesn't seem to map on Spain that well; it doesn't map on Britain that well eiteher, but the commercial sophistication certainly seems closer. Moreover, they won't have their economy destroyed by a huge influx of silver...

It was also a period of constant war, famine, plague and misery, with income generally stagnant or falling.

Oh, come now Doug. You know as well as I do that the free trade was if anything a symptom of the war, not a cause.

Because oil grows on... no, wait.

But it's a valid analogy; you've pointed out in response to the claim that there was a lumber shortage that the Japanese pioneered amazing silviculture as prices rose. This does not to me seem to imply an abundant resource.
 
Oh, come now Doug. You know as well as I do that the free trade was if anything a symptom of the war, not a cause.

Right, but how did all this look from the early 1600s?

I mean, from a modern perspective there was much to like about the late 1500s. Not only free trade, but unprecedented freedom of religious practice and an astonishing level of social mobility, capped by the peasant-to-ruler career of Hideyoshi.

But the folks who lived through it, and went on to found the bakufu, saw it as one wave of chaos after another. As noted upthread, much of Tokugawa Japan only makes sense when you realize how appalling the earlier chaos was to the people who lived through it.


But it's a valid analogy; you've pointed out in response to the claim that there was a lumber shortage that the Japanese pioneered amazing silviculture as prices rose. This does not to me seem to imply an abundant resource.

At the end of the day, wood is a renewable resource and oil isn't. That seems a pretty basic difference to me.

Also, much of the price increase -- I'm speculating here, but it's speculation based on having hiked around Japan a bit -- may have been driven not so much by deforestation as by deforestation of the bits that were easy to reach. A lot of Japan's forests were (still are) inland, in rugged terrain without good roads or water access. Prices were rising, but they obviously weren't /out/ of wood.

-- Anyway, this is a digression, albeit an interesting one.


Doug M.
 
Anyway, it seems oto me that while Tokugawa Japan might not open up or do the things you propose, this still misses the point.

Could an alternate Japan have done so? This seems more pertinent; if you could get leadership daft enough to invade Korea, then Taiwan seems quite plausible.

And it had the bonus of not being Chinese, yet.
 
Anyway, it seems oto me that while Tokugawa Japan might not open up or do the things you propose, this still misses the point.

Could an alternate Japan have done so? This seems more pertinent; if you could get leadership daft enough to invade Korea, then Taiwan seems quite plausible.

And it had the bonus of not being Chinese, yet.
I've been thinking about this, and I have begun wondering whether or not such things might have been undertaken been undertaken by a Japan under the continued dynasty set up by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Perhaps a WI in which loyalist forces win the Battle of Sekigahara?
 
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