Ginseng
Ginseng was a highly demanded product in Edo period Japan, popularly used for medicinal purposes. It was also a prominent tribute good which circulated in the region.
Though domestic Japanese production of ginseng was expanded under Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune in the early-to-mid 18th century, it was generally available almost exclusively from Korea. Tsushima han, which managed the Korean trade, thus held a near monopoly on ginseng, which it sold to daimyô, other high-ranking samurai, and select merchant houses out of its domain mansion in Edo. Because there were no limits on how much one could purchase at once, certain buyers acted as speculators, buying up excessive amounts, thus creating shortages and driving up prices, so they could then turn around and sell the ginseng at considerable profit. Because ginseng was such a highly-demanded Korean product, at times it constituted as much as 27% of the volume of Korean goods entering Japan.[1]
The demand for the root was so high that fights and other incidents regularly erupted between people lining up at the Tsushima han mansion to buy some of the limited supply of ginseng, prompting the shogunate in 1690 to order the domain to begin only selling the root through pre-orders. The lords of Tsushima were able also to take advantage of the perceived necessity of a regular influx of ginseng, leveraging it for concessions or the like from the shogunate. In 1700, the shogunate's debasement of silver currency combined with decreased ginseng production in Korea to effectively double the cost of importing ginseng. Tsushima's complaints resulted in the domain being granted a loan of 15,000 ryô to purchase additional ginseng, as well as an increase in the amount of imports they were allowed to sell in Edo, from 1,080 kan (value as measured in silver) to 1,800 kan. Finally, after the shogunate further debased the coinage in 1706, producing ingots that were now only 50% silver, Tsushima requested permission to specially mint 80% pure ingots specifically for use in trade with Korea; permission for this was granted in 1711, considerably alleviating Tsushima's financial & trade difficulties.
References
- Robert Hellyer, Defining Engagement, Harvard University Press (2009), 61.
- ↑ Schottenhammer, Angela. "The East Asian maritime world, 1400-1800: Its fabrics of power and dynamics of exchanges - China and her neighbors." in Schottenhammer (ed.) The East Asian maritime world, 1400-1800: Its fabrics of power and dynamics of exchanges. Harrassowitz Verlag (2007), 56-57.