Throughout his academic career Louis Cullen’s main research interest has been foreign trade - originally that of England, Ireland and France, but from the mid-1990s, his focus turned to Japanese history resulting in his critically acclaimed A history of Japan 1582–1941: Internal and External Worlds. Subsequently, he concentrated on the analysis of archival sources and of the problems they pose for the interpretation of Japanese history: papers on some of these themes and their associated statistical dimensions have appeared in Nichibunken’s Japan Review and are republished here together with a collection of other papers including interpreting Tokugawa history and the knowledge and the use of Japanese by the Dutch on Dejima island.

Foreword by Shunsuke Katsuta

Acknowledgements & Transliteration of Japanese

Introduction: The Route to Japanese Trade

Part I: Interactions –Ancient and Modern

1. Sakoku, Tokugawa Policy, and the interpretation of Japanese history

2. Knowledge and Use of Japanese by the Dutch on Dejima Island, Nagasaki

3. Review of James W. White’s Ikki: Social Conflict and Political Protest in Early Modern Japan

4. Gulliver in Japan: Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

5. Japan in a Changing Asia: Achievements and Opportunities Missed

Part II: Statistical Resources of and Interactions with Tokugawa Japan

6. Population: Tokugawa Population: The Archival Issues

7. Coastal Trade: Statistics of Tokugawa Coastal Trade and Bakumatsu and Early Meiji Foreign Trade.

Part 1: Coastal Trade in Tokugawa Times

8. Post-1859 Foreign Trade: Statistics of Tokugawa Coastal Trade and Bakumatsu and Early Meiji Foreign Trade.

Part 2: Trade in Bakumatsu and Early Meiji Times.

9. Archives: Japanese Archives: Sources for the Study of Tokugawa Administration and Japanese History

10. The Foreign Trade of Nagasaki: The Nagasaki Trade of the Tokugawa Era: Archives, Statistics and Management

Notes

Glossary

Index