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P ATHS TOM ODERNISATION 157 Japan was considered rich, because it imported luxury goods like silk from China and textiles from India. Paying for these imports with gold and silver strained the economy and led the Tokugawa to put restrictions on the export of precious metals. They also took steps to develop the silk industry in Nishijin in Kyoto so as to reduce imports. The silk from Nishijin came to be known as the best in the world. Other developments such as the increased use of money and the creation of a stock market in rice show that the economy was developing in new ways. Social and intellectual changes – such as the study of ancient Japanese literature – led people to question the degree of Chinese influence and to argue that the essence of being Japanese could be found long before the contact with China, in such early classics as the Tale of the Genji and in the myths of origin that said that the Nishijin is a quarter in Kyoto. In the islands were created by the gods and that the emperor was a sixteenth century, it descendant of the Sun Goddess. had a weavers’ guild of 31 households and by the end of Tale of the Genji the seventeenth A fictionalised diary of the Heian court written by Murasaki century the community Shikibu, the Tale of the Genji became the central work of fiction numbered over in Japanese literature. That period saw the emergence of many women writers, like Murasaki, who wrote in the Japanese script, 70,000 people. Sericulture spread while men wrote in the Chinese script, used for education and and was encouraged government. The novel depicts the romantic life of Prince Genji by an order in 1713 and is a striking picture of the aristocratic atmosphere of the that only domestic Heian court. It shows the independence that women had in yarn was to be used. choosing their husbands and living their lives. Nishijin specialised only in the most expensive products. The Meiji Restoration Silk production helped the growth of Internal discontent coincided with demands for trade and diplomatic a class of regional relations. In 1853, the USA sent Commodore Matthew Perry (1794- entrepreneurs who 1858) to Japan to demand that the government sign a treaty that challenged the would permit trade and open diplomatic relations, which it did the Tokugawa order, and following year. Japan lay on the route to China which the USA saw when foreign trade as a major market; also, their whaling ships in the Pacific needed a started in 1859 place to refuel. At that time, there was only one Western country Japan’s silk exports that traded with Japan, Holland. became a major Perry’s arrival had an important effect on Japanese politics. The source of profit for emperor, who till then had had little political power, now re-emerged as the economy an important figure. In 1868, a movement forcibly removed the shogun struggling to from power, and brought the Emperor to Edo. This was made the capital compete with and renamed Tokyo, which means ‘eastern capital’. Western goods. Reprint 2026-27