Abstract

It is reasonable to assume that Kaga han, in view of its size, large rice and other exports, and central coastal location, provided the lion's share of ships and shipowners operating in the Japan Sea during the two centuries before Perry. Villagers were going from Noto to North Honshu and Hokkaido both for temporary occupation and for permanent residence in the mid-seventeenth century and diereafter; and some of these emigrants became useful Kaga han trade agents. Moreover, transport of rice and salt respectively to Tsuruga and Echigo from Noto villages early in the Tokugawa period can be documented. Kaga han needed an all-water route to Osaka because of the high cost of transshipping rice by land from Tsuruga to Osaka. This may have been the main reason for the development in the latter part of the seventeenth century of nishi mawari, the route for ships going from the Japan Sea through the Inland Sea.

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