For Daimyo Smugglers; It All Started with Silver (7)

     What were those two false missions to Joseon going to purchase for their silver?  It was mainly cotton cloth; high-tech products for Japanese people at the time.  Hemp cloth used to be used even among ordinary noble people in Japan, and silk cloth was just super luxurious, while cotton cloth was rather new products.

     Cotton was introduced to China during Tang or Song Dynasties.  It was in 1364 that cotton was brought to Goryeo, Korea, by Mun Igjeon (1329-1398) against the rules under Yuan Dynasty, China.

     After Goryeo, Joseon became a Confucianism society with an agriculture-based national ideology.  Commerce was despised.  Bartering was common, and cotton cloth, hemp cloth, and rice played a role of a kind of currency.   Their agriculture-based economic system was more radical than that under the Edo Shogunate in Japan.

     The Joseon ruling class might have been scared of the shadow of possible mercantilism and commercialism to emerge.  In other words, they really knew well the power of the glitter of precious metals.  The arrival of additional silver stimulated popular greed for silver all the more.  A large amount of silver newly produced in Japan plunged East Asia into the age of great smugglings.