Editing East India Company (section)

==== Japan ====
[[File:Bodleian Library MS. Jap. b.2 Shuinjo.jpg|thumb|A document with the original [[vermilion]] seal of [[Tokugawa Ieyasu]], granting trade privileges in Japan to the East India Company in 1613]]

In 1613, during the rule of [[Tokugawa Hidetada]] of the [[Tokugawa shogunate]], the British ship {{ship||Clove|ship|2}}, under the command of Captain [[John Saris]], was the first English ship to call on Japan. Saris was the chief factor of the EIC's trading post in Java, and with the assistance of [[William Adams (sailor, born 1564)|William Adams]], an English sailor who had arrived in Japan in 1600, he was able to gain permission from the ruler to establish a commercial house in [[Hirado, Nagasaki|Hirado]] on the Japanese island of [[Kyushu]]:

{{blockquote|We give free license to the subjects of the King of Great Britaine, Sir Thomas Smythe, Governor and Company of the East Indian Merchants and Adventurers forever safely come into any of our ports of our Empire of Japan with their shippes and merchandise, without any hindrance to them or their goods, and to abide, buy, sell and barter according to their own manner with all nations, to tarry here as long as they think good, and to depart at their pleasure.<ref>{{cite book|first=Marguerite Eyer|last=Wilbur|title=The East India Company: And the British Empire in the Far East|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HTCsAAAAIAAJ|year=1945|publisher=Stanford University Press|pages=82–83|access-date=31 October 2015|archive-date=30 May 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160530110805/https://books.google.com/books?id=HTCsAAAAIAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>}}

Unable to obtain Japanese [[raw silk]] for export to China, and with their trading area reduced to Hirado and [[Nagasaki]] from 1616 onwards, the company closed its factory in 1623.<ref>{{cite book|first1=Akira|last1=Hayami|title=Japan's Industrious Revolution: Economic and Social Transformations in the Early Modern Period|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z-1rCQAAQBAJ|year=2015|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-4-431-55142-3|page=49|access-date=31 October 2015|archive-date=26 April 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160426104735/https://books.google.com/books?id=Z-1rCQAAQBAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>