The Nguyen Cochinchina was a maritime power. Its Archipelago-like landscape facing the South China Sea gave it a special character and made it stand out from all the Vietnamese dynasties. The synergy of its economy and the hybridity of its population and culture should all be seen against this background. Overseas trade defined seventeenth-century Cochinchina and regulated its labour and cash crop production on the coast and penetrated all sectors of local production and consumptions and accelerated its interactions with the uplanders. The Nguyen Cochinchina’s history challenges the conventional version of a single Vietnamese past, and the narrow strip of land between the mountains and the sea encouraged people to seek a much freer way of being Vietnamese. In such a way, it was little surprise that Cochinchina became the historical engine of change and pulled the national Vietnamese centre of gravity – whether seen in political, economic, or even cultural terms – southwards from the seventeenth century.

This chapter outlines how from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century a mature Tokugawa shogunate recast the Japanese realm’s structures of trade, diplomacy, and maritime defense. It details the ways in which the Tokugawa regime, despite being Japan’s central authority, could not act unilaterally but had to recognize the agency held by the Satsuma and Tsushima domains in their relations with foreign states. In addition, the chapter explains the monopolistic and market tools employed by the shogunate to control key sectors of Japan’s foreign trade. It also explores the broader Pacific contexts – notably a common desire among participants to limit the use of silver in trade with China – that shaped the Japanese state’s foreign trade. Finally, it details the diversity in imported products that emerged by the early nineteenth century, reflected in the variety of goods in demand by both male and female Japanese consumers.

In the early modern period, Japan emerged as a key node in global trading networks. While a vast range of goods were traded, Japan’s position was underpinned by the silk-for-silver exchange that acted as a powerful magnet for foreign merchants. This chapter aims to situate Japan within global trade by exploring the underlying commercial dynamic that drove engagement and the crowded commercial landscape that emerged as a result. The focus is, first, on successive challengers including the Portuguese, shuinsen merchants, the Dutch, the English, and the Chinese and, second, on Tokugawa attempts to channel trade through sanctioned pathways while cutting links with any group that might inject volatility into a precariously balanced system. The chapter concludes by examining the Zheng maritime organization, which emerged to challenge the Dutch East India Company for control over trade routes in East and Southeast Asia.

This chapter explores the Jewish community in Japan and its ups and downs since its emergence in the latter half of the nineteenth century until today. Although a small community of usually no more than a thousand souls, it has been a home for diverse Jewish groups and a large number of talented individuals. The chapter traces its emergence, its growth following the Bolshevik Revolution, its ordeal during World War II, and its postwar recovery.

This chapter describes the use of nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosive devices. To date, the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 is the only hostile use of nuclear weapons by one State against another. But in the 1960s to 1980s, around 160 nuclear explosive devices were detonated for so-called ‘peaceful purposes’. Also described is the Cuban missile crisis as well as broken arrow incidents in which major accidents occurred with nuclear weapons.

Western arms played a significant role as a new means of violence leading to the Meiji Restoration and in the ensuing civil war in Japan 1868–69. This chapter explores how industrial arms manufacturing and the global arms trade in the 1860s fueled wars in multiple locations worldwide including Japan. As domains and the Shogunate prepared for battle domestic demand for foreign arms soared precipitously overshadowing any other form of international trade. With their global and regional connections local Western merchants such as L. Kniffler & Co. in Nagasaki and the Schnell brothers in Yokohama supplied several sides in the Japanese conflict with military goods ranging in size from gunpowder to gunboats. Nevertheless, the rifle became the prevalent Western weapon for combat in Japan and it is the rifle that became the centerpiece of military strategy and social reform. Contrary to the prevalent image of arms trading limited to a few young risk takers like Thomas Glover, this study shows the widespread and short-term creation of military goods trade networks through abundant foreign supply and great domestic demand.