debasements. Export As Bitasen coins were no longer allowed to circulate within Japan, Japanese traders started selling them on foreign markets for profits, especially on the Vietnamese market where a huge influx of Eiraku Tsūhō and Kan'ei Tsūhō coins from Japan made the Japanese mon the de facto currency of the region. The large export of Japanese coins to Vietnam during this period mostly happened on Red seal ships. From 1633 the Tokugawa government adopted the isolationist Sakoku policy. The Shogunate, however, opened up the seaport of Nagasaki to export with the Dutch East India Company and Chinese merchant ships from Southeast Asia. The Japanese merchants who were now prohibited from exporting mon coins directly to Vietnam used the Dutch traders as middlemen and exported, between 1633 and 1637, around 105,835 strings of 960 Eiraku Tsūhō and Kan’ei Tsūhō coins (or 101,600,640 mon) to Vietnam. From 1659 this continued with the Nagasaki trade coins which were specifically minted for foreign markets; this is why they were escribed with Song dynasty inscriptions as coins from the Song dynasty were already circulating in Southeast Asia and the populace had already become accustomed to them. The trade of mon coins stopped however after the Shogunate banned the export of copper in 1715. Inflation during the Bakumatsu In 1708 the Tokugawa shogunate introduced the Hōei Tsūhō (Kyūjitai: 寳永通寳 ; Shinjitai: 宝永通宝) which had a face value of 10 mon (but contained 3 times as much copper as a 1 mon Kan’ei Tsūhō coin), which lead to the coin being discontinued very shortly after it started circulating as it wasn't accepted for its nominal value. However, in 1835 (during the Bakumatsu) the Tokugawa shogunate tried issuing a larger denomination copper coin again with the Tenpō Tsūhō 100 mon coin which this time only contained five and a half times the amount of copper in a 1 mon coin, but was accepted nonetheless. The introduction of this denomination caused large scale inflation comparable to that of caused by the 100 wén coin minted by the Qing dynasty in 1853, or the 100 mun coin issued by the Kingdom of Joseon in 1866. The reason for the change in mentality was the scarcity of copper which had earlier forced the Japanese to mint iron coins breaking the previously established tri-metallic system. The concurrent circulation of 1, 4, and (heavily debased) 100 mon coins caused for a chaotic