Japan’s 250-Year Lockdown Created the World’s First Futures Market
In 1697, while Europe was still trading goods hand-to-hand, Japanese merchants in Osaka invented something revolutionary: the futures contract. Born from the Tokugawa shogunate’s strict isolation policy, the Dojima Rice Exchange became the world’s first organized futures market, complete with standardized contracts, clearinghouses, and speculation that would look familiar to any Wall Street trader today.
This is the story of how Japan’s forced isolation sparked one of history’s greatest financial innovations — and why Western economists didn’t catch up for another 150 years.
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