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One of the more exotic of the Asian diasporic communities of seventeenth-century Southeast Asia was that of the Japanese who formed Nihon-machi, or Japantowns, in a number of court cities, Asian trading ports, and European fortified cities. In large part, these communities developed as a consequence of Japanese participation in the Shuinsen, or “red seal” trade, under which official passports were issued to select merchant groups. The formation of Nihon-machi in Southeast Asian ports was an episode lasting but one or two generations, but there had been a broader engagement of Japan with East-Southeast Asia over a longer time frame. This chapter seeks to examine the political and commercial impacts that the Japanese traders and adventurers had on local Southeast Asian societies. It also discusses Japan's trading legacy in Southeast Asia. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the impacts that the overseas connection had on Japan's own internal economy and politics.

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to demonstrate the complexities, intricacies, and subtleties of thinking afforded by the sensibilities of arbitrage. Arbitrage, sometimes called “relative value trading,” is ideally risk-free or low-risk trading in which traders aim to capitalize on economically significant variations in the market's valuation of what the traders regard as equivalent or linked assets. The book discusses the use of the category of arbitrage among a group of Japanese traders specializing in arbitrage operations in the Japanese financial markets since the late 1980s. It examines the thoughts, imaginations, and dreams inspired by theories and techniques of arbitrage. By drawing attention to the particular way the idea of arbitrage has inspired a broad range of thought experiments and imaginations in a Japanese securities firm's trading room, the book suggests that theories and techniques of finance could serve as a source of inspiration for a critique of capitalism.

This chapter focuses derivatives trader Tada, and his fascination with the kind of transparency that he believed money would bring to his relationship with himself. The starting point of the discussion is a spreadsheet Tada created in January 1999, after his trading team was disbanded, to compute his own market value. As a result of this calculation, Tada took a greater risk than he had ever taken in his career and quit Sekai Securities to join an independent investment fund. The chapter traces the trajectory of Tada's changing views on the relationship between money and what he termed “self-realization.” It examines his heroic effort to arbitrage every possible inefficient market in Japan and the relationship of this effort to his own personal dreams, which included making enough money to retire early and bicycle around Japan.

This chapter discusses a business plan that derivatives trader Aoki crafted in his effort to raise money for a hypnotherapy clinic that would specialize in addressing the psychological problems of Japanese youth. The business plan as a genre of writing became salient in the early 2000s, in the midst of the rise of the culture of venture capitalism in Japan. As a former antiwar student activist turned trader, Aoki sought to revisit his youthful passion to change Japan and tackle what he saw as the negative consequences of Japan's uncompromising pursuit of economic growth. The discussion focuses on the debate concerning this project between Aoki and Tada, who helped Aoki draft the business plan. The debate ultimately points to the two financial market professionals' complex views on the role of belief in the market and in life, and the possibility of an exit from finance and capitalism. Using this debate and the contrast between the two men's seemingly different dreams of an exit from their work, the chapter brings to light a particular kind of commitment emerging at the intersections of arbitrage and arbitrageurs' lives, a commitment to keep in view both an endpoint to their work and the endlessness of their work.