Abstract: The era of the seventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries was one when the exchange of books between China and Japan was most frequent and common. The pattern of book exchange also changed greatly. Besides being articales of traditional cultural exchange, Chinese classic works took on the characteristics of commercial goods. Taking Chinese Local Gazetteers as a case study, this paper examines the number, channel, price and profit of Chinese local gazetteers’ export to Japan from seventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries from the perspective of economics. The article also probes the characteristics of the local gazetteers traded between China and Japan and explores the reasons for Japanese collection of local gazetteers. From this perspective we obtain a deeper understanding of the importance of Chinese local gazetteers in the historical literary exchange between China and Japan.