For the Japanese example, the issue isn't that no one in Japan wanted to buy anything from or sell anything to, say, American traders. The issue is more that the Japanese government (the Tokugawa Bakufu) wanted to forbid foreign trade, except in a very few selective circumstances (some trade with the Chinese and Dutch).

Such trade restrictions were probably in the interest of the Japanese government, and possibly even in the interest of the Japanese people as a whole (although that's a far more tenuous argument), but not in the interest of individual Japanese who would have engaged in trade.

In the case of China, you could make the case that the opium trade was contrary to the interests of the Chinese government, the Chinese people as a whole, and the individual Chinese opium users, but opium is highly addictive, so people still wanted to buy it.

In short, the coercion was generally directing at altering government policy which obstructed such trade, not actually forcing individual transactions.

(Note: actual plundering and exaction of tribute, involving direct, coerced transfers of assets (e.g. Congo Free State) are another important story, but I'd say they belong in a somewhat different category than the "forced free trade" approach about which you're inquiring.)

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