Commodity and Market 41
aloes wood, 7 tons of sugar and 1.2 tons of natural medicines. The ships
from Malacca carried tin and pepper to China to exchange for silk to be
shipped to Nagasaki.^145 The prosperity of Nagasaki that can be ascribed
to the tosen trade began to decline after its port authorities restricted the
number of incoming Chinese junks at the end of the seventeenth century.
One reason for the restriction was the fear of a surge in Chinese migrants
that might threaten to become unmanageable.
The port from which a Chinese junk set sail on its voyage does not
necessarily indicate its home port. For instance, most of the ships
departing from Shandong originated from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and
Guangdong. The purpose of their coming to Shandong was to procure
herbal medicines that were a local specialty. Most of the “Nanjing junks”
departed from Shanghai and other ports in Jiangsu. The highest number
was the vessels leaving here for Nagasaki. The reason is not far to βind:
the region of Yangzi delta produced a great amount of commodities, raw
silk and silk fabrics in particular, that were in great demand in Japan.
Ningbo, which also played an important role in trade with Japan, was
equally renowned for its silk market. Besides local ships, other vessels
came from Jiangsu and Fujian. A certain number of ships opted for
Putuoshan off the Zhejiang coast as their port of departure, because there
they could conveniently procure merchandise intended for Japan.^146
The same holds true of the junks departing from ports in Southeast
Asia. A 1680 tosen document records seven vessels that had arrived
in Nagasaki from Siam under the category of “ships from Ayudhya”. In
fact, only three of them, among them two commissioned by the Siamese
king, had their home port in Siam. The other four originated from Amoy
and had come to trade in Ayudhya. After news that Amoy was soon to
be the main base of the Qing naval force in the imminent war against
the Zheng regime in Taiwan, these Amoy junks wanted to avoid sailing
into the war zone and prudently decided to sail directly from Ayudhya to
Nagasaki instead.^147
Chinese junks heading for Nagasaki from Ayudhya, Pattani, Ligor,
Songkla, Cambodia, Batavia, Bantam and other Southeast Asian ports
carried native products or goods from other places acquired via
transshipment. Taking Siam as an example, its most important export in
the tosen included deer-skins, ray-skins, cowhides and sappanwood. Other
commodities that were also in demand were black lac, eaglewood, tin,
- The Junk Trade from Southeast Asia, ed. Yoneo Ishii, pp. 4–5.
- Sun Wen, Tang chuan feng shuo, Chapter 4.
- Document 1-1, Ship No. 14, in The Junk Trade from Southeast Asia, ed. Yoneo
Ishii, pp. 22–3.