38 Boundaries and Beyond
as “sakoku”, or close-the-country policy) by the Tokugawa Shogunate in
the seventeenth century, Japan had to rely heavily on the Chinese and
Dutch shipping for external trade, and the Satsuma-Ryukyu trade played
a much smaller role in it. During the period 1612‒34, for example, there
were only 20 Ryukuan ships sailing to China, only one-thirtieth of the
total number of Chinese junks.^136
The “Tosen” Trade to Nagasaki: The number of Japanese ships that
traded with China under the guise of ofβicial missions greatly increased in
Song times and continued until the Ming period when the court imposed
the strict sea-going prohibition. As might have been expected, the
restriction only encouraged the expansion of illicit trade. Toward the end
of the sixteenth century, Japanese overseas shipping was surging. Since
both the Ming merchants and the Tokugawa Shogunate, founded in 1603,
were desirous of trading with each other, ships of both sides found a way
to evade the Ming law by establishing contacts to exchange trade goods
in such Southeast Asian ports as Manila and Annam. Japanese ships from
Nagasaki and Hirado also ventured farther to Ligor (Nakorn) and Pattani
in southern Siam. During the period 1604‒35, a total of 355 Japanese
shu-in, or government-licensed ships appeared in the Nanhai, of which 71
went to Cochin-China, 55 to Ayudhya and 7 to Pattani.^137 Many Japanese
sojourners also formed their own communities in major Southeast Asian
cities. Their settlement in Ayudhya numbered around 1,500 in the early
seventeenth century.^138 Chinese junks from the Min-Zhe (Fujian and
Zhejiang) region on the southeast coast also increasingly frequented
Japanese ports. In about 30 years from 1612, some 600 of them departed
to Japan to trade.^139 The growth in shipping clearly indicates that maritime
trade had not been deterred by the chaotic political situation in late Ming
China. Obviously, in times of adversity merchants were skilled in βinding
ways to get around problems and make an even greater proβit.
European ships had been trading in Japan from the sixteenth century.
In 1616 they were allowed by the Edo government to dock in Hirado until
- Chang Pin-tsun, “Chinese Maritime Trade”, pp. 353–7; Xie Bizhen, Zhongguo
yu Liuqiu, pp. 216–43; and Sydney Crawcour, “Notes on Shipping and Trade in
Japan and the Ryukyus”, p. 378. - Sarasin Viraphol, Tribute and Proϔit: Sino-Siamese Trade, 1625–1853 (Cambridge,
MA: Council of East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1977), p. 15. - The Junk Trade from Southeast Asia: Translations from the Tosen Fusetsu-gaki,
ed. Yoneo Ishii (Canberra: Research School of Paciβic and Asian Studies and
Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1998), p. 1. - Sydney Crawcour, “Notes on Shipping and Trade in Japan and the Ryukyus”,
p. 378.
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