The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 4: Early Modern Japan
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CHAPTER 6
THE INSEPARABLE TRINITY:
JAPAN'S RELATIONS WITH
CHINA AND KOREA
Krieg,
Handel und Piraterie,
Dreieinig sind sie, nicht zu trennen
War,
trade, and piracy
Are an inseparable trinity
(Goethe,
Faust, II, 5:3)
TRADE AND PIRACY
The Sinocentric tributary system
The international order that ideally spanned East Asia when Japan was
in the later Middle Ages of its history (1392-1573) may be described
as a tributary system, one in which outlying states were bound with
real or fictional ties of allegiance to the "Central Country," China.
Underlying that system was a culturalist theory, developed by Chinese
Confucians, which held that China was
a
universal empire whose sover-
eignty had to be acknowledged by the "barbarian" rulers on its periph-
ery if they wanted the benefits of commerce with it. In return for their
homage, the Chinese emperor granted them the status of his royal
vassals, the privilege of diplomatic relations, and the boon of access to
Chinese civilization. They sent him tribute. He, in turn, bestowed
gifts upon them out of his bounty.
As far as the Chinese of the Ming period (1368-1644) were con-
cerned, Japan had entered such a tributary relationship with China
long ago, during the time of the Han dynasty (202 B.C.-A.D. 220).
Their scholars could catalog a long list of Japanese "tribute-bearing
missions" stretching back at least to
A.D.
57. To be sure, in more
recent times that relationship had been disturbed by war and piracy,
but it was confirmed and regulated once again at the beginning of the
fifteenth century, on the initiative of the Japanese ruler Ashikaga
Yoshimitsu (1358-1408), the third shogun of the Muromachi bakufu,
who retained his control over Japan's foreign affairs even after for-
mally retiring from the shogunate in 1395.
235
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236 JAPAN'S RELATIONS WITH CHINA AND KOREA
Yoshimitsu was an ardent seeker of monarchal distinction and just
as avid an amateur of Chinese luxury goods. Between 1401 and 1405,
he sponsored four embassies to China in pursuit of both those objec-
tives.
As a result, he was invested with the title "King of Japan" by the
Ming emperors Chien-wen (r. 1398-1402) and Yung-lo (r. 1402-24),
acknowledged his status as their subject, and entered an agreement
that permitted the Japanese to send periodic missions with tribute to
China. These missions were legitimated with visas issued in the form
of tallies (Chinese:
k'an-ho;
Japanese:
kango)
by the Chinese court, and
the trade that was part and parcel of such embassies is therefore called
the "tally trade." Yoshimitsu's eager acceptance of the Chinese norms
of international relations opened the door to commerce, which the
Japanese pursued under cover of obeisance.
The Japanese were assigned Ningpo in Chekiang Province as their
port of entry into China. From there, a substantial part of their
embassy - sometimes more than three hundred persons - would pro-
ceed to the Ming capital, which from 1421 was Peking. There they
presented their tribute, according to a prescribed list of
goods,
which
included sulfur and such products of Japanese artisanship as swords,
suits of armor, gilt fans, and painted screens; the chief envoy was
received in audience by the Ming emperor; and the embassy was then
dismissed with gifts for the "King of Japan" (i.e., the shogun), includ-
ing sumptuous silken fabrics, porcelain and other precious objets
d'art, as well as large sums of copper cash.
The Ming government made official purchases from the cargoes of
the Japanese ships and also allowed the Japanese envoys and their
accompaniment of merchants to carry on private trade with licensed
Chinese brokers. Ships were sent not only by the shogunate itself but
also by religious institutions and regional notables. In the fleet of nine
sail that reached China in 1453, for instance, there were vessels char-
tered by the powerful Ouchi family of Yamaguchi in western Honshu,
the equally prominent Otomo family of Bungo in northern Kyushu,
the great Zen monastery Tenryuji of Kyoto, as well as the Shinto and
Buddhist temple complex of Tonomine in Yamato
Province.
The grow-
ing volume of imports from Japan, as demonstrated by this large fleet,
evidently alarmed the Chinese authorities, for they limited the size of
subsequent missions to three ships. Having transacted its business,
such a "tribute-bearing mission" sailed back to Japan richly laden with
Chinese merchandise. For almost a century and a half - from 1404,
when the first official tally mission departed for China, to 1549, when
the seventeenth and last returned to Japan - this arrangement pro-
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TRADE AND PIRACY 237
vided the framework for largely peaceful (if not entirely incident-free)
relations between the two countries.
It must be emphasized that the tally trade was the only form of
commerce permitted the Japanese by the Chinese authorities. Indeed,
it was the sole legal channel for the direct exchange of commodities
between Japan and China. The Ming empire from 1371 repeatedly
issued decrees that prohibited Chinese from voyaging overseas for
private purposes and thereby rigidly circumscribed the opportunities
for foreign trade. The denial of free access to the sea was originally
intended to protect the newly founded empire's security against yet-
unpacified rebels who had their bases on the littoral of
China.
In time,
however, it became the shibboleth of a state whose governmental insti-
tutions were designed to foster and exploit agriculture, not commerce,
and whose public ideology, Confucianism, distrusted and even con-
demned the profit motive behind trade. The Ming regime sought to
keep its people from venturing abroad; it restricted and regulated
foreigners' entry into China; and it undertook these measures in the
name of security, ideological purity, and the control of trade. It
thereby constructed the model of an isolationist policy for East Asia.
In its own way, Japan was destined to follow that model: The means
and motives of what the Chinese of
the
Ming period called
hai-chin
(J:
kaikin),
or maritime prohibitions, were analogous to those of
the
Toku-
gawa period's
sakoku
directives.
The isolationism to which the Ming regime became habituated is a
genuine paradox, because that same regime between 1405 and 1433
conducted maritime exploration on a scale unprecedented in the
world's history, sending seven fleets with scores of naval vessels and
tens of thousands of men to Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and as
far away as the east coast of Africa. Once having shown the flag in
faraway lands, tied more "barbarian" rulers (if only loosely and tempo-
rarily) to the Chinese tributary system, and brought back shiploads of
exotica for the court's self-gratulation, the fleets were adjudged super-
fluous and were disbanded. Exploration was not followed by coloniza-
tion; trade did not follow the flag. Instead, the regime's attention was
redirected inward. Abandoning the quest for distant oceans, the Ming
empire did not rule the waves even of the China Sea.
Its
maritime prohibitions
were,
moreover, ineffective. In
its
anticom-
mercial bias, the regime failed to react positively to the fact that the
growth of handicraft and processing industries in places on or near the
seacoast of South China - from the silk and cotton manufactures of
Soochow and the Yangtze Delta to the iron-utensil production of
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238 JAPAN'S RELATIONS WITH CHINA AND KOREA
Canton - had stimulated mercantile activities that spilled over into
large-scale maritime trade. That trade remained illegal. The mer-
chants, however, ignored the government's ban. The gentry of the
littoral invested in the trade. The very officials charged with enforcing
the maritime prohibitions as often as not connived at the traffic. As a
result, by the end of the fifteenth century the trade directed overseas
by Chinese merchants exceeded by far the volume of goods carried to
and from China in the bottoms of the various official "tribute-bearing
missions." The government's efforts to enforce its laws merely encour-
aged the contrabandists to arm themselves, thus turning merchants
into outlaws.
On the Japanese side, too, efforts to regulate commerce with China
were doomed by a breakdown of authority. Here the smooth function-
ing of the tally trade postulated an order kept, if not by the "King of
Japan" directly, then by his deputies and provincial constables. By the
beginning of the sixteenth century, however, the Ashikaga shoguns
had been reduced to utter powerlessness by the internal strife that had
swept Japan ever since the Onin War of 1467-77. Control over the
official trade with China had long since slipped out of their hands and
become a bone of contention between two of their principal vassals,
the Hosokawa and Ouchi families.
These two parties exported their quarrel to China itself in 1523,
when they sent rival embassies to Ningpo. There Hosokawa agents
bribed the superintendent of merchant shipping and obtained prece-
dence for their mission, thereby infuriating the delegation of the
Ouchi. The Ouchi men vented their rage by killing the Hosokawa
side's chief
envoy,
the priest Ranko Zuisa, and rampaging through the
streets of Ningpo. Having burned and looted their way to the harbor,
the Ouchi delegation sailed away in commandeered vessels, carrying
with them a kidnapped garrison officer, and fought off a Chinese
pursuit squadron, killing its commander.
1
In the aftermath of this riot, which exposed the Chinese officials'
corruption no less than the Japanese voyagers' penchant for violence,
the Ming authorities further tightened the procedures governing the
tally trade. In the event, only two more missions, those dispatched by
the Ouchi in 1540 and 1549, were to be accepted by the Chinese,
although the Japanese sent several others. By the middle of the six-
teenth century, political conditions in Japan had become so chaotic
1 Mingshih,
chiian
322: "Lieh-chuan 210, wai-kuo 3, Jih-pen," vol. 27 (Peking: Chung-hua shu-
ehii, 1974), pp. 8348-9. Nihon shiryo shusei hensankai, ed., Chugoku, Chosen no shiseki ni
okeru
Nihon shiryo
shusei:
Seishi
no
bu (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1975), pp.
290-1.
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TRADE AND PIRACY 239
that there was indeed good reason to question the legitimacy of embas-
sies arriving from that country. Moreover, the entire setting of trade
and diplomatic relations between Japan and China was being trans-
formed dramatically with the appearance of the Portuguese and the
resurgence of the pirates known as wakd (Ch: wo-k'ou, Korean:
waegu),
or
"J
a
P
anese
brigands," in East Asian waters. The wakd were
anything but
a
new phenomenon. Rather, they were a scourge that had
afflicted Korea intermittently for centuries.
The early tide of
the
wako
The Chinese-character compound
wakd,
referring to invaders from
Japan, first occurs on a Korean stele erected in
A.D.
414. By the
sixteenth century, seafaring as defined by Goethe's Mephistopheles -
"War, trade, and piracy / Are an inseparable trinity" - was a time-
honored tradition in the Japanese archipelago. This is not the place to
trace the origins of that tradition or to explore all of the regions where
it developed. Two benchmarks, however, should be recorded. The
first is the rebellion of Fujiwara no Sumitomo in the 930s. Sumitomo,
an official ordered to suppress the pirates of
Iyo
Province in Shikoku,
instead joined them, fomenting a disturbance that swept across the
Bungo Strait and the Inland Sea to keep much of western Japan in a
state of turmoil until he was tracked down and killed in
941.
The other
benchmark is in the 1220s, when the Matsuura-to first became notori-
ous as a "band of villains"who sailed abroad to "destroy people's
dwellings and plunder their property."
2
The Matsuura-to was a group
of petty military families with eleventh-century roots in the Matsuura
region of northern Hizen Province in Kyushu, and the object of their
piratical raids was Korea. The myriad coves and islands of the Inland
Sea would remain important bases of piracy - or, as the case may be,
of maritime enterprise and naval endeavor - into the sixteenth century
and beyond. So would the lairs of the Matsuura-to from Sasebo,
Hirado, and the Goto Islands to Yobuko, Iki, and Tsushima.
The flurry of piratical activity directed against Korea in the 1220s
died down abruptly after the Kamakura shogunate's commissioner in
Kyushu (Chinzei
bugyd),
Muto Sukeyori, had ninety suspected brig-
ands decapitated before the eyes of
a
Korean envoy in 1227. For more
than a century thereafter, wakd raids to Korea were few and far be-
2 Fujiwara Teika, Meigetsuki, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1911), pp. 544-5; entries for
Karoku 2 (1226). 10.16-17.
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24O JAPAN'S RELATIONS WITH CHINA AND KOREA
tween. To start with, the Koreans had been forced into a high state of
vigilance and military preparedness by the aggressive designs of an
emergent imperial power, the Mongols, who invaded Korea in force
six times between 1231 and 1258 before they finally managed to sub-
due the country and put it under their complete domination. On the
Japanese side, the shogunate evidently was able to keep seafaring
military groups under control throughout the rest of the Kamakura
period (1185-1333). They were mobilized against the threat of
a
Mon-
gol invasion of Japan, which had to be reckoned with even after the
Mongols had been repelled twice, in 1274 and 1281.
By the middle of the fourteenth century, however, the Kamakura
shogunate had fallen; the Mongol empire was disintegrating; and its
client, the Koryo dynasty (918-1392) of Korea, was likewise on the
edge of a crisis. Japan was in the throes of a widespread conflict
engendered by a dynastic schism in its imperial house. In Kyushu as
elsewhere, supporters of
the
so-called Southern Court contended with
adherents of the Northern Court and its principal backer, the Muro-
machi bakufu. There was, in short, no authority strong enough to
keep down the predatory hunger of the sea wolves.
The wako resumed their activities in earnest in 1350, and for the
next half-century engulfed Korea with a veritable tide of spoliation.
3
Worst was the decade between 1376 and 1385, when the wave crested
with no fewer than 174 recorded instances of pirate raids. Some of
these raids amounted to miniature Japanese invasions of
Korea.
Bands
of as many as three thousand intruders, far from being satisfied with
ravaging the coasts, penetrated deep into the country's interior before
withdrawing again to their ships. The entire southern half of the
Korean peninsula was subjected to this rapine: The raiders repeatedly
despoiled the environs of Kaesong, the Koryo dynasty's capital city,
and on occasion reached as far north as the mouth of the Taedong
River and the general area of P'yongyang. These Japanese marauders,
who pillaged granaries and waylaid revenue shipments of grain, were
at the same time slavers, who carried people away with them into
servitude and held them to ransom. Their depredations seriously hurt
Korea's society and economy, put a severe strain on the resources of
the Koryo dynasty, and greatly contributed to its downfall. The pirati-
3 See the chronological table prepared by Tanaka Takeo in
Wako:
umi no
rekishi,
vol. 66 of
Kyoikusha rekishi shinsho "Nihonshi" (Tokyo: Kyoikusha, 1982), pp.
200-1.
The estimate of
174
wako raids on Korea between
1376
and 1385 is a conservative figure. The count of 228 (or
even 346) incidents can be found in a similar chart set out by Tamura Hiroyuki in
Chusei
Nitcho boeki no kenkyu
(Kyoto: Sanwa shobo, 1967), pp. 36-7. The number
346
is given in the
chart presented by Yi Hyong-sok,
Imjin Chilian
sa,
vol.
1
(Seoul: Ch'ungmuhoe, 1975), p. 49.
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TRADE AND PIRACY 24I
cal tide of the wako overflowed into China. Some of their bands roved
across the Yellow Sea from Korea to the Shantung peninsula. Others
struck farther south, at Kiangsu and the coastal provinces south of the
Yangtze Delta: Chekiang, Fukien, and Kwangtung.
Both China and Korea demanded that Japanese authorities put an
end to the piracy. No sooner had the Hung-wu emperor (r. 1368-98)
conquered the Yiian dynasty of the Mongols and established the Ming
empire in China - in 1369 and 1370, the second and the third years of
his reign - than he sent envoys to Prince Kanenaga (1329-83), the
Southern Court's "generalissimo for the subjugation of the west"
(seisei daishogun)
in Kyushu; he warned the Japanese that he would
send forces to "capture and exterminate your bandits, head straight
for your country, and put your king in bonds" unless the wako raids
were stopped, and urged Japan to submit to the suzerainty of Ming.
4
Kanenaga treated the first of these embassies rudely, killing five of its
members, but responded deferentially to the second: In
1371,
he sent
his own envoys to China, where (according to Chinese records) they
rendered obeisance in the expected manner and took receipt of the
symbols of vassalage for their master. Actually, there is some doubt
that Kanenaga would have assumed such a grave diplomatic responsi-
bility. But it is clear that, his grand title notwithstanding, he was by
that time hard put to it just to maintain himself in Kyushu and quite
unable to deliver on any promises to stamp out the pirates.
In contrast with the Chinese, the Koreans sought redress not from
the Southern Court and its agents but from the Muromachi bakufu, its
opponent. A Koryo embassy was received in 1367 by Shogun Ashi-
kaga Yoshiakira (1330-67) (r. 1359-67) in Kyoto but was told, ingenu-
ously enough, that Kyoto could do nothing abut the lawless actions of
the inhabitants of Shikoku and Kyushu, areas over which the bakufu
as yet had no control.
5
The Koreans next sought the cooperation of the
shogunal deputy (tandai) in Kyushu, Imagawa Ryoshun, to whom
they sent the first of repeated embassies in 1377. Ryoshun had been
successful in the contest against Prince Kanenaga and the Southern
Court's other champions in Kyushu, but he had not managed to gain
4 Ming Vai-tsu shih-lu, pt. 39, f. 3, entry for Hung-wu 2 (1369).2.[6]: Ming shih-lu, vol. 2
(Taipei: Chung-yang yen-chiu-yuan li-shih yu-yen yen-chiu-so, 1962), p. 787; Nihon shiryo
shusei hensankai, ed., Chugoku,
Chosen no shiseki
ni
okeru
Nihon
shiryo
shusei:
Min
jitsuroku
no
bu,
vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1975), pp. 1-2.
5 Goto Tanji and Okami Masao, eds., Taiheiki, vol. 3, in vol. 36 of Nihon koten
bungaku
taikei
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1962), p. 451. The historicity of ihis account is examined in detail by
Nakamura Hidetaka, Nissen kankeishi no
kenkyu,
vol. 1 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1965),
pp.
203-6.
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242 JAPAN'S RELATIONS WITH CHINA AND KOREA
the ascendancy over the maritime area of Matsuura and the island
provinces of Iki and Tsushima, the principal nests of the pirates who
plagued Korea. Hence the wakd stayed out of control.
The Chinese fortified their
seacoasts.
The Koreans in 1389 and again
in 1419 attacked the pirate bases on Tsushima but were forced to with-
draw without inflicting much
damage.
A
major precondition for solving
the wakd problem was, however, met in 1392, when the conflict be-
tween the Southern and Northern courts was
finally
resolved under the
auspices of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, who thereby brought the
Muromachi bakufu to the height of its authority. Coincidentally, 1392
was also the year when the new Yi dynasty displaced Koryo in Korea.
Under the new political circumstances, diplomacy had a better chance
of prevailing. The results of Yoshimitsu's diplomatic initiative toward
the Ming empire - his investiture as "King of Japan" and the inception
of a regulated trade with China - have already been noted. In 1404,
Yoshimitsu sent an embassy to Korea under that new title, "King of
Japan," that is, as one vassal of the Ming to another, his coequal. In
sum, through Yoshimitsu's management of foreign affairs, Japan was
integrated into the East Asian international order.
To be sure, that by itself did not put down the
wakd.
They went on
raiding China in force at least until
1419.
In that year,
a
large pirate fleet
of more than thirty sail assembled in Tsushima and headed north along
Korea's Yellow Sea coast. Kept under constant observation, it was
finally ambushed and smashed off Wang-hai-kuo in Liaotung by the
provincial military commander, Liu Jung, who is said to have taken
anywhere between seven hundred and fifteen hundred heads.
6
After
that, the
wakd
steered clear of Liaotung, although they hit other
areas of
China sporadically. They had become more of a nuisance than a threat
and would remain so until their massive new surge of the 1550s. In the
case of Korea, too, it was not simply high-level diplomacy and the
radiance of the bakufu's institutional
or
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu's personal
prestige that stopped the
wakd.
Rather, it was action by regional not-
ables of western Japan, whom the Koreans lured with appeals to their
self-interest and conciliated by making concessions.
Korean efforts to deal with the wako
The gist of the Koreans' plan was to try transforming the robber
barons of western Japan into instruments for controlling the
wakd.
As
6 Mingshih, vol. 27, p. 8346;Seishino
bu,
vol. I, p. 288. Cf. Nakamura,Nissenkankeishi.vol. 1,
pp.
309-10.
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TRADE AND PIRACY 243
King Sejong (r. 1418-50) of Korea concluded after hearing the report
of Pak S6-saeng, his ambassador to the court of Ashikaga Yoshinori
(1394-1441) (r. 1429-41) in 1429, dealing with the Japanese shogun
was necessary for ceremonial reasons but apt to prove ineffective if the
purpose was the suppression of piracy.
7
Much more, Pak reported,
could be expected from a direct approach to the real masters of the
shores and islands that harbored the wako.
Among the most important of these were the great shugo daimyo
family of the Ouchi, lords over seafaring groups based both in the
Inland Sea (e.g., at Kamado and Yashirojima; now Kaminoseki and
Oshima, Yamaguchi Prefecture) and in Kyushu (at Shikanoshima;
now part of the city of Fukuoka); the Otomo family, who held the
military governorship (shugoshiki) of Bungo Province and were power-
ful rivals of the Ouchi for the control of northern Kyushu; the
Munakata, barons of Chikuzen Province and patrons of the seafarers
of Oshima (now an offshore part of Fukuoka Prefecture); and the
petty barons who constituted the membership of the Matsuura-to.
Winning the favor of this last group would be tantamount to pacifying
the most active pirate bands, those from the in- and offshore region
between the Goto Islands and Iki that had its geographical center at
Hirado. Courting the Ouchi was politic, not least because they could
seal off the narrow straits at Akamagaseki (now Shimonoseki) and
thereby bottle up the rovers of the Inland Sea. Above all, it was
necessary to cultivate the goodwill of the So family, the preeminent
power on Tsushima, for it was Tsushima, as Pak S6-saeng observed
correctly, where all Japanese pirates mustered before attacking Korea,
at its closest point less than thirty nautical miles away.
As regards Tsushima, Iki, and Matsuura, Kang Kwon-son (another
Korean envoy, who visited Iki in 1444) capped Pak's appraisal with
the following pithy analysis:
8
In these regions, the people's dwellings are miserable; land is tight and,
moreover, utterly barren, so that they do not pursue agriculture and can
scarcely escape starvation; thus they engage in banditry, being of a wicked
and violent cast. . . . But if we attend on them with courtesy and nourish
7 Sejong
Changhdn Taewang
sillok, pt. 46, ff. 13V-16 and 16V-17V, entries for Sejong 11.12.[3]
and [9] (December 28, 1429 and January 3, 1430):
Choson
wangjo sillok, vol. 3 (Seoul: Kuksa
p'yonch'an wiwdnhoe, 1955), pp. 207-9; Nihon shiryo shusei hensankai, ed., Chugoku,
Chosen no shiseki ni okeru Nihon shiryo
shusei:
Richo
jitsuroku
no bu, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kokusho
kankokai, 1976), pp. 259-63. Hereafter brackets indicate that the date has been converted
from its original citation in the sexagesimal citation; parentheses indicate conversion to West-
ern calendar.
8 Sejong
Changhdn Taewang
sillok, pt. 104, f. 8, entry for Sejong 26
(1444).4.
[30]:
Chosdn
wangjo
sillok, vol. 4, p. 552; Richo jitsuroku no bu, vol. 2, (1977), p. 459.
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244 JAPAN'S RELATIONS WITH CHINA AND KOREA
them with generosity, even more so than in previous days, then the pirates
will all submit.
The Koreans went to great lengths to appease those who held the
pirates in leash. From around 1396, only a few years after coming to
power, the Yi dynasty adopted the policy of granting official Korean
titles,
with appropriate stipends, to wako chiefs who were willing to
surrender.
9
Such appointments to titular office were used not only to
buy off actual aggressors but also to reward residents of Japan who
assisted in repatriating Korean captives of the wako, furnished infor-
mation on the pirates' plans, or were helpful in other ways. Another
device used by the Korean court to coax the picaroons into peaceful
partnership was the issuance of copper seals (K:
toso,
J:
tosho)
as a sign
of most favored status to Japanese perceived as being influential in
maritime affairs. This practice dates back at least to 1418, but many of
the recipients of the seals were members of the Matsuura-to who were
granted this distinction in the 1440s and 1450s, perhaps as a result of
Kang Kwon-son's recommendations. Japanese holders of Korean ti-
tles and the bearers of
toso
had legal access to Korea, which they could
use for the purpose of trade.
From the 1420s, the Koreans began to develop an elaborate system
of allotting the number of ships that could be licensed each year for
trade by individual Japanese. The most advantaged in that regard, as
in others, was the Koreans' nearest and most strategically placed neigh-
bor, So, the overlord of Tsushima. According to an agreement con-
cluded in 1443 (sometimes called the Kakitsu treaty, after the Japanese
era name for the years 1441 to 1444), the head of the So family was
permitted to sponsor fifty regular vessels a year, with the proviso of
sending other ships on special missions, and was granted the sizable
yearly stipend of two hundred koku (about
361
hectoliters) of rice and
legumes from the Korean fisc; other members of the So family also
received various privileges. The So were also delegated the task of
verifying the bona fides of all Korea-bound Japanese vessels, which
were required to stop at
a
checkpoint in Tsushima and obtain a permit
(K: munin, J:
bun'in)
before proceeding to their destinations. This was
a highly remunerative arrangement for the So, who not only levied
transit duties on the cargoes but also charged each ship's master a fee
for the indispensable munin. Few captains could have willfully by-
passed the Tsushima checkpoint; for regardless of who sponsored the
9 A chronology of the successive steps in the development of Japanese-Korean relations from
1392 to 1868 is found in Nakamura, Nissen kankeishi, vol. 3 (1969), pp. 241-4.
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