ABSTRACT
JAPANESE MERCHANDISE IN CHINA.-The Chinese Court was long so much in terror of the Japanese adventurers that they used every means of defence, even sacrificing other things to prepare for it. Many soldiers and generals in the latter days of the Ming Dynasty distinguished themselves in the defence against the Japanese pirates and earned high fame for their bravery and strategy, but the Chinese soldiers and their military preparations alone could not defend their coasts, and it is not a little curious to hear that the Chinese conciliated some Japanese, gave them positions of authority, and employed them
4 to defend their coasts against the Japanese pirates. During the 15th century, when the Chinese generals Sekikeiko and Yudaiyu were in charge of the defence of the eastern and southern coasts, they often bribed the Japanese pirates to withdraw; and having thus proved that Japanese were bribable, they enticed them by similar methods to join China, and entrusted them with the defence of their coasts. For instance, when some Japanese adventurers, Jusuke of Takamimura in Sanuki Province and ten others, descended on the coast of Fukien Province in China, they were suddenly fired at, stopped, and boarded by Chinese officials. To their great astonishment, these Chinese officials were not Chinese but Japanese, headed by one Tadotsuya Gihei. This incident occurred in 1587, the year in which Hideyoshi subdued Kyushu. It is natural for Japanese to know the conditions of their country best, and therefore to engage Japanese who were pirates by profession to defend the coasts against their fellow-countrymen, on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief, proved a most efficient method of coast defence. It was not the Japanese adventurers alone who were a terror to the Chinese; there were also the gangs of Chinese pirates, a terrible thorn in the side of their Government, because they were in touch with the Japanese adventurers, and together plotted against their own country. This was one reason why the Chinese Government appointed the Japanese adventurers Chinese officials, for they were able to clear their seas of pirates as soon as they were deprived of the help of the Japanese. The abovegiven instance is only one, and no doubt there were many Japanese who allowed themselves to be enticed into Chinese service, and undertook the work of coast defence against pirates of both nationalities. There is a record how, about the year 1660, there was at Hakata in Kyushu a merchant called Yamato-ya Hoshinosuke who engaged in the coast trade. Once he went to China on business and never came back home, to the great astonishment of his family; and while his people were wondering as to his whereabouts some gifts from him arrived, and continued to come from time to time. At the same time the family received a hint that this Hoshinosuke was enjoying a very high post in China as the chief of a Chinese province, and there is reason to believe that he filled the same sort of position as Tadotsuya Gihei mentioned above.
