In his 2005 book Umi to teikoku — Min-Shin jidai [The Sea and Empire: The Ming-Qing Period], Ueda Makoto writes, “By focusing on the relationship between empire and the sea we can continually pay attention to the contemporaneity of Japan and Southeast Asia, which were linked to China by the sea, and Europe, and to depict the history of Eurasia as a common history.” This approach prompts two observations. First, Ueda's history is a case study of how the sea impacted the history of Ming China and Qing China and, more broadly, the histories of nearby countries and a larger region. Second, Choson Korea is not included in this history of Ming and Qing China and the sea.

That Ueda does not include Choson is understandable. Save for the first several decades of the Ming period, when the capital was located in Nanjing and Korean embassies often travelled there by sea, these two Chinese governments and the Choson government conducted their diplomatic relations through the dispatch overland of embassies to the other country. In addition, Koreans often traded with Chinese and Jurchens north of the Yalu River. Ueda's project encourages the writing of the Choson government and its engagements with the sea as another case study.

Two themes will be discussed in this chapter. The first theme is the maritime space, divided into microregions, in which the Choson government conducted trade from 1392 until 1592. The second is the Choson court's management of maritime trade. Trade in Southeast Asia, the transport of Southeast Asian goods northward to Ryukyu and then to Japan, and the Choson government's structure for managing maritime contact shaped a maritime trade region that continued to connect these areas from at least the late 14th century and the 15th century onward. That structure, a Korean tribute system, a “bureaucratic systematization of the management” of trade missions, arranged Japanese contacts into a hierarchical order of relations with the King of Choson. The Choson government sanctioned trade and accepted items conveyed from Southeast Asia through this structure for routine interaction.

The critiques of sakoku (literally “closed country”) since the 1970s have fundamentally rewritten the historiography of the foreign relations of Tokugawa Japan (1603–1868). The term sakoku was created by Shizuki Tadao, a Nagasaki interpreter to the Dutch in 1801, and it started to circulate in the Meiji period to express the “seclusion policy” of the Tokugawa shogunate, often with a negative connotation referring to the backwardness of the former regime. In the following years, a general understanding was established that Tokugawa Japan had absolutely adhered to the sakokurei (the sakoku edicts), or the five edicts issued between 1633 and 1639 in order to achieve a state of seclusion from the external world, until the arrival of Commodore Mathew Perry and his American fleet in 1853. The evidence accumulates, however, to show that these edicts, including the ban on Japanese navigation to foreign countries in 1635 and the expulsion of the Portuguese in 1639, were issued to realize the centralization of foreign relations under the new Tokugawa administration, not to isolate the country from the world.

Today's researchers consider that the foreign policy of Tokugawa Japan was one of the variants of the Chinese haijin system, a state-controlled system of foreign trade and diplomacy.3 As in that model under the Ming, it was the central government that monopolized diplomacy and that decided at which ports, in both governmental territory and feudal domains, foreign trade should be conducted and with whom. Except for Choson Korea, probably no other country in the world carried out such a rigid state-centred foreign policy. At the same time, the Tokugawa administration formed a hierarchical system of foreign relations into which the kingdoms of Korea and Ryukyu, Chinese and Dutch traders, and the Ainu in Ezochi (current Hokkaido and further northern islands) were incorporated, borrowing the model of the Sino-centric World Order that consisted of a civilized centre (hua) and peripheral barbarians (i).

It was a significant historiographical turn that Tokugawa Japan's foreign relations came to be discussed in relation to other regions in Eastern Asia. It should be emphasized that this revision was not limited to Japan's foreign relations, but affected the understanding of the history of its economic development.

Gunpowder technology not only changed the nature of warfare, but also changed the trajectory of the early modern world, as Geoffrey Parker has famously argued. Another aspect of the advent of gunpowder technology is that it also changed the way war-making materials were procured. Since the two major materials used to manufacture gunpowder, saltpetre and sulphur, were mostly located in different geographical locations and no one country or region in the early modern world possessed both of them in sufficient quantity to fill its needs for manufactured gunpowder (“black powder”) for waging war, at least one of them had to be procured via trade. Charcoal, the third ingredient, was universally available.

Comparatively speaking, saltpetre played a more important role than sulphur and charcoal in the gunpowder formula. However, existing research on the saltpetre trade has hitherto left much to be desired, especially regarding Asia east of India. For the early modern world (c.1390–1850), saltpetre production and trade have received abundant attention for Europe, the Ottoman empire, and India (especially the trade between India and Europe). Regarding Indian saltpetre, Brenda Buchanan has recognized that acquisition of Indian saltpetre led to the creation of the “British Gunpowder Empire”, while James Frey in his meticulous and global study has argued that it was this Indian saltpetre that made possible the “Military Revolution” in 18th century Europe. Valuable and inspiring as these works are, they are marred by Indocentric views. In Asia east of India, saltpetre refining in Japan and Korea, and saltpetre trade between China, Korea, Japan, Siam and the Philippines, have been treated to some extent, but primarily in Japanese and Korean scholarship; using by and large only Chinese, Korean, and Japanese sources.

Studies of the Chinese junk trade with Tokugawa Japan under the so-called sakoku policy fall, in general, into two categories — namely studies of institutions and studies of quantities. The first has focused on administrative institutions, regulations and procedures the Tokugawa authorities installed one after another over years. The latter has made great and almost heroic efforts to quantify imports and exports carried by Chinese junks as opposed to those by the Dutch ships. Yet, such approaches inherently conceal and gloss over more “human” aspects of trade. This is to say, individual traders and their networks among the local community have never been studied in any real depth.

This chapter first lays out the regulatory frameworks placed upon Chinese people and their trading activities while they were on Japanese soil, by examining a series of edicts the Tokugawa bakufu issued during the 1630s. The second part introduces Wei Zhiyan, a Chinese merchant who, despite all the official rules and regulations, resided in Nagasaki from the 1650s and concurrently carried on foreign trade until the early 1680s. Previous studies, which did not acknowledge the existence of such a Chinese trading operation originating from Nagasaki after the 1630s, were not able to explain how Wei manoeuvred around the restrictive Japanese government policies and pursued his commercial ventures. In search of clues to answer this question, the last part of this essay explores Wei's personal ties with the Nagasaki local community.

THE SAKOKU EDICTS AND CHINESE RESIDENTS IN JAPAN: IN THEORY

Towards the end of the 16th century, thriving trade between China and Japan created the conditions whereby Chinese residents could be seen everywhere in Japan. Chinese junks were allowed to call at any port, and people of Chinese origin were free to settle anywhere in Japan or to leave there again for another overseas venture.1 However, during the 1630s, the Tokugawa bakufu successively issued five directives to the magistrates of Nagasaki. The so-called sakoku edicts gradually changed the landscape of maritime East and Southeast Asia, including the position of Chinese junks and residents in Japan. The following section will outline the contents of the edicts concerning Chinese activities at Nagasaki and their effects.

This book was stimulated by the aim of deepening comparison and dialogue between historical research on Northeast Asia and that on Southeast Asia. Two centres collaborated in the joint research project which provided the groundwork for the book. One was the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. The Institute's Southeast Asia–China Interactions Cluster brought together scholars working on European-language, Chinese-language and Southeast Asian sources in an effort to understand the long-term relationships between China and her southern neighbours. The other was the Kaiiki Ajiashi Kenkyūkai — the Research Group of Maritime Asian History or Kaiikiken, established in 1993 and headquartered in Osaka, Japan. In cooperation with research groups on Central Asian history and early modern global history, the main axis for the activities of Kaiikiken's members was provided by the 21st Century Centre of Excellence Program “Interface Humanities” at Osaka University, 2003–7. Kaiikiken's principal research theme was the medieval and early modern maritime history of the area spanning Northeast and Southeast Asia. This work included exchange with scholars from Korea, China, Taiwan, and other regions. The Singapore and Osaka groups jointly hosted two international workshops: one in October 2004 in Okinawa titled “Northeast Asia in Maritime Perspective: A Dialogue with Southeast Asia” and one in Nagasaki in October 2006 titled “Dynamic Rimlands and Open Heartlands: Maritime Asia as a Site of Interactions”. This book is a selection of papers presented at these workshops, all extensively revised for publication. A series of smaller panels and seminars were also held on related themes, including a session titled “the European Presence in Early-Modern East and Southeast Asia: Examination of the Concept of Early-Modern Empire” at the International Association of Historians of Asia (IAHA) conference in Taiwan in December 2004.

We are grateful for the support for these activities furnished by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (the 21st Century Centre of Excellence Program at Osaka University “Interface Humanities”), the Suntory Foundation (“A Theoretical Study of Continuity and Discontinuity in ‘Early Modern’ and ‘Modern’ East and Southeast Asia”), and the Asia Research Institute.

The inter-Asian emphasis of this volume is part of a welcome reintegration of regional histories following the gains made in area studies in recent decades. Southeast Asianists have paid some attention to the 9th to 14th centuries as a time of state-building, when the so-called charter polities dominated the region. Several Southeast Asianists have also identified a kind of turning point in the 13th or 14th century (see below), and a recent volume has focussed on the 15th century as marking a number of new beginnings for what Anthony Reid called Southeast Asia's “Age of Commerce”. Meanwhile China scholars have had difficulty extending beyond the dynastic periodization of Tang, Song and Yuan, let alone seeing China as part of a broader set of networks. But when we shift the focus to the maritime networks that operated throughout Asian waters, the 9th to 13th centuries can be seen as marking a kind of maritime boom of a broader sort. While the commercial actors in the earlier part of the period were largely West, South and Southeast Asians, the sources from China are indispensable in identifying these networks.

From a background in Middle Eastern History, Janet Abu-Lughod has drawn attention to the last phase of this flowering, though on a basis which appears to need adjusting for eastern Asia (see below). In this chapter it is argued that the entire four centuries from circa 900 to 1300 CE can be seen as a long period of expansion of maritime trade, which in turn induced political, social and economic changes throughout the region. The conjunction of a number of forces provided an environment where maritime trade boomed not only in Southeast Asia, but also in the South China Sea as argued elsewhere in this book. The period 900–1300 indeed has a number of similar features to those identified as marking an “Age of Commerce” for Southeast Asia in the 15th–17th centuries.

The factors giving rise to this flourishing of maritime trade can be grouped under four heads: Chinese economic policies; socio-economic changes in Southern China; the growth of Islamic trade; and Tamil trade networks.

FRAMEWORK OF COMPARISON

This chapter aims at reviewing the periodization of Southeast Asia from the 9th century to the mid-19th century in comparison with that of Japan, and sometimes of Korea and China. The authors prefer the term Northeast Asia to the more usual East Asia for the three countries, and in some cases are inclined to regard southern China as part of Southeast Asia. We focus on the common features of East Eurasian rimlands. It will help readers grasp wider (in terms of both time and space) economic and social trends, in which maritime interactions examined in the following chapters took place. Southeast Asianists often pay attention to common features or the entire composition of the region. Generally speaking, however, Southeast Asian historical studies are indifferent to the periodization of regional history. Serious challenges to the ahistorical dichotomy of Ancient/Modern or Traditional/Modern Southeast Asia have only recently appeared, despite the early proposition of Benda's “The Structure of Southeast Asian History”. On the other hand the historiography of Northeast Asia, led mostly by scholars in the region, is often nation-state oriented. But it is more conscious of periodization, whether it is done to trace negative “premodern” or “feudal” pasts, or to find positive “preludes” or “embryos” of modernity. There are ample arguments about continuities and changes among various historical stages, and standards of periodization as well. For this reason, Northeast Asian and Southeast Asian studies can be supplementary to each other.

Nevertheless, the scope of Southeast Asianists in relation to the northern direction usually covers only China, while peripheral areas of Northeast Asia like the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Archipelago are often overlooked. Most Japanologists and Koreanists in their turn are far less interested in Southeast Asia than in China. In this context, Lieberman's comparisons of mainland Southeast Asia, Japan and China, focussing on the major steps of state consolidation, are quite challenging. He drew a picture of Eurasia as a whole, distinguishing the “protected zone” (much of Europe, Southeast Asia, and Japan) from the “exposed zone” (China, most of South Asia, and Southwest Asia) strongly influenced by Inner Asia. This distinction reminds Japanese readers of the “ecohistory of civilizations” proposed by Umesao Tadao.