01
There has always been a lot of debate about the problem of wokou on the southeast coast during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, and the biggest controversy about Wokou on the Internet now is about the composition of Wokou. The prevailing view is that wokou are mostly made up of chinese coastal residents, and that Chinese dominate the wokou.
02
Although the Wokou only became the most serious scourge of the Ming Dynasty during the Jiajing Period, in fact, as early as the Yuan Dynasty, there were Wokou who plundered the coastal areas of Chinese mainland. At that time, Japanese pirates not only plundered merchant ships, but also landed from the coast, burning and looting in the coastal counties for many years, and the Yuan Dynasty army was helpless.
In the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, due to the initial determination of the country, the political instability in various places and the difficulty of governance gave the Wokou more opportunities to take advantage of. During the Reign of Hongwu Yongle, the Wokou repeatedly invaded the Coastal Areas of Daming, causing great national defense difficulties for the Ming Dynasty.
At that time, Emperor Taizong of Taizu sent people out to sea many times to search for Wokou and obtained a large number of booty such as Warships, Wokou swords, and Wokou bows
"Twelve ships, more than one hundred and thirty people, and bows and other instruments"
03
It is enough to show that at this time, the Wokou should basically be the so-called true Wokou, of course, there is no shortage of coastal traitors to join them, like the pirate Zhang Ama of Huangyan County in Taizhou, who has repeatedly led the way to the Wokou and guided the Wokou into the Chinese mainland coastal robbery, but the proportion should be said to be quite small.
Moreover, the Kingdom of Korea at the same time was also invaded by the Wokou many times, which further confirmed that most of these people were real Wokou, and if they were Chinese coastal residents, they were obviously unwilling to cross the sea to the Korean Peninsula to rob it, and only the Japanese who came from Japan across the sea and passed through Korea would have this kind of mind to plunder Korea.
04
Since the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the serious problem of woe has basically disappeared from the coastal areas of Chinese mainland after two generations of strong blows from the Hongwu and Yongle years of the Ming Dynasty, and the situation in the southeast region of Haijing Boning lasted for more than a century until the Jiajing period.
Because in the second year of Jiajing, Zong Shi and Song Suqing came to China from Japan to have friction over trade problems and the authenticity of the emissaries, Zong Shi was angry and wantonly burned and looted in Ningbo, and the famous "Battle of Tribute" broke out, resulting in the Ming Dynasty's reluctance to trade with Japan anymore, so it shut down the city shipping division.
However, the huge profits of the ocean trade touched people's hearts, and the Chinese civilians along the coast often went to the sea to trade with the Japanese in the Zhoushan area. The Japanese Five Islands Wu people and merchants from Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian along the Coast of China all came here to trade, forming a huge sea trade market.
05
And these Japanese people, who have both merchant identity and pirate status, often have to go to the land to grab a vote after coming to China's coastal trade, which makes the Ming Dynasty's coastal defense and security problem very serious, so the imperial court strengthened the "sea ban" policy, "strict ban on the ban".
As a result, Chinese coastal residents rarely went to Zhoushan to trade, and the Japanese merchant pirates whose trade profits were not satisfied showed their fierce fangs and directly robbed themselves to meet their needs. At the same time, pirates and profiteers smuggled along the Coast of China also colluded with the Wokou, who used them as a guide to invade the Chinese coast.
06
At that time, there were many records that believed that the Southeast Wu was "a person of many Chinese"
Zheng Ruozeng's "Compilation of Charting the Sea" records: "Today's sea is counted in thousands of people, and all of them are entrusted with the words of the Slaves... The Zhangjun County of Great Fu is the most of it, and Ning Shao often has it, so why not be all of them? ”
Zheng Mao's "Jinghai Jiluo" also said: "The bald bird sounds of the Wu people, less than two or three hundred, Yu Juning, Shao, Zhang, and Guangzhuo are not successful." ”
Gui Youguang's "Zhenchuan Collection" records: "When visiting the island of Yizhou, the real wu are not more than a hundred, and there are many outlaws in the interior, and there are often those who cannot extricate themselves from being plundered." ”
These records seem to illustrate, as we can, the indisputable fact that the Wokou are actually mostly composed of Chinese, and the problem of wokou is actually a farce of robbery committed by the coastal people under the guise of the real Wokou. So, is it really as they say?
07
In fact, in order to attract attention, these records deliberately exaggerate the role played by the coastal traitors in the plague, in order to achieve the purpose of sensationalizing the public, and there is no shortage of examples of individual special cases as general situations.
Let's take the "Gaijiang South Coast Guard, Wuju Thirteen, and Chinese Rebel Ju Seventeen" recorded in the "Records of Sejong" as an example to analyze in detail the background of this passage.
The full record of this sentence is:
"At that time, there were many inhabited boats on the islands on the shore of the sea, there were those who really obstructed the wind and did not return, there were coastal traitors who robbed the Jiangnan Xuanhou to come to the age of the widows, and before long, there were three boats landing on the shore of the Nanri Village, and (Zhang) Dong and (Dong) Shi hongzhi attacked, and led them, and captured several thieves, all of whom were really woe. Than Quanzhou Prefecture soldiers patrolled the sea, attacked thieves in Shizhen'ao deep mud bay and other places, and all those who fought again and captured more than forty thieves were all from Zhejiang Linhai, Fujian Zhangpu, Guangquan Jieyang and other counties, Gaijiang South Coast Guard, Wuju thirteen, and China's rebels were seventeen. ”
One of the points worth noting in this account is that of the Wokou ships that inhabited the coastal islands, and it can be seen that most of the "Makoto" ships at that time had already returned to Japan, and the "Makoto" who continued to stay on the coast were forced to stay on the coastal islands because they were hindered by the monsoon, and these people were obviously only a small part of the "Makoto".
Secondly, the coastal traitors also live on these islands, they wait for the next year's Wokou to come and then they will rob together, and the "next year's Wokou" here must be the "True Woe".
Qi family army Mandarin duck array detailed diagram
08
The person who edited the "Records of Sejong" said that "the thirteenth house of the Wuju, and the Seventeenth of the Chinese rebels" are obviously lamenting the coastal traitors, rather than the actual statistics, and because most of the "True Woes" have left in a boat, his exclamation is obviously a bit generalized.
In addition, there are many historical records that point out that most of the Wokou came from Japan and not mostly Chinese.
It is recorded in the "Continuation of the Literature examination" that "the former entered the koku, the people of Tosamo, Higo, and Nagato, followed by osumi, Chikuzen, Chikugo, Hakata, Hyuga, Remo, Tsushu, Kii, and so on, and there were also people from Toyomae, Toyogo, and Izumi." ”
The Compilation of the Chart of the Sea also records that "the pirates who were judged to be in the Kou Clan were nojima Koi, who belonged to Japan, and were entangled and robbed by the Chinese fugitives", "The Uighurs returned to the boat, robbed when they encountered the ship, killed when they met the ship, and went to their own country, and the ease of China's robbery aroused the admiration of the islands." ”
The History of Ming also records: "Wang Zhichu lured the Wu into the invasion, and the Wu made a big profit, and the islands were thus from this date." Since there are many casualties, there are no one on the island. ”
09
These Wokou who invaded China in large numbers across the sea, due to language problems, basically no one knows who their surnames are, and Chinese history books rarely record these "island Yi", but Wang Zhi, Xu Hai and others who were used by Wukou as guides were under the history secretary, and the most important reason was that the names of the Chinese people were easy to remember, while the names of the true Wu were rarely recorded due to language barriers.
The "Outline of the Wu Rebellion" clearly records the situation that the "true Wo" is difficult to confirm due to the language barrier.
"Shi Beiwu led the commander-in-chief Wang Yinglin to lead hundreds of soldiers out of the guards, and the thieves did not dare to move when they saw our soldiers. Wang Dispatched land commanded Wang Yanzhong to lead more than a hundred troops to the ship to inquire about it, and the translation was Mo Tong. ”
At that time, the famous Wukou leaders included Xu Hai's ally Xin Wulang, and the secret Modo, Xu Gongsifei, And Chai Youmen, who were captured with Xin Wulang, but these Wukou leaders along the coast were basically unknown in the history books, and their names could only be known in Zhao Wenhua's performance, and more "True Wo" were not known because they were not as famous as these Wukou leaders in Shangshu.
In the "Outline of the Wu Rebellion", a number of violations by the Wokou are recorded, but the Wokou are referred to by words such as "eight kings", "two kings", "Wu chieftains", and "red-robed Canal Kui". It is conceivable how difficult it was to verify the true identity of The Wokou and record his name deeds at that time, there were more than forty Wukou leaders who accompanied Wang Zhi in the thirty-sixth year of Jiajing's invasion of the coast, and only shanmiao was left with his name in the end, and the rest of the Wukou xiaoxiao's troops could not be recorded.
10
At the same time, the Zhejiang Cloth Administration Department announced to Japan in the name of the Ming Court, hoping that the Japanese island owners would restrain the pirates under them. At that time, after the lords of Yamaguchi, Bungo and other islands in Japan strengthened supervision, the following year there were really fewer wokou offenders.
It can also be seen from here that the main force of the Wokou is indeed the Japanese "True Wo", not the Chinese.
Yu Dayu wrote about this matter in the "Japanese Tribute to the Council": "The number of thieves who went to Zhejiang Province to pronounce the explicit text, changed to the islands, and forbade crossing the sea as a thief, was also very strict, and the number of thieves who entered the Kou at this age was relatively small, and it was his test... The town of Jinyuan... Although there are thousands of thieves in Yangzhou this year, there are many small police officers in Places such as Shenjiamen in Zhejiang province, and there are tens of thousands of thieves in jiangbei and jiangnan in previous years. ”
From this series of records, it is enough to point out that the Japanese, that is, the "true Wo", are the main cause of such a serious plague, and not Chinese pretending to be a Wokou to plunder themselves.