What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
Compared with the "Wu Troubles" that lasted for more than three centuries from the middle and late Yuan Dynasty, when China and Japan "robbed me and grabbed me", especially compared with the "Jiajing Great Wu Rebellion" that lasted for forty years during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, and the war spread to the entire southeast coast, the Qing Dynasty before the Opium War, the "Wu Troubles" were very much stopped. Although in the 1990s, the "joke" theme Qing Palace drama starring the "immortal male gods" and "immortal goddesses" of Hong Kong and Taiwan was also filled with the bloody plot of the Emperor of the Qing Dynasty tearing up the Japanese Wokou by hand, but in the real history, this matter really had no chance - Japan on the other side of the sea was "honest" for more than two hundred years.
Of course, this "honesty" is not for no reason, and the first important reason is the change in Japan's national conditions.
Japan during the Qing Dynasty was neither the "Warring States Era" of the Yuan dynasty and the next year, nor the rampant beast of the Toyotomi Hideyoshi era who dreamed of "moving the capital to Ningbo". After the Tokugawa shogunate ruled Japan, out of the consideration of stabilizing its own position of power, it strictly implemented a policy of "locking the country" to the outside world: except for Nagasaki, All Japanese ports were closed to the outside world, Japanese ships were not allowed to trade at sea, let alone communicate with overseas without authorization, and smuggling was a serious crime of death. Only ships from a few countries, such as China and the Netherlands, could trade in Nagasaki, but they were closely monitored.
Every country has to be executed? Such a tightly monitored system of locked countries has also just eradicated the soil of the Wokou rebellion. During the Yuan Dynasty and the next year, the Wokou wantonly drove boats to "forage" for food, and the "good days" of robbing when they wanted to rob were lost from the roots.
However, between Japan, which is desperately trying to lock up the country, and the Qing Dynasty on the other side, it seems that "well water does not violate the river water", but it also has important common interests. This was another important reason for the "Sino-Japanese peace" at that time: the incomparably important "foreign copper trade" between the two sides.
After the Qing Dynasty unified the world, the country entered a long-term peace, but one major event was related to the stability of the country: copper coins. To issue copper coins, you need a lot of copper, the Qing Dynasty copper production areas, but concentrated in Yunnan Guizhou Sichuan and other provinces, production is limited, transportation is more difficult, can not be transported out of copper is a common thing. However, this matter is delayed for a while every year, and it is very likely that it is a "money shortage" that is fatal. Thankfully, Japan has!
Unlike the Qing Dynasty, which is rich in land and treasures but lacks copper, although the island of Japan is poor and has nothing to do with daily necessities, it is rich in precious metals such as gold, silver and copper, and it can be said that "poor enough to have only money left." Moreover, although the country is locked, the demand for various goods in Japan is also extremely large. So what to do? Trade copper for it.
Therefore, since 1683, with the Qing Dynasty pacifying the Southern Ming regime in Taiwan, China and Japan have tacitly begun the "foreign copper trade" that has lasted for half a century. Every year, a large number of Chinese ships go to sea from Ports such as Ningbo and Guangzhou, carrying raw silk and other goods to Japan in exchange for a large amount of high-quality copper. It is worth mentioning that although the "Kangqian prosperous" era, the Qing Dynasty was highly nervous about overseas trade, and only one treaty port was left during the Qianlong period. However, for the sale of "copper for Japan", the Qing Dynasty was a relaxed policy, as long as it was to go to Japan to exchange copper, Chinese merchant ships could even disregard the relevant prohibitions and bring a large number of important treasures.
The Qing Dynasty's attitude toward this transaction, which was related to the stability of the country's finances, was too enlightened compared to other foreign trade policies.
This enlightened attitude also created a period of Sino-Japanese trade that was almost forgotten by later generations, but was flourishing at that time. During the Kangqian period, the Qing Dynasty's annual merchant ships to Japan were often more than 100, and the Number of Chinese merchants who landed on the Japanese island every year was as many as nearly 10,000. From 1683 to 1840, Chinese merchant ships earned a total of 3.8 billion catties of copper from Japan. It's a lasting win-win business for both parties.
Since it is a win-win situation, china and Japan will naturally do their best to maintain peace, and it is not difficult.
But the most important reason is that the Qing Dynasty, which claims to "ignore the ocean" and "close the country", once had a maritime force that threatened the East Asian seas in the "Kangqian prosperous era".
During the Kangxi Dynasty, out of the need to fight against the "Small Imperial Court of the Southern Ming" in the southeast, the Qing Dynasty, which began with a bow horse and a horse, also once attached great importance to naval construction. In 1683, China and Japan began to "foreign copper trade", the Qing Dynasty at that time, the navy was like Japan and The sky, the main battleship "Bird Ship" was more than fifty meters long, equipped with more than thirty large artillery pieces, even compared to the famous Dutch warships on the Asian sea, the Great Qing Bird Ship that inherited the shipbuilding technology of the Ming Dynasty was enough to "single-handedly" at that time. And such fierce gunboats, at that time, there were as many as sixty ships in the Qing Army's marine division.
Such a fierce warship not only played a real role in the battlefield, but also during the Kangxi period, it was also used as a "sealing boat" to seal the Ryukyu every few years, which was equivalent to shining on the surface of the Japanese sea, and the deterrent power was very strong. Such a powerful sea force, which "neighbor" around it dares to easily create a second time?
But the most lamentable thing is this. With the stability of the Qing Dynasty's rule, this once powerful "bird ship" was mostly abandoned by the Qing Dynasty, almost dismantled and thrown away. During the Qianlong period, the qing army's most "jumbo" warship was only eleven inches long. With the banning and destruction of a number of handicraft books in the Qing Dynasty, the shipbuilding and artillery technology of the Qing Army's marine divisions also took a big step backwards.
It was also in qianlong's later years that don't look at the Qing Dynasty and did not make a "woe", but the Vietnamese pirates came to the fore. At that time, the Vietnamese pirate gang equipped with "master ships" often had warships three or four times larger than the Qing warships, known as "large and tall ships, many cannons and strong". With this powerful strength, from the late years of Qianlong to the Jiaqing period, every spring and summer, pirate ships from Vietnam would form groups to kill and kill on the sea from Guangdong to Zhejiang.
But what about on the battlefield? Due to the large number of cannons in people's ships, the coastal water divisions of the Qing army were able to hide every time. So much so that the coastal merchants who had a little money had to spontaneously equip themselves with ship guns and rely on their own strength and pirates to die. Every time the pirates came, the "regular army" sailors of the Qing Army were basically "climbing the mast", and they could see the liveliness. If it were not for the five years of Jiaqing, the Vietnamese pirate ships suffered a hurricane on the sea, plus the change in the domestic situation in Vietnam, and its king took the initiative to eliminate the pirate forces, which was once called the Qing army to hide from the pirates, I don't know how long it will be tossed away.
However, their own navy is not powerful, even if there is no Wokou, even if they rely on luck to survive the Vietnamese pirates, until the Opium War starts, in the face of the British army's strong ships and guns, it is still called every day. The Qing Dynasty, which was bombed out of the country, then fell into the pit of backwardness and was beaten, and in the Sino-Japanese War at the end of the nineteenth century, it was trampled under the feet of japan, the former "trading partner".
Therefore, changes in each other's national conditions and common trade and economic interests are of course necessary conditions for peace, but self-improvement is fundamental. The Qing Dynasty, which did not have a "Wokou", finally paid too much of a heavy price for ignoring sea power.