At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Japan coincided with the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and the guardians of various places gradually developed into feudal separatist forces. In order to plunder wealth to fight the shogunate, lords often gathered ronin and soldiers to form armed gangs to invade the southeast coast of China, sometimes known as "Wokou". The original remnants of Fang Guozhen and Zhang Shicheng fled to the sea when they were exhausted, and then colluded with the Wokou to plunder the people and usurp wealth along the southeast coast of the Ming Dynasty. However, because the Ming Dynasty was powerful at that time, the coastal defense was consolidated, and the suppression was at the same time, so the Wokou did not cause much disaster.
As early as the Hongwu period, Zhu Yuanzhang had sent the general Tang He to inspect coastal defense. Under the command of Tang He, 59 cities were built from Laizhou in Shandong to Zhejiang, and 58,700 soldiers were recruited to guard the coastal defenses. In order to maintain relations with the Ming Dynasty, Japan also often arrested the Wokou. However, this stable situation was destroyed by the Jiajing Dynasty, and the Wokou waited for the opportunity to loot, and the damage was great. So why did Jiajing Wokou cause a big disaster?
From the perspective of the world pattern, the European commercial revolution has been developed for two centuries, especially overseas exploration and navigation, which has greatly stimulated overseas commercial trade. The maritime powers Portugal and Spain both wanted to gain a place in the trade of the East. However, China was rich in natural resources and was not interested in their trade demands, and when refused, they had to cruise along the coast of China. At that time, Guangdong strictly enforced the Ming Dynasty's edict prohibiting overseas trade, so the Portuguese and Spanish shifted the focus of trade to the coastal provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang in the north, and for a long time hidden in the unnamed islands and harbors to winter. Pirates Xu Dong, Wang Zhi, Li Guangtou and others bought goods from Africa, Southeast Asia and Europe from the Portuguese Spaniards, including advanced weapons, while the Portuguese Spaniards bought Chinese raw silk, silk, porcelain, cotton cloth, grain, with an annual turnover of 3 million Portuguese yuan, most of which was paid in Japanese ingots.
From the perspective of Japan, from the fall of the Kamakura shogunate to the Sengoku daimyo, from the end of the 13th century to the 14th century, Japan was in the Sengoku period of long-term chaos, resulting in a large number of samurai and unemployed displaced people becoming exiles. However, at this time, due to the rapid improvement of the level of agriculture and handicrafts, overseas trade also developed rapidly, which stimulated the greed of feudal lords, nobles, samurai, and merchants, who competed for Chinese trade. This merchant-pirate wako, flying the banner of Hachiman Daibodhisattva, broke through the joint regulations of the Muromachi shogunate and the Ming Dynasty to trade in China. And those bankrupt peasants, derelict officials, unemployed displaced people, defeated samurai, unemployed ronin, with the support of lords everywhere, also rushed overseas for a way out. At the same time, in the north-south melee, many defeated generals, derelict samurai, and bankrupt peasants were exiled to the island to become pirates due to homelessness. In addition, some people who have escaped conquest or lost their means of production are also in exile on the island of the sea, and they collude with unscrupulous merchants around Kyushu to rob the coasts of China, Japan, and North Korea, and invade the coastal areas of China.
Judging from the situation in the Ming Dynasty, in the early Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered that "coastal people are forbidden to smuggle with foreign countries" and "people are forbidden to use tomato and sweet goods to cut off the sales of foreign goods" to implement a sea ban policy. However, due to the small number of people in the southeast coastal areas, the income from the land is not enough to maintain their livelihood, most of the coastal people take boats as their home, the sea is the basis for their survival, and going to sea to make a living is the main way out for the people on the southeast coast, while the Ming government's sea ban policy has cut off the livelihood of the people on the southeast coast, and they are forced to become "wokou" in order to live.
During the Jiajing period, the power of eunuchs was excluded, but the dictatorship of power and ministers was formed, party strife was constant, and bureaucratic favoritism and bribery were prevalent. Jiajing did not go to the imperial government for more than 20 years, and the chief assistant Yan Song was able to dictate power, ran amok, and the corruption of the imperial government was extremely dim. Therefore, in the middle of the Jiajing period, the "Wokou" headed by Wang Zhi and Xu Hai was rampant for a while.
After Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty, in order to curb the remaining forces such as Zhang Shicheng and Fang Guozhen, while strengthening coastal defense and imposing a sea ban, foreign trade adopted tributary means. However, by the time of Jiajing, the development of foreign trade economy was rapid, but the Jiajing Emperor and Yan Song and other ministers knew little about the southeast coast, and still adopted tributary trade. Therefore, after the "Battle of Ningbo" in the second year of Jiajing (1523), the imperial court believed that the plague was caused by the opening of the city's trade, so it continued to implement the policy of sea ban, and the city was abolished, and the official tribute trade between China and Japan was stopped. At that time, there was still a great demand for trade development between China and Japan, which made it profitable to engage in maritime trafficking. Therefore, in disregard of the prohibition of the imperial court, private coastal merchants and "wealthy giants" invested in maritime trade to make huge profits, but private maritime trade was regarded as illegal by the Ming government and was cracked down, and the livelihood of the coastal people in Fujian and Zhejiang was curbed, so they turned from merchants to curses.
At the same time, during the Jiajing period, due to increasing political corruption and policy mistakes, coastal defense facilities lost their proper functions, guardhouses were in vain, air weapons were lacking, and warships were left to pieces. The anti-Yan generals were also ostracized and killed. It was already difficult to adapt to the needs of resisting the Wokou at that time.
Therefore, there were many reasons for the sudden seriousness of the Wokou problem to the Ming Jiajing Dynasty, including Japan's internal chaos, Jiajing's mediocrity and Yan Song's dictatorship, foreign policy mistakes, and the relaxation of coastal defense armaments, which eventually made the Wokou problem rampant and formed the "Jiajing Great Wokou."
Later, when the Jiajing Emperor heard that the Wokou were coming, killing and setting fire to people wherever he went, and plundering the Emperor, he decisively sent troops to resist the Wokou. The Ming Dynasty also paid a heavy price in order to resist the Wokou, which lasted for 20 years, with 142 major battles, and 107 people died in the following battles alone, and finally hundreds of thousands of Ming troops finally defeated tens of thousands of Wokou, and Wang Zhi and many other Wakou leaders were beheaded.
The key to truly solving the war was to abolish the sea ban during Longqing and allow trade to be carried out along the coast, so that private maritime trade gained a legal status, promoted the development of the domestic economy, enabled the people to live and work in peace and contentment, and stabilized social order, so that the situation in the southeast could be regarded as stable.