The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony By Micha ...

The reason for the shuinsen (or “red seal ship”) system, which was originally conceived of by Hideyoshi, was twofold. First of all, it helped to reduce the piracy that was endemic to East Asian coastal waters since the time of the Warring States Period and about which Asian governments complained. Hideyoshi specifically used the shuinj to curb piracy, a policy that Nagazumi Yoko called Hideyoshi's “sword hunt at sea” (Umi no Katanagari). She also related that the governor of the Philippines expressly asked Hideyoshi to issue official trade passes to Japanese merchants to distinguish between legitimate trade and piracy.³⁹ Secondly, and more importantly for the purposes of this book, shuinj allowed the Tokugawa to control all trade into and out of Japan, thus depriving other, potentially hostile daimyo of a significant source of revenue.⁴⁰

The shuinsen system was widespread for the first couple of decades of the Tokugawa period, resulting in hundreds of voyages to various locations in Asia. Iwao Seiichi noted that even though many scholars recognize the role of foreign ships in transporting silver out of Japan, in reality, the shuinsen represented a much larger trade by volume and were responsible for massive amounts of precious metals being transferred to Asia in return mainly for luxury goods.⁴¹ It should be noted that this commodity flow—Japanese silver in exchange for Asian luxury goods such as silk, spices, animal products, and so forth—was one of the most important trade routes in the early modern period.⁴² I examine this system in more depth later, but suffice it to say that Japanese ships played a large role in the economy of early modern Asia.

The Japanese were not simply traveling to other countries but, from the sixteenth century onward, constituted a significant presence overseas in the form of settlements that came to be known as nihonmachi, or “Japan-towns.” The two biggest of these settlements were in Manila and Ayutthaya, although there were significant smaller settlements all across Southeast Asia. In these settlements, the Japanese merchants were effectively able to act as middlemen in the trade with China, given that the Ming dynasty had forbidden direct trade between the two countries.⁴³ Because the Spanish in Manila and the Siamese in Ayutthaya were eager to monopolize this middleman role for themselves, the Japanese often