Japanese Pirates in the Beginning of the Heian Period [1-3]

Rice and regional goods, such as salt, were indispensable for people’s daily life, but bulky. Weren’t there anything more valuable and handy? There could have been! In 866, some Tang people, Chinese people in today’s sense, were reported to have come all the way to Kyoto with no pass issued in Dazai-fu. There could have been more Tang people with passes. They used to be called trading visitors. What were they trading then? It is worthwhile to notice that in 874, a document tells us, Okami Mii, an officer in Iyo, and Taji Yasue, another officer in Bungo, were officially sent to Tang to purchase incense and medicine there. Another document tells us that at least Taji came back to Japan on board Tang trader’s ship in 877. Diplomatic relations with Shinra had been broken off in 779, and Japanese envoys to the Tang Dynasty had been stopped in 810. Yet, noblemen’s need for advanced and sophisticated foreign-imported goods was neither broken off nor stopped. The end of official exchange of ministers might have rather encouraged private trading.

Japanese Pirates in the Beginning of the Heian Period [1-2]

Was private trade nil at the beginning of the Heian period? By no means! The government order in 756 itself implies there had already emerged forwarders fully enough to carry all the tax rice from the Seto inland Sea regions presumably between the harvest and the start of the rainy season of a year at the longest. According to the order issued in 796, traders from Kaya Port (in today’s Fukuoka Prefecture), Kunisaki Port and Sakato Port (both in today’s Oita Prefecture) had been supposed to get a pass at Dazai-fu and show it at Moji Checkpoint along a narrow channel between Kyushu and Honshu islands on their way to Kyoto. As late as by the year 746, however, some forwarders had come to be found shipping their regional goods to Kyoto without calling at Moji. In 796, at last, the central government gave up, and approved the traffic deregulation. Traders could now directly sail to Nambe, the largest sea port at the mouth of a river from Kyoto to be checked by a regional officer there. Commercial shipping was not only between the capital and regions. Before 716, for example, private sailing had been forbidden between Bungo, the easternmost region on Kyushu Island, and Iyo, the westernmost region on Shikoku Island, and there used to be forts on each side to force the rule on traders. An order in 716, however, allowed a ship to sail between the 2 regions if a higher-ranked nobleman (higher than the 5th in the ranking system at that time) was on board. This was another example of water traffic deregulations. These deregulations imply that even some high-ranked noblemen found their interests in freer water transportation.

Japanese Pirates in the Beginning of the Heian Period [1-1]

First of all, as far as pirates are supposed to be those sailing on the seas, attacking other boats and stealing things from them, there must have been other boats to be attacked and those boats must have been carrying things. Then, what boats were carrying what things in the Seto Inland Sea in the 9th century? Things carried officially are comparatively easy to grasp. As early as in 756, the central government ordered the regional governments around the Seto Inland Sea to send their tax rice to the capital by rowboat, and added, if the tax rice on a boat was lost, 30% of it should be taxed again to the original taxpayers and 20% to the forwarders according to the order issued in May, 735. The Japanese ancient centralized bureaucratic government had been established in 645. They imposed 3 types of taxes: So, tax rice; Yo, labor duties; Cho, tax cloth. All the taxes were supposed to be carried to Kyoto by Yo itself. That is, all the taxes were carried on taxpayers’ shoulders. As boat-building skills improved, and navigating skills matured, water transportation might have increased so much as the government could not ignore within a century. 111 years after the establishment of the tax system, Yo also had become rice, and all the tax rice including Yo came to be carried by rowboat around the Seto Inland Sea.

Japanese Pirates in the Beginning of the Heian Period [0]

When you talk about the history of the Heian period, you can not avoid talking about pirates. Pirates in Japan were very active twice at the beginning of the Heian period: first, in the middle of the 9th century, and, second, in the middle of 10th century. The two confrontations against the state forced the central government to realize the critical situation, to face it, and to stabilize it. The second series of incidents, including Fujiwara Sumitomo’s rebellion, have been widely studied. They were not only active but also well-organized enough to attack local governments’ offices around the Seto Inland Sea and even Dazai-fu, a special regional agency of the central government which handled diplomacy and defense in Kyushu, the westernmost main island in Japan, that is, the closest main island to Korea and China. The first pirate uprisings, on the other hand, have come to be regarded as pre-stages or signs of the second, as the researches over the second have, ironically enough, have progressed and deepened. Pirates in the middle of the 9th century, however, must have had their own historical and regional characteristics, and should be analyzed independently. Why, in the first place, were Pirates Crackdown Orders declared? What were their articles like? How were those articles organized and composed in one order? How were those orders carried out? These are the questions which have been paid little attention to. The existence of pirates itself has never been questioned, even less has their relationship with the pirates from Shinra, one of the three countries in the Korean Peninsula at the time, been. I would like to pick up the frequent divisions of counties and the increase of county officials around the Seto Inland Sea in the middle of the 9th century first. Shinra pirates started looting and plundering regions along the Japan Sea coast and their outer islands in the second half of the 9th century. What is the relation between those Shinra pirates and “pirate problems” in Japan?