The Preconditions for the First Uprisings of Japanese Pirates

     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 provincial 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 supposed to be 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 it 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. 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 provinces presumably between the harvest and the start of the next rainy season of 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 provincial 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 Namba, the largest sea port at the mouth of a river from Kyoto to be checked by a provincial officer there. Commercial shipping was not only between the capital and provinces. Before 716, for example, private sailing had been forbidden between Bungo, the easternmost province on Kyushu Island, and Iyo, the westernmost province 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 provinces 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. Rice and provincial 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 Province, and Taji Yasue, another officer in Bungo Province, 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 Silla 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. Now, we find daily necessities such as rice and provincial goods including salt on board. If we are lucky enough, we can find a few valuable foreign-imported goods such as incense aboard. Are we ready to have pirates then? No, not yet. Even Captain Cook could not conduct piracy by himself. He had to have his minions. In other words, the Japanese ancient centralized bureaucratic rule needed to have been loosened enough to supply rowers and as such. Let me introduce 2 Chinese poems composed by Sugawara Michizane, one of the most famous Japanese poets in Japan, to see the supply-side conditions. The two, along with the other 8, are supposed to have been composed in the winter of the year 886. The series of 10 Chinese poems all describe poor people under his ruling as a governor in Sanuki Province, one of the provinces along the Seto Inland Sea, just east to Iyo Province: To whom winter comes faster? To repatriated tramps winter comes faster They don’t have a clan to rely on And are assigned along the names they give But the land granted is too poor Their bodies become thinner and thinner Unless the governor rules them with mercy More and more will certainly take flight To whom winter comes faster? To hired rowers winter comes faster They don’t know how to farm They are hired as a day laborer And have little land to farm They row only to be poorer They don’t mind winds and waves But only hope to be hired everyday In 669, an order was issued to register all the people and cut off bandits and tramps. In 697, an imperial order commanded provincial governors to register people during the winter, and to examine and arrest tramps by September. Those orders suggest that the ruling noblemen at the time were equating tramps with bandits. The noblemen perceived the free movement of ruled people negatively. With their negative perception in mind, we are going to see chronologically in “The First Uprisings of Japanese Pirates” how piracy in Japan started to appear in historical documents and materials, and what actions the authority took against it.