The Transformation of Pirates at the End of the Ancient Japan (2)

Who were those who tried to control water transportation along the Seto Inland Sea instead of just attacking boats and warehouses? Unluckily enough, it was not sea people themselves but local powerful families whom salt makers wanted to sue in a Chinese poem on the poor composed by Sugawara Michizane that led the transformation process of piracy at the end of Ancient Japan. Each of these local powerful families had its own estate and combatant followers. They often “donated” their estate to a central noble clan or a big temple to ask for their legal and/or unlawful protection against a provincial government or other local powerful families. Some of the powerful families stationed their relatives in the Heian-kyo Capital to ingratiate themselves with central nobles and to get some more useful information. Some were working to keep the peace over their county, and became samurais later in Japanese history. As Fujiwara Yasunori suggested, those powerful families did piracy rather to get richer than as a result of poverty or social unrest. In the 12th century, at the end of Ancient Japan, Taira Clan, a central military noble clan, which used to be despised by central civil noble clans, got interested in exploiting the water transportation along the Seto Inland Sea, especially in monopolizing the trade with Song, the first dynasty who unified China after Tang, and tried placing the sea under their sphere of influence. For Taira Clan, those who didn’t acquiesce to their demands and orders were pirates. For the locals, however, Taira Clan must have been pirates. Taira Clan overawed local powerful families along the Seto Inland Sea with their own force. That means they shut the door to the Ancient Japan Establishment, and prepared the country to open up another door to its medieval times, when those who could control local powerful families or samurais came to enjoy the hegemony and supremacy in Japan.