Japanese Pirates’ Medieval Times (13) ——The Rise of Sea People (4)——

As Medieval times passed down, more and more commodities were getting traded through the Seto Inland Sea, and more and more sea people who lived there were getting involved in the trading. Even in fisheries, where sea people made most of their livelihood, net fishing became widespread, and, as a result, their societies became more stratified. The stratified societies, then, produced powerful families who were called “mure-gimi” in Japanese, literally “number of powerfuls”. The Japanese phrase “mure-gimi” is supposed to have become their name later as a kind of clan name, Murakami. Those powerful sea families learned 2 lessons through their experience as they fought with Kumano sea people. First, they should be networked, maybe under a religion or a legend, so as to avoid the pirate dilemma. Second, they needed to establish certain bases to claim just and reasonable pay as pirates.