Sulfur, One of the Most Important Smuggled Goods (1)

     Daijo-in Temple in Nara, stored many diaries dated from1065 to 1504.  One diary recorded the tribute cargo of the mission to Ming in 1543, which was the largest mission with 9 ships and 1200 members.  They carried 238.5 tons of sulfur, 92.7 tons of copper, 63.6 tons of red dye, 9500 Japanese swords, 417 Japanese halberds, 1250 fans, etc. in total.

     Sulfur accounted for the largest portion of the cargo.  Each of 9 ships carried 26.5 tons of sulfur in average.  However, Mission Ship No.6, which was owned by the Otomo Clan, loaded the largest amount of sulfur; 54.1 tons.  The amount shows the superiority of the clan’s procurement power over sulfur.

     What was sulfur for?  If you make gunpowder with 75 percents of niter, 15 percents of sulfur, and 10 percents of charcoal, 54.1 tons of sulfur alone can enable you to produce 360 tons of gunpowder.  In Japan, they used to use about 3 grams of gunpowder to make a shot.  120,000,000 shots!  If you can kill one person by shooting a couple of times, you can cause the death of tens of millions of people.  It’s more than massacre.  The sulfur was offered to Ming government as the mission was approved by them as an official one.  If not, the mission had to sail south to sell, or smuggle, the sulfur to someone else along the Fujian coast.