The Otomo Clan and their Smuggling (4)

     Although the mission to Ming in 1453 brought a lot of profit to the Otomo Clan, accepting the mission with 9 ships and about 1200 members was an enormous burden on Ming.  In 1453, ming set a rule which allowed Japan to send only one mission every 10 years with no more than 3 ships and 300 members.  The restriction made it impossible for the clan to manage its own ship within a mission.  After the mission to Ming in 1468, all the clan could do was to send guard samurais and provide suffer as exports.

     To break the commercial deadlock, the Otomo Clan started sending out “false” missions to Ming.  In the middle of the 16th century, Otomo Yoshiaki (1502-1550) sent out 2 “false” missions to Ming with Juko and Seiryo as ambassadors respectively.  You can regard those “false” missions to Ming as private missions to Ming against official national missions to Ming.  Some of the Ming government called them Wokou smugglers.  Whatever those ships may be called, they didn’t have valid tallies nor good letters offered from the king of Japan.  In many cases, they had out-of-date old tallies which had been sold out by Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436-1490).  When they were not admitted to be official national missions, they just sailed south as far as Fujian, where coastguard was insufficient.