Sulfur, One of the Most Important Smuggled Goods (3)

     We can trace exporting sulfur to China back to the end of the 10th century.  Under the Song Dynasty (960-1279), firearms were deployed and used more and more often in battles and the usage of gunpowder expanded.  The Song central government imported sulfur as munitions from other Asian countries and put the imported sulfur under the central control.

     Later,  while the Southern Court and the Northern Court were fighting each other for the right to the throne in Japan, Prince Kaneyoshi (1329-1383), the South court’s Commander in Chief to Subdue Western Japan, offered horses, swords, armors, sulfur, etc. in 1379, and horses, sulfur, swords, fans, etc. in 1380 to Hongwu Emperor, the founder of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

     Tribute, offerings, whatever you may call it, sulfur was one of the most important exported goods from Japan for centuries.  Other exported goods included swords, halberds, amours, horses…..  Missions to China sound more like merchants of death.  No wonder those missions opened up the floodgates for Later Wokou, who smuggled munitions around the East China Sea.

     The National Museum of China has preserved a picture in which a battle between Wokou ships and Ming ships were painted.  Infrared photographs revealed that one of the Wokou ships was flying a banner which read “Koji san nen”, or the third year of Koji (1557).  It was in 1557 that the Otomo Clan sent a mission to Ming which was not admitted to be an official one by the Ming officials.  The question is whether the picture is unreliable, Wokou pretended the mission, or the mission turned into Wokou after the denial.