What Were Smuggled to Japan (11)

     Those luxurious goods such as what Oda Nobunaga presented to other warlords were recorded as imported ones fairly well, but there were some others which were smuggled into Japan secretly.  They were munitions.  Being merchants of death always paid well, has always paid well so far, and, I’m afraid, will pay well for the foreseeable future.

     Let me talk about niter first.  We have a few pieces of written supporting evidence of its import to Japan.

     One of the written texts the Mori Clan has kept reveals that they had to purchase niter to attack Susuma-numa Castle in Suo Province in 1557.

     In 1567, Otomo Sorin wrote a letter to Bishop Carneiro in Macao, requesting him to forbid exporting niter to the Mori Clan so that the Otomo Clan could beat the Mori Clan to spread Christianity to the Mori Clan’s domain, and to have the captain-major there sell 120 kilograms of niter to his clan annually, promising to pay 4 kilograms of silver or more for the niter.

     Later, during the Edo Period, after the national isolation policy was instituted by the Tokugawa Clan, the Maeda Clan developed an efficient method to produce niter in their mountainous area, Gokayama, but, till then, extracting niter from aged dung and droppings was not sufficient for an estimated 0.5 million matchlock guns in Japan.