Virtual Eastern Edo 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #27 Eisho-ji Temple

 

     Eisho-ji Temple was founded in Shitaya Village, Musashi Province, in 1558.  According to tradition, it was the Asahi the Wealthy who supported the foundation of the temple.  The folklore of Asahi the Wealthy spreads around the country.  The folk song usually starts with singing, “At the foot of the tree on which the morning sun and the evening sun shine, …”  Usually it is Asahi the Wealthy who hid treasure, but, in the case of Shitaya Village, who found treasure was called Asahi the Wealthy.  The temple has a thousand-armed Sahasrabhuja statue, which was said to have been carved for Ryogen (912-985), and which became the personal guardian Buddhist image of Asahi the Wealthy.

     In 1637, the Tokugawa Shogunate requisitioned the precincts.  Matsura Shigenobu (1622-1703) supported its move to its present place.  Shigenobu’s grandfather was also named Shigenobu (1549-1599).

     After Eisho-ji Temple moved away, the lot was used as a residential area for the footsoldiers of the shogunate.  The area burned down in the 1657 Meireki Great Fire.  After the fire, the area was granted to Noh players such as Konbaru Soemon and Edo Castle’s attendants such as Nagasaka Seiju.  At the end of the 17th century, it was called Shitaya-Choja-machi.  Choja literally means wealthy person.

     In 1639, the former vassal of the Hirado Domain, Ukihashi Mondo, accused the domain of harboring Christians.  The Tokugawa Shogunate dispatched Matsudaira Nobutsuna (1596-1662) to inspect the suspects.  The suspicion was cleared up, but Nobutsuna was surprised with the wealth the domain had accumulated through trading with foreign countries.  In 1641, the shogunate ordered the closing of the Dutch Trading Office in Hirado.  The Hirado Domain lost the huge profit through trading with foreign countries and fell into financial hardship.

     Who were the Matsura Clan then?

     We can know what the ancient Matsura area was like through the Records of the Three Kingdoms, a Chinese historical text which covers the history of the Late (East) Han Dynasty (BC184-AD220) and the Three Kingdoms Period (220-280).  The 3 kingdoms included Wei, Shu, and Wu.  Volume 30 of Book of Wei has Biographies of the Wuhan, Xianbei, and Dongyi.  The Dongyi biography has the entry about Wa, today’s Japan.

     Himiko, the queen of Wa, sent ambassadors to Wei in 238, 243, 245, and 247.  The return ambassadors of Wei described Japan.

     To reach Yamatai Country, where Himiko lived, they crossed the Korea Strait via Tsushima and Iki Islands, and arrived at the north-west coast of Kyushu.  The area was called Matsura Country.  The country was covered with weeds and trees so dense that they could not see people walking in front of them.  The people living there were good at catching fish and abalones not only in the shallow sea but even by diving into the deep sea.

     The Matsura people were sea people, and later became sea samurai, or pirates in short.  They were called Matsura Corps.  In the battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185, they fought for the Taira Clan.  They fought against the Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281 for the Kamakura Shogunate.  Under the Muromachi Shogunate, they worked as escorts for missions to Ming.  In the latter half of the 15th century, one family became more powerful than others.  They called themselves the Matsura Family, and formed the Matsura Clan with themselves the head family.  In the 16th century, the Hirado Family, one of the branch families of the Matsura Clan, became powerful.  When the family was riding the boom, Takanobu (1529-1599) succeeded the headship of the family in 1543.  In 1565, he forced the Matsura Family to adopt his third son, practically took over the Matsura Clan, and called himself Matsura Takanobu.  In 1568, his eldest son, Shigenobu (1549-1599), succeeded the headship of the clan.

     The Hirado Family became powerful through trading with foreign countries, or through smuggling from the official point of the view of the central government.

     In 1550, a Portuguese ship first visited Hirado.  From 1553, one or two Portuguese ships came to Hirado annually.  That brought prosperity to Hirado, but Takanobu didn’t like their missionary work.  Under the tension, the captain and 13 other crew members of a Portuguese ship were killed in 1561, and Portuguese merchants moved to Nagasaki.

     In 1609, 2 Dutch ships visited Hirado, and opened a trading house, although it moved to Dejima, Nagasaki, in 1641.

     In 1613, an English ship came to Hirado, and set up a trading house, which was closed in 1623 because of their poor trading performance.

     Anyway, Hirado enjoyed its prosperity through trading, or smuggling, with western countries for more than half a century.

     Matsura Historical Museum stores a draft of a letter written by Matsura Shigenobu (1549-1599) to the king of Siam in January, 1577.

     According to the letter, in 1576, Guo Liuguan sailed his Chinese junk to Hirado with a Siamese ambassador aboard.  And, this time, in 1577, Wu Laobao sailed his junk to Hirado with another ambassador.  Shigenobu thanked the king for his gifts, asked him to send an ambassador annually, and presented back a set of Japanese armor.

     The Matsura Clan didn’t seem to have had their own ship.  The Siamese might not have had their own.  Their diplomatic relations were mediated by Chinese traders.

    During the latter half of the 16th Century, other Western warlords turned their eyes to Asia as well.  The Sagara Clan in Higo Province, today’s Kumamoto Prefecture, for instance, sent their ships to Ming Dynasty, China.

     Those Western warlords’ active diplomatic relations with Asian countries were progressing, as a matter of course, side by side with their trading.  Why, then, could those Western warlords do a lot of trade?  Their trading was supported with silver and sulfur.

     In the first half of the 16th Century, the Ouchi Clan, who were based in Suo Province, today’s Yamaguchi Prefecture, fully opened up the Iwami Silver Mine.  The silver produced there was so massive as to flow out of Japan and to sweep all over East Asia.  Silver became a de facto international currency in East Asia.

     That was “silver rush”, and we had “sulfur rush” in the latter half of the 16th Century.  As Europeans brought guns into East Asia, there came a great demand for gunpowder.  However, China hardly produced sulfur while Japan had far too little saltpeter to meet the demand by so many warlords fighting one another.  Smuggling them between the two was just inevitable.

     The Otomo Clan’s and the Shimazu Clan’s territories produced a lot of sulfur thanks to active volcanoes there, and other areas in Japan had minor volcanoes too.  The more warlords ventured into smuggling, the more Chinese and Europeans were attracted to Japan.  China towns were formed in Western warlords’ territories, and, in the capital of Otomo’s for example, we can even find a record that Chinese living in the China town visited Ise Shrine to pay homage there along with some other Japanese living in neighboring towns.  How profoundly they adapted to Japan!

     The tally trade preceded these smugglings by Western warlords.  The tally trade was a part of the Sinocentric tribute system, and only those who were recognized as “subjects” by the Ming Dynasty were issued with certificates and were allowed to trade within the boundaries of the dynasty.

     The third shogun of Ashikaga Shogunate, Yoshimitsu (1358-1408), was accepted as a “subject” in 1402.  In 1404, 100 tallies were given to Japan, and at least 6 of them were used by himself under the name of his son, Yoshimochi (1386-1428).

     In the latter half of the 15th Century, Ashikaga Shogunate declined, and was deprived of the control over the tally trade by the Hosokawa Clan and the Ouchi Clan, who were allied with the Sakai merchants near Kyoto and with the Hakata merchants in Kyushu.  In the 16th Century, the Ouchi Clan monopolized control.

     In the middle of the 16th Century, the Ouchi Clan was destroyed by their vassal, Sue Harutaka (1521-1555).  After the fall of the clan, the tally trade has been supposed to have severed.  However, a couple of Western warlords such as the Sagara Clan and the Otomo Clan attempted to revive the trade, some others started unofficial trading for themselves, and, above all, “smuggling” flourished with Later Wokou sweeping the East China Sea.

     Previously, in 1540’s, some of the silver mined and refined in Iwami Silver Mine flew out into Korea.  It didn’t take so long for Japanese silver to drain off into China.  Those days in China, more taxes were supposed to be paid with silver than before, while the production of silver in China was sluggish.  The thirst for foreign silver was burning.  Direct non-stop marine transportation routes across the East China Sea were opened up.  The Chinese junk ships on those direct routes arrived in Japan at Hirado, for example, in the northwestern tip of Kyushu, which used to be ruled by the Matsura Clan.

     In 1550’s, Chinese smugglers from Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong Provinces flocked to Japan with an eye to its silver.  Although they were heading for Hirado, some of them, unluckily, got astray and got washed ashore either in the north on the Korean beaches or in the south on small islands around the southern part of Kyushu, on Tanega-shima Island, for example.  In Korea, those ships were reported and recorded as wrecked Tang ships.

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