Engineering:Red Seal ships

Short description: 1604–1635 Japanese armed merchant sailing ships

For the RCA or RCA Victor record series, see RCA Red Seal Records.

A modern scale model reconstruction of a Red Seal ship in the National Museum of Japanese History.

A 1634 Japanese Red Seal ship, incorporating both European-style lateen sails and Chinese-style junk rig sails, rudder and aft designs. The ships were typically armed with 6 to 8 cannons. Tokyo Naval Science Museum.

Japanese Red Seal trade in the early 17th century.

Red Seal ships (朱印船, Shuinsen) were Japanese armed merchant sailing ships bound for Southeast Asian ports with red-sealed letters patent issued by the early Tokugawa shogunate in the first half of the 17th century. Between 1600 and 1635, more than 350 Japanese ships went overseas under this permit system.

Origins

Record of a Red Seal license, dated 11 January 1608.

From the 13th to the 16th century, Japanese ships were quite active in Asian waters, often in the role of "wakō" pirates, that raided the Korean and Chinese coasts. Often paid by various Japanese feudal leaders, they were frequently involved in Japan's civil wars during the early part of this period. Quasi-official trading missions were also sent to China, such as the Tenryūji-bune around 1341. The wakō attacks became less frequent by the third quarter of the sixteenth century. Wakō activity was efficiently curbed in the late 16th century with the interdiction of piracy by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and the successful campaigns against pirate activity on the Chinese coast by Ming dynasty generals.

Red Seal system

Red Seal ship with Japanese and Portuguese sailors, early 17th century

Sueyoshi Red Seal ship in 1633, with foreign pilots and sailors. Kiyomizu-dera Ema (絵馬) painting, Kyoto.

Suminokura Red Seal ship with foreigners. Kiyomizu-dera Ema painting, Kyoto.

Ship design

A 17th-century Red Seal ship of the Araki trading family, sailing out of Nagasaki for Đại Việt (Vietnam)

The complement is speculated to have been about 200 people per ship; the average of the fifteen Red Seal ships for which the number of people is known is 236.

Destinations

Japanese portolan sailing map, depicting the Indian Ocean and the East Asian coast, early 17th century.

Major Southeast Asian ports, including Filipino Manila, Vietnamese Hội An, Siamese Ayutthaya, Malay Pattani, welcomed the Japanese merchant ships, and many Japanese settled in these ports, forming small Japanese enclaves.

The Japanese seem to have been feared throughout Asian countries, according to a contemporary, Sir Edward Michelbourne:

The Japons are not suffered to land in any port in India (Asia) with weapons; being accounted a people so desperate and daring, that they are feared in all places where they come.

A Dutch commander wrote (c. 1615): "they are a rough and a fearless people, lambs in their own country, but well-nigh devils outside of it".

Philippines

The Japanese led an abortive rebellion in Dilao against the Spanish in 1606–1607. Their numbers rose again with the interdiction of Christianity by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1614, when 300 Japanese Christian refugees under Dom Justo Takayama settled in the Philippines. In the 16th and 17th centuries, thousands of Japanese traders also migrated to the Philippines and assimilated into the local population. They are at the origin of today's 200,000-strong Japanese population in the Philippines.

Siam (Thailand)

Yamada Nagamasa c.1630.

The Siamese "Chronicles of the Kingdom of Ayutthaya" record that already in 1592, 500 Japanese troops under the King of Siam helped defeat an invading Burmese army.

In December 1605, John Davis, the famous English explorer, was killed by Japanese pirates off the coast of Siam, thus becoming the first Englishman to be killed by a Japanese.

Macau

Although prohibited by China from touching Chinese soil, Japanese sailors from Red Seal ships transited through the European Portuguese port of Macau on the Chinese Cantonese coast in some numbers. On 30 November 1608, a fight with about 100 Japanese samurai, wielding katana and muskets, confronting Portuguese soldiers under the acting governor and Captain of the Japan voyage André Pessoa led to a fight in which 50 Japanese lost their lives. The remaining 50 were released by the authorities after having to sign an affidavit blaming themselves for the incident. Ieyasu prohibited visits to Macau by Japanese nationals in 1609:

Since it is an undoubted fact that the going of Japanese in ships to Macau is prejudicial to that place, this practice will be strictly prohibited for the future. (25 July 1609, Ieyasu Shuinjo, remitted to Mateus Leitão)

Indonesia

Nine Japanese samurai were employed at Amboyna in 1623, when they were victim of the Amboyna massacre.

India

Tenjiku Tokubei, 17th century.

Relative importance

Japanese exports 1604-1639 (From "Red Seal Ships", Nagazumi Yoko)
Type	Number of ships (Average per year)	Export Value (in kg of Silver)	Of which: Silver export Volume (in kg of Silver)
Red Seal ships	10	1,053,750	843,000
Portuguese ships	1	813,375	650,700
Chinese ships	N/A	429,825	343,860
Dutch ships	3	286,245	228,996
Total		2,583,195	2,066,556

End of the system

Left image: Japanese Christian remained in Batavia (now renamed as Jakarta) after Sakoku, c. 1656, by Andries Beeckman. Christianity indicated by the hat.
Right image: A similar Japanese figure appears on the right, in the forefront. The Castle of Batavia by Andries Beeckman, c. 1656.

Timeline

• 1543 – Portuguese sailors (among them possibly Fernão Mendes Pinto) arrive in Tanegashima and transmit the arquebus.
• 1570 – Japanese pirates occupy parts of Taiwan, from where they prey on China.
• 1571 – Establishment of the port of Nagasaki for trade with the Portuguese, under the supervision of Gaspar Vilela and Tristão Vaz da Veiga.
• 1577 – First Japanese ships travel to Đàng Trong (Southern Vietnam).
• 1588 – Interdiction of wakō piracy by Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
• 1592 – First recorded mention of Red Seal ships.
• 1600 – William Adams reaches Japan in April.

– Olivier van Noort encounters a 110 tons Japanese junk in the Philippines in December.

• 1604 – First known Red Seal permit.
• 1608/9 – Red Seal ship incident
• 1609 – The Dutch open a trading factory in Hirado.
• 1610 – Nossa Senhora da Graça incident
• 1613 – England opens a trading factory in Hirado.

– Hasekura Tsunenaga leaves for his embassy to Europe. He returns in 1620.

• 1614 – Expulsion of the Jesuits from Japan.

– William Adams starts engaging in Red Seal trade to Southeast Asia.

• 1615 – Japanese Jesuits start to proselytize in Indochina.
• 1621 – Jan Joosten manages 10 Red Seal ships.
• 1623 – Yamada Nagamasa sails from Siam to Japan, with an Ambassador of the Siamese king Songtam (พระเจ้าทรงธรรม). He returns to Siam in 1626.

– Jan Joosten sinks in the South China Sea.

• 1624 – Japanese Jesuits start to proselytize in Siam.

– Interruption of relations with Spain.

• 1628 – Death of Yamada Nagamasa in Siam.

– Destruction of Takagi Sakuemon's (高木作右衛門) Red Seal ship in Ayutthaya by a Spanish warship.

– Destruction of the Japanese settlement in Ayutthaya by Siamese forces.

• 1633 – Re-establishment of the Japanese settlement in Ayutthaya (300–400 Japanese), with returnees from Indochina.
• 1634 – Travel of Yamada Yahei (山田弥兵衛) from Japan to Indochina and Siam.
• 1636 – Introduction of the sakoku policy and interdiction of foreign travel or return from foreign countries for Japanese nationals.

See also

• Nanban trade
• Djong (ship)
• Junk (ship)

References

• Yoko Nagazumi, Red Seal ships, 2001, 永積洋子 「朱印船」2001 日本歴史会館, Japan Historical Society　ISBN 4-642-06659-4 (in Japanese)
• Boxer, Charles Ralph. The Affair of the Madre de Deus: A Chapter in the History of the Portuguese in Japan, London, K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & co., ltd., 1929.
• Boxer, The Christian century in Japan 1549–1650 Carcanet ISBN 1-85754-035-2
• Stephen Turnbull, Fighting Ships of the Far-East, Osprey Publishing, ISBN 1-84176-478-7

External links

• Commercial Trade between Japan and Vietnam