In the western world, pirates have always loomed large in the collective imagination,
with the likes of Henry Morgan, Jack Rackam, and Edward Teach
achieving larger-than-life status. Despite this, the impact of European piracy in its
most famous Caribbean theatre pales in comparison to its Asian counterpart.
Throughout the medieval and early-modern eras, from the shores of Honshu to Malacca,
great pirate bands dominated the oceans, where they mastered both commerce and carnage, brought
ancient Empires to their knees, and connected countless cultures from China to Portugal
through barter and blood. Welcome to our video on the Wokou, the seminal pirate lords of the East.
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The name ‘wokou’ translates roughly to ‘Japanese pirate’, with ‘Wo’ (倭), meaning ‘dwarf’,
being a long-standing derogatory term by which the Chinese referred to the Japanese.
However, as we will see later in this video, the wokou were neither entirely Japanese,
nor even entirely pirates. But before we get into that, let us discuss the earliest origins of our
eponymous sea lords. Although the first use of the term wokou dates back as early as the 4th century,
our story begins in the 13th century. Like most stories set during this particular century,
this one begins with the Mongols. As Chingis Khan and his successors put increasing pressure
upon Korea from 1218, the ailing Kingdom of Goryeo found its military manpower
stretched thin, leaving its southern coasts largely undefended. This coincided with a wave
of drought and starvation in Japan’s Kyushu, Iki, and Tsushima isles, which compelled its
denizens to abandon their farms and estates and plunder foreign shores to survive.
From 1223 onwards, Japanese pirate vessels from these islands, manned by rogue peasants and
masterless Samurai alike, raided the southern coast of Korea with consistent regularity.
By 1259, the Chingisids had achieved the submission of the Goryeo dynasty,
and in the following decades, would assume control of the whole peninsula. Afterwards, it is very
likely that Korean testimonies of sea-raiders from the land of Wa were what first put Japan
as a whole on the Mongol Empires’ radar- which eventually led to the two failed Mongol
invasion attempts of the land in 1274 and 1281. In the immediate decades after the divine winds
shredded Kublai Khan’s invasion fleet, wokou raids declined. The reasons for this were manyfold:
Korea was now under the suzerainty of the world’s biggest Empire,
while Tsushima and Iki had suffered widespread destruction during the Mongol invasions. Moreover,
the bakufu of the Kamakura Shogunate had undergone great centralization reforms across Japan, which
included clamping down on the extrajudicial pirate gangs operating off of their shores. However,
by the mid 14th century, the authority of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty was crumbling. Meanwhile,
Japan’s central authority was facing challenges of its own, with the new Ashikaga shogunate being
embroiled in the rivalry between two schismatic Imperial courts competing for each others’ throne.
This, compounded with a series of natural disasters that rocked Japan between 1346 and 1349,
created another perfect storm upon which wokou activity could flare up once more.
From 1350 onwards, wokou bands of as many as 3,000 men, operating mainly out of Tsushima and Iki,
began plundering the coastline of Korea. Meanwhile, the Sō samurai clan, vassals
to the Ashikaga Shogun and legitimate authority on Tsushima, seemed content to turn a blind eye
to the pirate activity in their domain. The wokou principally targeted Korean vessels carrying rice,
the main form of currency of the age. When the Korean authorities began moving their tax rice
overland, the wokou responded by penetrating inland, raiding grain storehouses as far away
from the coast as the environs of Pyongyang, taking many slaves in the process. It was very
unfortunate timing for the Goryeo dynasty, whose beleaguered King Gongmin had just thrown off the
Mongol yoke, only to now be dealing with a massive surge of well-organized marauders from the sea.
Indeed, the deeply traumatic impact the wokou had on the social and economic landscape of Korea
contributed heavily to the eventual collapse of the nearly 500-year-old Goryeo Dynasty in 1392.
Northern China also suffered endemic Wokou attacks. From 1358 onwards, coastal areas
like the Shandong peninsula and Jiangsu province were the victim of large, well-organized raids,
with the once mighty, yet now enfeebled Mongolian Emperors of the Yuan Dynasty able to do little
about it. The Koreans, however, did not sit idly by in the face of pirate violence. Under generals
like Choi Yeong and Yi Seonggye, they lashed back against the wokou, destroying over 300
ships in a raid on Tsushima in 1389. Yi Seonggye, incidentally, would later usurp the declining
Goryeo, becoming Taejo, the first King of Joseon. His descendant, King Sejong the Great of Joseon,
would oversee the fatal death-blow which would end this most recent phase of wokou activity.
In the summer of 1419, a large fleet of Joseon ships carrying 17,000 men sailed for Tsushima,
launching raids across the entire isles. This a ttack was known as the Oei invasion, and finally
prompted the Sō clan of Tsushima to actually do something about the pirates in their backyard.
Moreover, the Ashikaga Shogunate had resolved the rift in the Imperial court back in 1392
and was able to restore order across the land once more.
Meanwhile in China, a new dynasty, the Ming, had since overthrown the Mongol yoke,
and the Ashikaga Shogun had entered into tributary supplication with the Ming Emperor
in order to secure a legal trading relationship with the richest country in the world.
This meant the Shogunate had a vested interest in clamping down on pirates who might jeopardize
that relationship. All of this brought an end to this second major wave of wokou activity.
However, the ocean is ever a lawless place, where desperate and ambitious people can go
to seek their fortunes beyond the reach of feudal laws. In the 16th century,
the geopolitical situation had shifted to favour paralegal maritime entrepreneurialism once more.
After the Ōnin War of 1467, the authority of the Ashikaga Shogunate had collapsed, causing social
order in Japan to fail as the islands were torn up into dozens of independent warring fiefdoms,
most of which were unable to contain wokou activity. Moreover, by the 16th century,
Ming China had begun imposing extremely strict regulations on foreign maritime trade.
Ningbo was the only port city where the Japanese were permitted entry to participate in the highly
ritualized, tributary gift exchange proscribed by Chinese court protocol. However, after a brawl
between two rival Samurai clans, the Hosokawa and the Ōuchi, caused widespread chaos in Ningbo and
its environs in 1523, China seriously curtailed commercial relations with Japan. Following this,
black market smugglers and pirates surged into a niche once occupied by legitimate authorities.
The Wokou of the 16th century would prove to be much different than their previous
iterations. While the early Wokou were most likely of predominantly Japanese stock,
the wokou of the early modern era were a far more international affair, with tens of
thousands of Southern Chinese joining up, their ocean going livelihoods having been dispossessed
by draconian Ming Dynasty trade bans. According to Ming Dynasty records, by the mid 16th century, as
many as 70% of wokou were Chinese, mainly from the southern province of Fujian. Malays, Filipinos,
and even a smattering of Portuguese Catholics would also colour wokou ranks. While previous
iterations of the Wokou localized their raids to Korea and Northern China, the 16th century Wokou
had a far wider reach, maintaining a dominating presence from Hirado to the Philippines.
Although an undoubtedly cruel and brutal bunch, the Wokou were never ones to seize through
violence what they could obtain through business. Nowhere was this more evident than at Shuangyu,
China’s seedy black market entrepot. This hub of illegal trade was founded as a result of the
entry of the Portuguese into the south China sea in 1511. Having established
colonial ports dotting Africa and the Indian Ocean and conquered the Sultanate of Malacca,
the Catholics were now seeking to breach the closed markets of China.
Having failed to do so by force, they instead collaborated with Japanese sailors and Chinese
smugglers from Fujian to create an illegal offshore emporium on the tiny island of Liuheng,
where clandestine trade could be conducted in defiance of Ming maritime prohibitions.
By the early 1540s, Shuangyu- known as Liampo by the Portuguese,
had come under the rulership of a Wokou syndicate: the Xu, whose vast maritime commercial networks
spread from Malacca to Kagoshima prefecture. The Xu’s chief lieutenant, the wokou lord Wang Zhi,
is credited for helping lead the Portuguese to Japan in 1543, thereby facilitating the first
steps any Europeans had taken on the land of the rising sun, while also popularizing the use of
European-style firearms in not just Japan, but China as well. Ultimately, the story of Shuangyu
is indicative of the fact that the Wokou were not just disruptive agents of chaos, but more often
than not were crucial economic actors who greased the cogs of a massive, pan-east-Asian economy.
Of course, setting up an unsanctioned port city inhabited by illegal smugglers on Chinese soil
was not going to sit well with Ming Dynasty authorities.
In 1547, the Imperial court bestowed one Zhu Wan with the crisp title of “Grand Coordinator of
Zhejiang and Concurrent Superintendent of Military Affairs for Zhejiang and Fujian Coastal Defense”,
a role specifically created to combat Wokou piracy. Zhu Wan embraced his new
purpose with relish, and in 1548, assembled a massive Imperial fleet and stormed Shuangyu,
burning it to the ground and forcing its smugglers to disperse among the southern Chinese coastline.
Unfortunately for Zhu Wan, the Wokou had deep connections with some of the most powerful
families in Fujian, who utilized his unlawful execution of prisoners to have him politically
disgraced by the Emperor, forcing him to commit suicide in 1550. For the pirates, an eloquent
pen was often as effective a weapon to brandish against their enemies as a well-tempered sword.
That is not to say that swords would not have their day, for the burning
of Shuangyu would ultimately kickstart the single most violent decade in Wokou history.
With Shuangyu incinerated, the Wokou had lost their means to smuggle goods in and out of China
in an orderly, if still illegal way. Concurrently, with Zhu Wan dead and his fleet dispersed,
a massive power vacuum had opened up in the Southern Chinese coastline,
allowing the pirates to recuperate their losses in the old fashioned way.
Thus began the Jiajing raids, thusly named for the Jiajing Emperor, during whose reign they occured.
Between 1551 and 1560, Chinese archives report no less than 467 separate Wokou raids,
an average of over fifty per year. Most of these were spearheaded by the aforementioned Wang Zhi,
who had become the most powerful voice among the Wokou clans, and was now operating off the Gotō
Islands, where he had established solid relations with the local Kyushu Daimyos,
and had begun styling himself as the “King of Hui.” Other notable pirate lords in this
period included Xu Hai of the aforementioned Xu syndicate, and admirals like Chen Dong and Ye Ma.
During these excursions, Wokou ranks were often swelled by the very people they raided,
as peasants on the Chinese coast decided they would rather throw their lot in with the pirates
rather than deal with poverty, taxation, and the abusive presence of the Imperial troops stationed
quartered in their villages, who were often just as exploitative as the pirates they were supposed
to be protecting the peasants from. Despite the fact that most of the chaos rended upon Chinese
shores was caused by the Chinese themselves, Ming officials tended to emphasize the Japaneseness of
the raiders. That way, they could blame the destruction on the of trespasses of barbaric
foreigners, rather than as their failure to control their own subjects. That is not to
say that there were not still ethnic Japanese who played a major role in the Jiajing raids,
as according to sources of the time, plenty of poor Japanese, particularly from Satsuma, Higo
and Nagato, saw the potential to obtain Chinese plunder a very attractive opportunity indeed.
Eventually, over the course of several years, Ming authorities were able to contain the Wokou tide
through a policy of divide and conquer. By 1556, a new Grand Coordinator of anti-piracy activity,
Hu Zongxian, had been appointed by the Ming government. Rather than trying to brute force the
issue as Zhu Wan had, Zongxian cleverly exploited the rivalries between the most powerful of Wokou
lords. He appeased the pirate lord Xu Hai with promises of lavish gifts and an official pardon in
return for his help in betraying Chen Dong and Ye Ma, who Xu Hai was on bad terms with after a feud
over the rights to a captured slave girl. Chen Dong and Ye Ma were subsequently betrayed and
captured by the Ming authorities, and with Xu Hai now subsequently isolated, Hu Zongxian went back
on his promise and had him destroyed as well. In 1557, Zongxian turned his attention onto Wang Zhi,
who he lured out of his Japanese island stronghold and back to China by promising him a full pardon
and offering to negotiate a relaxation of maritime prohibitions so Wang could trade legitimately
with the Ming state. This, of course, was a trap, and Wang Zhi was subsequently captured,
imprisoned, and beheaded two years later. After the elimination of all their most prominent
captains, Wokou raids on Chinese shores were seriously curtailed, and had more or less fully
stopped by 1567, when the Ming government finally lifted their prohibitions on international trade,
eliminating the need for smugglers and pirates to fill that niche. It should be noted that
the Portuguese came off especially well in the aftermath of the Jiajing raids. Despite having
once worked alongside the Wokou, they had since entered into an agreement with the Ming Emperor,
whereby in return for eliminating the pirate fleets off Guangzhou, they were allowed to lease
out a port, Macau, which became a foothold into the markets of China which the Portuguese would
hold for the next 400 years. Moreover, the Ming government still blamed the Japanese for the Wokou
raids, and thus prohibited Japanese from stepping foot on their shores. This allowed the Portuguese
to establish a firm foothold in Japan as the primary supplier of Chinese silk in the nation,
the social and religious consequences of which we have covered in our previous videos
on the Shimabara Rebellion, and William Adams, the English pilot-turned-Samurai.
Despite being largely repulsed from Chinese shores, Wokou activity continued for a time,
now shifting southwards to the Philippines, where the local gold, ginger, sandalwood, and spices
offered plenty of opportunity for enrichment. Initially, Wokou bands found great success in
these tropical isles, even establishing an independent pirate city-state, Aparri, in northern
Luzon. However, before long, the Wokou found themselves in conflict with another Iberian power,
the Spanish, who were currently in the process of colonizing the Philippines for themselves.
In 1574, the Chinese Wokou lord Limahong tried to invade the Spanish city of Manila,
but was repelled. Then in 1582, the Spaniards defeated the Wokou in the Cagayan battles, where
Spanish conquistadors and rogue Japanese Samurai came to blows in one of the strangest military
clashes in early modern history- we recommend you check out our dedicated video on this event.
Eventually, the Spanish seized Aparri, and the activity of
Japanese and Chinese piratical activity in the Philippines was greatly diminished.
Indeed, at the turn of the 17th century, the Wokou had entered into their final twilight years.
Back in Japan, where it had all started, a series of invincible warlords had begun uniting the once
shattered land, which by 1602 had culminated in the emergent Tokugawa Shogunate.
In the ensuing decades, the Tokugawa Shoguns would enact policies that nearly completely isolated
Japan from the outside world. Almost all outsiders were forbidden entry, and more importantly,
no Japanese were permitted to leave, on pain of death. Thus, all pirates operating
on Japanese shores were either snuffed out by the newly re-established central authority,
or incorporated into the state as naval bands which served the national hegemony.
It is here that our history of the Wokou pirates will end. It is, admittedly, an arbitrary ending,
for piracy and smuggling in the south China sea would continue going strong for centuries,
with massively powerful sea lords like the Pirate Queen Ching Shih coming to mind. However,
these were figures who largely had no ties to Japan, from where the Wokou, despite spending
their heyday as a highly international band of sailors, had originated. In that sense, it can
be said that while the Wokou themselves were eventually snuffed out, the legacy they left on
the seas they once ruled endured for far longer. More videos on the history of Japan and criminal
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