Database: Pirates
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Piracy has always existed in the seas of the Far East, even if it did not give rise to spectacular western figures in Pirates of the Caribbean. The coasts of Japanese are so indented with numerous islands, islets, creeks, and bays that piracy has always been, more or less, endemic and was only really eradicated with the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate regime at the beginning of the 17th century.
From ancient times in Japan the existence of pirates was noted, particularly in the Inland Sea (Setonaikai), where bands led by an aristocrat Fujiwara no Sumitomo scoured the region around 935-941. In the Middle Ages, certain groups of warriors (bushidan) controlled maritime spaces where they specialized in the transport of taxes and goods and, if necessary, forced ships crossing these seas to pay tolls. Those who were compelled to do so said they had dealt with a pirates, while those who collected the tax justified their actions by claiming to protect maritime safety. Where local communities were very powerful, they enforced order over the maritime basin in their control. As a result, these bands were present in Ise Bay, in the Inland Sea with the Murakami, or in the northwest of Kyushu with the Matsura band. In Kii, the Saika controlled the maritime space in the east ofthe Inland Sea. However, these groups were dismantled at the end of the 16th century by Hideyoshi and then by Ieyasu.
International piracy was also particularly active in the second half of the 16th century between China, Korea, and Japan, the wakō. These pirates originated from the coasts and islands of northwest Kyushu and the Chinese coasts. They had an international crew often composed of Sino-Japanese mixed-race individuals. It was on a junk belonging to a Sino-Japanese pirate chief Wang Zhi (Ō Choku) that the Portuguese first landed in Japan in 1543.
The chronic political and military instability of Japan pushed some elements to smuggling and piracy at sea. The restoration of order and peace at the beginning of the 17th century and the decree of the closure of the archipelago put an end to this international piracy.