著者

中島 楽章

出版者

公益財団法人 史学会

雑誌

史学雑誌 (ISSN:00182478)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.118, no.8, pp.1423-1458, 2009

被引用文献数

1

---

This article reexamines, with the help of contemporary Chinese and European sources, the plan by Kato Kiyomasa, the lord of Northern Higo Domain, to initiate trade with Luzon during Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea, which Kiyomasa led in 1592. In a letter written to his retainers at home in late 1593, Kiyomasa ordered a Chinese junk loaded with wheat and silver to be dispatched to what the author argues was Luzon, since 1) junks were maritime, rather than coastal, trading vessels, and 2) wheat, the major cargo on board, was the main commodity in Japan's trade with the Philippines at that time. The author argues that Kiyomasa, fearing a long campaign in Korea, planned to used the profits from the Luzon venture to procure sorely needed arms and ammunition. For Japan during the last years of the 16^<th> century, its supply of munitions, like lead and saltpeter, were supplied by three routes, all terminating in Kyushu: 1) the Macao-Nagasaki route, 2) the Chinese route linking Fukien with Kyushu and 3) the entrepot trade from China and Southeast Asia through such points as Luzon. However, given the fact that around the time of Hideyoshi's invasion, the Philippines was suffering from a lack of munitions due to decreasing Chinese imports, Kiyomasa planned to trade for such highly sought after commodities as gold, for the purpose of procuring munitions within Japan. Furthermore, it is a fact that Kiyomasa ordered another junk to sail to Luzon in 1576, which succeeded in arriving at Manila in the summer of the following year, despite worsening diplomatic relations between Japan and the Philippines. Finally, the author confirms that during the 1590s, Japanese vessels began to venture out on the high seas, to not only Luzon, but such Southeast Asian continental locations as Cochin China, Siam, Cambodia and Malacca. The activities of the vermillion seal ship's voyages to the region, which began at the beginning of the 17^<th> century, were hardly spontaneous events, since their routes and trade activities had already been pioneered during last decades of the previous century.