Chapter 1175 - A Two-Pronged Approach

Both sides initialed the agreement—the trade pact would only take effect after the Lord of Tsushima affixed his seal, completed the appointment formalities, and dispatched the hostage. They agreed that in one month the Tsushima domain would send a ship to Jeju. The previously captured Tsushima merchant ships would only be returned after the agreement took effect. As a gesture of goodwill, the Jeju side released all captured personnel this time. Each person received a set of clothes, a pair of Australian straw sandals, and two bottles of rum; officers also received a Lingao-made glass lantern. Mission members each received gifts as well, along with a set of bone china and a Lingao-made revolver as presents for Sō Yoshinari.

This revolver was a special edition—like the Nanyang-style rifles, it was a smoothbore percussion cap weapon. In terms of power and range it was quite mediocre, but the percussion cap gave it unprecedented rapid-fire capability. That alone was selling point enough.

"Chief, are we going to export swords to the Tsushima domain?"

"Not necessarily." Ping Qiusheng was noncommittal. Japan at present existed in a state of "peace under heaven," and there really wasn't much of a market for swords and such.

According to the thinking of some Elders—including Ping Qiusheng and Si Kaide—the plan was to stir up major trouble during the chaos following the 1633 Seclusion Edicts.

The Tokugawa shogunate, like the Toyotomi regime before it, harbored deep distrust of imported Christianity. For the Tokugawa shogunate, virtually all the Kirishitan daimyō had belonged to the Western Army camp. The shogunate lived in constant fear that Christian faith might be exploited by outside daimyō to launch anti-shogunate uprisings, potentially conspiring with the formidable Southern Barbarian ships and guns.

This double distrust—political and religious—drove the shogunate's persecution of Kirishitan believers to ever-greater intensity. Northern Kyushu, as the primary Kirishitan settlement area, fell under especially tight shogunate surveillance. In 1628, shogunate senior councilors Doi Toshikatsu and Sakai Tadayo had "inspected" Shimabara District in Hizen Province and, in a single incident, burned 570 Kirishitan believers to death.

In 1630, the shogunate issued the "Prohibition Edict": Kirishitan believers were ordered to renounce their faith within two months or face execution. Through the strenuous efforts of Kirishitan daimyō like Terasawa Hirotaka, Matsuura Tadanobu, and Sō Yoshinari, the "Prohibition Edict" was ultimately suspended. But in 1633, the third Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu issued another "Prohibition Edict" and ordered the principal defender of Kirishitan Christianity—Terasawa Hirotaka, daimyō of the 240,000-koku Hizen Karatsu domain—to commit seppuku. Karatsu domain was subsequently dissolved and awarded to Matsukura Katsuie, 66,000-koku daimyō of Yamato Shigiyama, who commenced brutal persecution of Kirishitan believers. In the six years from 1633 to 1638, Matsukura Katsuie burned as many as 10,000 Kirishitan believers to death, and tensions grew extremely acute.

Though the Amakusa Rebellion wouldn't erupt until 1638, throughout the years 1633-1638 ample opportunities would arise to incite Kirishitan uprisings. The southwestern outside daimyō—Satsuma, Chōshū, and others—had always been hostile to the shogunate. Once the shogunate failed to suppress Amakusa Shirō Tokisada in timely fashion, the outside daimyō who had been brutally suppressed and harbored resentment—especially the Western Army daimyō who had fought at Sekigahara—might well rise in rebellion again. The countless ronin from the various daimyō houses that had been dissolved under the harsh "rule by force" of the "three generations of Tokugawa" would also rally to the cause—by the fourth year of Keian (1651), when Iemitsu died, their numbers had swelled to 500,000. The current figure was probably lower, but there would still be two or three hundred thousand.

This mass of ronin had no income yet remained burdened by their samurai status. Their hearts seethed with resentment, and once an opportunity arose to reignite warfare and seek fame and fortune again, they would not let it pass.

Once war broke out, the various daimyō and the shogunate would once again require large quantities of munitions. The effective Warring States-era policy of expanding foreign trade would regain importance, and the seclusion policy would inevitably collapse. The various restrictions on gold, silver, and copper exports would also be relaxed due to munitions demands—this point particularly troubled Ping Qiusheng, since due to severe precious metal outflows, the shogunate had already been restricting silver and copper exports since 1616.

But this beautiful plan involved specific strategies toward Japan—matters only the Executive Committee and the Senate could ultimately decide. Thus Ping Qiusheng could only conduct simple preparatory work and refrain from investing excessive resources.

He said to Murakawa: "There are also certain matters you need to prepare. The organization is planning to send you back to Japan."

"Please give your orders, Chief!"

"This time you'll need to cultivate relationships with Sō clan retainers. If the Sō clan permits, you'll accompany the next ship to Tsushima."

"Yes!"

"After you've arranged matters in Tsushima, you'll take one of their ships back to Nagasaki to handle several tasks. First, from Jeju Island—and earlier in Taiwan—we've had more than a dozen Security Forces soldiers die in battle or from illness, plus two injured men who wish to return home. You need to escort them and their ashes back, and deliver the Empire's pensions and medals to their families."

"Yes—thank you for the great grace of the Senate!"

"Second, you need to locate information about someone. This person is your fellow believer, named Amakusa Shirō Tokisada. He might also be called Masuda Tokisada, Ōyano Shirō, or Ebe Shirō. His birth father was formerly a retainer of Konishi Yukinaga, named Masuda Yoshitsugu. He was later adopted by Amakusa Jinbei. This person is currently about eleven years old and probably lives in Nagasaki. He may have studied medicine with the Dutch... Here is his file. Memorize it thoroughly—you should be able to recite it backwards. Now that Tokugawa has issued the Prohibition Edict, you must take care to conceal your own identity."

"Yes!" Murakawa didn't understand why Elder Ping had suddenly taken an interest in an eleven-year-old ronin, but orders were orders.

"You only need to find him. You don't need to make contact. Though the Sō clan has officially converted, they remain secretly sympathetic to Christianity. Among the Sō clan's retainers, you can locate reliable believers who still secretly practice the Kirishitan faith and have them establish correspondence with Amakusa. It will prove useful in the future."

"Yes." Murakawa suddenly felt his eyes sting. Indeed, the Lord had appeared to him in a dream bearing a great mission.

"This humble one will do whatever it takes."

"The final task is to see if you can recruit a sufficient number of ronin," Ping Qiusheng said. "The Security Forces have decided to add six more Japanese companies. Determine if there are suitable ronin available—they can't be too old. Preferably under thirty."

"Yes!" This last task was the simplest. Murakawa reckoned he knew at least fifty or a hundred starving ronin personally. Through them, finding another thousand or two wouldn't pose a problem.

The shogunate strictly prohibited Japanese from leaving the country. Japanese already abroad were forbidden from returning—all violators would be executed. Consequently, this matter had to be conducted in secret.

"District Eleven cannot resist amazing things..." Watching the Tsushima envoys' ship disappear into the distance, Murakawa Hideji heard Elder Ping murmur a sentence he completely couldn't comprehend... Perhaps his Chinese wasn't yet fluent enough.

But Elder Ping couldn't simply sequester himself on Jeju Island. There were already sufficient Elders stationed on Jeju. He had come here to develop Japan trade as a two-pronged approach. Now one prong—Tsushima—had been inserted. The other prong needed insertion as well.

"Pack up. We need to depart too." Ping Qiusheng said to his personal secretary, Ping Ayako.

Ping Qiusheng stood on deck gazing into the distance. Fukue Island was already visible on the horizon. This was a Chinese-style sailing vessel that the Navy had captured near Nagasaki. The ship carried fewer than fifty people aboard. This unfortunate vessel had been detained by the Navy in the Tsushima Strait more than a month earlier—the ship had originally been heading to Busan.

At the time, the Navy's mission was to capture Tsushima domain ships. But when they interrogated the ship's sailing master and interpreter, they discovered this wasn't a Sō clan vessel at all—it belonged to the Gotō Zhou clan.

Because they had captured what appeared to be Chinese merchants, the Jeju authorities didn't dare make their own determination and immediately telegraphed headquarters for instructions.

The telegram reached Lingao. Upon learning of this development, Ping Qiusheng immediately wired back: "Detain all personnel, ship, and cargo."

Any Elder familiar with this period of Sino-Japanese trade history knew about the Zhou clan. In the fifteenth year of Keichō (Wanli thirty-eighth year, 1611), Zhou Xingru—a man from Jiangning Prefecture who had set out from Fujian to trade in Japan—received a vermillion seal certificate personally granted to him by Tokugawa Ieyasu at Sunpu. This permitted him free access to all Japanese ports including Nagasaki. Such vermillion seals were issued by the shogunate to Japanese maritime merchants; that Zhou Xingru could obtain one demonstrated how highly Ieyasu regarded him.

The Zhou clan's base of operations in Japan was the Gotō Islands. The so-called Gotō Islands were an archipelago running northeast-southwest off the western coast of Kyushu Island, belonging to present-day Nagasaki Prefecture. They included the five islands of Fukue, Hisaka, Naru, Wakamatsu, and Nakadōri, plus over 140 surrounding islets. The location was extremely close to Nagasaki, Japan's principal foreign trade port at the time, and offered numerous natural harbors and anchorages. It served as an important stopping point for maritime merchants trading with Japan to rest and refit their vessels. At that time, the Gotō Islands, as a major stronghold of Chinese traders in Japan, wielded considerable influence.

This particular Zhou Group ship had been transporting swords to Korea in exchange for ginseng. Since the cargo was modest and the journey not far, they had only dispatched one hundred-ton sailing vessel with a few small boats accompanying it. Unexpectedly, the cargo ship had the misfortune to encounter Australian fast boats just as it reached Jeju waters and was captured without offering resistance. Though the captives had been continuously interrogated after being brought ashore, they had no idea what this strange group actually wanted. Even when the Australians informed them they would accompany the ship to Japan, they still couldn't fathom this group's intentions.

Ping Qiusheng had prepared his own story: he claimed to be a descendant of the Kanmu Heishi. His ancestors, after the Battle of Dan-no-ura, had led the remaining clansmen across the sea westward, drifting all the way to Fujian and settling in Fuzhou. Later, when the Mongol armies arrived, the Taira clansmen had followed Emperor Duanzong and his officials and people southward. From Yashan they crossed the sea, passing through Champa and Siam until finally reaching Australia, where over 350 years had now passed. He claimed to be the twenty-second generation descendant of Lord Taira no Kiyomori. His ancestors had never forgotten returning to their homeland—combined with Ping Qiusheng's Japanese, which sounded rather peculiar to contemporary ears, this made people half-believe, half-doubt his claims. And so relations with the locals grew warmer along the voyage.

(End of Chapter)