Capturing Prestige: Human Trafficking in Japan's Maritime Borderlands, c. 1350-1600

This presentation traces the evolution of human trafficking networks among so-called Japanese pirates (Kn. Waegu, Ch. Wokou) from the island of Tsushima located in the maritime borderlands between Japan, Korea, and China. It excavates the foundations of the East Asian dimensions of the early modern global circulation of enslaved peoples and shows how medieval Japanese transformations in commercialization, local lordship, and the integration of the archipelago into domestic and East Asian shipping circuits all depended on flows of captives. The lords of Tsushima, the Sō family, integrated slavery into the administrative machinery of their territorial domain and incentivized military service with awards tied to trafficking. For retainers, local elites, and commoner mariners, such sanctioned trafficking became a source of prestige and family legacies. Incentivized by the promise of tax exemptions and other awards from the Sō, their piratical enterprises raided Korean and Chinese coasts, engaged in military campaigns in Kyushu, and resocialized captives into slaves by modifying regional ascriptive ethnic and status categories. Patronage by the Sō connected Tsushima slavers to the apex of Japan’s warrior hierarchy, the Ashikaga shogunate. This history invites reconsideration of trafficking in medieval Japan as a low-status, opportunistic, and declining trade.