Chapter 423: A Two-Pronged Approach

The two sides initialed the agreement. The trade agreement would only take effect after the Tsushima domain had affixed its seal, completed the appointment, and sent a hostage. The two sides agreed that the Tsushima domain would send a ship to Jeju in a month. The previously captured Tsushima merchant ships would only be returned after the agreement took effect. As a sign of sincerity, the Jeju side released all the captured personnel this time, giving each person a set of clothes, a pair of Australian straw sandals, and two bottles of rum. The officials were also given a Lingao-made glass lantern. The members of the mission also received gifts, and they brought back a set of bone china and a Lingao-made revolver for So Yoshinari.

This revolver was a special edition. Like the Nanyang-style rifle, it was a smoothbore caplock gun. In terms of power and range, it was very ordinary, but the caplock mechanism gave it an unprecedentedly fast rate of fire. This was a big enough selling point.

“Chief, are we going to export swords to the Fuchu domain?”

“Not necessarily,” Ping Qiusheng said vaguely. Japan was currently in a state of “peace under heaven,” and there was not much of a market for things like swords.

According to the ideas of some Senators, including Ping Qiusheng and Si Kaide, they were prepared to stir up trouble and make a big move in the chaotic situation after the 1633 seclusion edict.

Like the Toyotomi regime, the Tokugawa shogunate had a deep distrust of the foreign Catholic religion. For the Tokugawa shogunate, the Christian daimyo were almost all from the former Western Army camp. The shogunate had always been worried that the Catholic faith would be used by the outside lords to launch an anti-shogunate uprising, and then collude with the ship-strong and cannon-powerful southern barbarians.

This dual distrust, both political and religious, led to the deepening persecution of the Christian religion by the shogunate. Northern Kyushu, as the main settlement of the Christians, was under the strict surveillance of the shogunate. In 1628, the shogunate’s senior councilors, Doi Toshikatsu and Sakai Tadayo, “inspected” Shimabara County in Hizen Province. In one instance, they burned 570 Christians at the stake.

In 1630, the shogunate issued a “prohibition of religion edict”: Christians were ordered to renounce their faith within two months, or face death. Thanks to the efforts of Christian daimyo such as Terazawa Hirotaka, Matsuura Takanobu, and So Yoshinari, the “prohibition of religion edict” was finally suspended. However, the third shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, issued another “prohibition of religion edict” in 1633 and ordered the main defender of the Christian religion, Terazawa Hirotaka, the daimyo of the 240,000-koku Karatsu domain in Hizen, to commit seppuku. The Karatsu domain was subsequently changed, and Matsukura Katsuie, the daimyo of the 66,000-koku Yamato-Shigisan domain, took over the Terazawa territory and began the cruel persecution of the Christians. Between 1633 and 1638, as many as ten thousand Christians were burned to death by Matsukura Katsuie, and the conflict became extremely intensified.

Although the Amakusa Rebellion would not occur until 1638, there were actually many opportunities to incite a Christian uprising between 1633 and 1638. The outside lords of the southwestern domains, such as Satsuma and Choshu, had always been hostile to the shogunate. Once the shogunate was unable to suppress Amakusa Shiro Tokisada in time, the outside lords who were dissatisfied with the shogunate’s cruel suppression, especially the Western Army daimyo who had participated in the Battle of Sekigahara, were very likely to rise up again. The numerous ronin of the various daimyo families who had been changed due to the harsh “military rule” of the “three generations of the Aoi” would also respond. By the time of Iemitsu’s death in the fourth year of the Keian era (1651), the number of these ronin had already swelled to five hundred thousand. At this time, there were probably not so many, but there were always two or three hundred thousand.

These ronin had no income and were burdened by their samurai status. They harbored resentment in their hearts. Once there was a chance to reignite the flames of war and regain fame and fortune, they would not give up.

Once war broke out, the daimyo and the shogunate in various places would need a large amount of arms again. In this way, the policy of expanding foreign trade, which had been effective in the Warring States period, would be valued again. The policy of seclusion would inevitably be abandoned, and various policies to restrict the outflow of gold, silver, and copper would also be relaxed due to the demand for arms. This was quite troublesome for Ping Qiusheng, because the outflow of precious metals was serious, and the shogunate had already begun to restrict the outflow of silver and copper since 1616.

However, this wonderful plan involved a specific strategy for Japan, which could only be finally decided by the Executive Committee and the Senate. So Ping Qiusheng could only make some simple preparations and could not invest too many resources.

He said to Zichuan, “There are some other things you need to prepare for. The organization is preparing to send you back to Japan.”

“Please give me your instructions, Chief!”

“This time, you are to make friends with the retainers of the So clan. If you get the permission of the So clan, you will go to Tsushima with the next ship.”

“Yes!”

“After you have arranged the affairs in Tsushima, you will take their ship back to Nagasaki to do a few things. First, there were more than a dozen security forces soldiers who were killed in action or died of illness in Jeju Island, including those in Taiwan before. There are also two who were injured and want to go home. You are to send them and their ashes back, and bring the empire’s pension and medals to their families.”

“Yes, thank you for the great kindness of the Senate.”

“Secondly, you are to inquire about a person. This person is your fellow Christian, named Amakusa Shiro Tokisada. He may also be called Masuda Tokisada or Oyano Shiro, Ebe Shiro. His biological father was a retainer of Konishi Yukinaga, named Masuda Yoshitsugu. He was later adopted by Amakusa Jinbei. This person is probably eleven years old now and may be living in Nagasaki. He may have studied medicine with the Dutch… This is his information. You must remember it in detail, to the point of being able to recite it backwards. Now that the Tokugawa have issued a prohibition of religion edict, you must pay attention to concealing your identity.”

“Yes!” Zichuan didn’t know why Senator Ping was suddenly interested in an eleven-year-old ronin, but an order was an order.

“You only need to find him, you don’t need to contact him. Although the So clan has changed their religion, they are still secretly sympathetic to Catholicism. You can find reliable Christians among the retainers of the So clan who still secretly believe in Christianity and establish correspondence with Amakusa. It will be useful in the future.”

“Yes.” Zichuan suddenly felt his eyes sting. It was indeed God who had entrusted him with a great mission in a dream.

“I will not hesitate to die for this.”

“The last thing is to see if you can recruit enough ronin,” Ping Qiusheng said. “The security forces have decided to add six more Japanese companies. You can see if there are any suitable ronin—they can’t be too old. It’s best if they are under thirty.”

“Yes!” This last task was the simplest. Zichuan thought that he knew at least fifty or a hundred ronin who had no food to eat. If he asked them to find more people, it would be no problem to recruit one or two thousand.

The shogunate strictly prohibited Japanese from going abroad, and Japanese who had already gone abroad were not allowed to return, otherwise they would be executed. Therefore, this matter had to be carried out in secret.

“District 11 cannot resist shocking things…” Watching the ship of the Tsushima envoy go far away, Zichuan Hideji heard Senator Ping mutter a sentence that he couldn’t understand at all… Maybe his Chinese was not good enough.

But Senator Ping could not just stay on Jeju Island. There were already enough Senators on Jeju Island. He had come here to start trade with Japan with a two-pronged approach. Now that one prong, Tsushima, had been inserted, the other one had to be inserted as soon as possible.

“Pack your bags, we have to set off too,” Ping Qiusheng said to his life secretary, Ping Lingzi.

Ping Qiusheng stood on the deck and looked into the distance. Fukue Island was already in sight. This was a Chinese-style sailing ship, captured by the navy near Nagasaki. At that time, there were less than 50 people on board. This unlucky sailing ship had been detained by the navy in the Tsushima Strait more than a month ago. The ship was originally going to Busan.

At that time, the navy’s mission was to capture the ships of the Fuchu domain, but after interrogating the ship’s captain and interpreter, they learned that they were not the ships of the So family of Tsushima, but from the Zhou clan of Goto.

Because they had captured what appeared to be Chinese sea merchants, the Jeju Island side did not dare to make a decision on their own and immediately sent a telegram to ask for instructions.

A telegram was sent to Lingao. After Ping Qiusheng learned of this, he immediately sent a telegram: “Detain all people, ships, and goods.”

As for the Zhou clan, all the Senators who were familiar with the history of Sino-Japanese trade at this time knew of this person. In the 15th year of the Keicho era, which was the 38th year of the Wanli era (1611), Zhou Xingru, a native of Jiangning Prefecture who had gone to Japan for trade, received a personal red-seal permit from Tokugawa Ieyasu in Sunpu, allowing him to pass through all the ports of Japan to Nagasaki without hindrance. This kind of red-seal permit was issued by the shogunate to Japanese sea merchants. The fact that Zhou Xingru could obtain one shows the importance Ieyasu attached to him at that time.

The Zhou clan’s base of operations in Japan was on the Goto Islands. The so-called Goto Islands are a group of islands off the west coast of Kyushu, oriented from northeast to southwest, belonging to the modern-day Nagasaki Prefecture. They include the five islands of Fukue, Hisaka, Naru, Wakamatsu, and Nakadori, as well as more than 140 other nearby islands. This place was very close to Nagasaki, the main foreign port of Japan at that time, and had many natural harbors and anchorages. It was an important place for sea merchants engaged in trade with Japan to rest their ships. At that time, the Goto Islands, as the main base of the Chinese in Japan, also had considerable influence.

This time, the ship of the Zhou clan was transporting swords to Korea in exchange for ginseng. Because there were not many goods and the journey was not far, only a sailing ship of about a hundred tons and a few small boats were sent. Unexpectedly, the cargo ship had the misfortune of encountering the Australian fast boats as soon as it reached the waters of Jeju Island and was captured without any suspense. Although they were constantly interrogated after being taken ashore, they did not know what this group of strangely dressed people wanted to do. It was not until the Australians told them that they were going to Japan with the ship that they still could not figure out what this group of people was thinking.

Ping Qiusheng had his own story: he claimed to be a descendant of the Taira clan of the Kanmu Heishi. His ancestors had led the remaining clansmen to cross the sea to the mainland after the Battle of Dan-no-ura, drifted all the way to Fujian, and settled in Fuzhou. Later, when the Mongol army approached, the Taira clansmen followed Emperor Duanzong and the officials and people south, crossed the sea from Yashan, passed through Champa and Siam, and finally arrived in Australia. It had been 350 years, and he was the 22nd generation grandson of Taira no Kiyomori. When his ancestors were alive, they never forgot to return to their homeland for a moment. In addition, Ping Qiusheng’s Japanese, which sounded very strange at that time, made people somewhat believe his story. In this way, the relationship with the local people became more cordial along the way.