Chapter 427: Hamada Shinzō

The island’s inhabitants were almost all fishermen, and every one of them was skilled at handling boats. The Ming people living on the island even exaggeratedly said that the islanders’ light boats were like arrows.

The people here, like the people of Goto, were descendants of the once rampant Japanese pirates. Less than a hundred years ago, their ancestors followed the ships of the great Chinese pirate merchants to the coast of the Ming Dynasty to plunder every year, always acting as the vanguard in the charge.

In addition, they were also skilled at diving for abalone and sea cucumbers, catching sharks, and making shark fins. These were all skills learned due to the needs of Chinese merchants. Every year, a large amount of tawaramono was transported from here to the Ming Dynasty in exchange for the “treasures” brought by the Tang ships.

The island’s lord, the Matsuura clan, was a daimyo that had continued since before the Warring States period. Among the daimyo of Japan, they could be considered one of the oldest families.

The family name of the lord here was Matsushima. Like the Goto clan, the daimyo of the Fukue domain, their family name was also taken from the name of the place.

It is said that the Matsuura clan’s original surname was Minamoto, and they were called the Saga Genji. But in the past, they had also claimed to be of the Taira or Fujiwara clans. This was a common phenomenon of currying favor among the daimyo.

It is said that the ancestors of the Matsuura clan were brave and fierce warriors from the eastern provinces. The Yamato court moved them to the coast of Tsukushi as garrison soldiers to resist the barbarians. These barbarians, covered in pigskin and smeared with lard, were the ancestors of the Jurchens. They sailed on simple rafts made of logs and plundered along the coast of the Japanese archipelago with the ocean currents.

Entering the Heian period, this system became a mere formality, and the central government forgot their existence. The garrison soldiers abandoned in the wilderness formed their own factions and seized weapons and land. By the Kamakura period, several samurai groups called “parties” had formed and fought against each other. Many independent “halls” were formed, becoming “water armies” that harassed the coast. The ancestors of the Matsuura family slowly grew up in this long and chaotic historical era, eventually becoming the hegemon of the upper and lower Matsuura regions.

During the Toyotomi Hideyoshi era, the Matsuura clan also participated in the invasion of Korea. After the Battle of Sekigahara, because they remained neutral, they were able to continue to exist as a daimyo with a domain of 63,200 koku. This was much larger than the Fukue domain, which only had 15,000 koku, which shows the importance of Hirado’s overseas trade to the Matsuura family.

The terrain of Hirado Island is rugged, and the roads are almost all slopes. Only a small, flat area called Miyanomae was built with stone walls, raised with rammed earth, and paved with stone slabs. This was the trading square called the “Portuguese Wharf Market.” The Fujian ships with bamboo leaf sails, the Zhejiang ships with straw mat sails, and the red-haired southern barbarian ships with cotton cloth sails also docked here.

The Zhou family’s ship anchored here. After the ship docked, the Zhou family’s sailors began to unload the cargo, while the Senators were led by Ping Kefu to a guesthouse with Zhou Xingru’s name card.

In the evening, a banquet was held in the guesthouse to welcome the “Australian sea merchants” who had come from afar. A young man received them. The young man had a sakayaki hairstyle, with his topknot combed from the back to the top of his head. He had a very neat appearance and looked to be no more than thirty years old. This should be a trading post, but the man was dressed like a samurai. Ping Qiusheng thought this was not strange. Kyushu was originally the old lair of the Japanese pirate merchants, and most of the various water armies were like this. The head of the Goto family also started this way. Most of these water armies were only incorporated into the system during Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s Kyushu campaign, breaking away from the level of “local clans” and “wild samurai” and becoming proper samurai.

Although the man was dressed as a samurai, he was very enthusiastic and had a very shrewd look in his eyes, like a merchant. The rise of Hirado benefited from foreign sea merchants. To the local samurai, foreign merchants were money trees. So much so that the Ming merchant ships in Hirado were called “treasures.”

After the host and guests were seated, Ping Kefu introduced this young man as the “master of the house” here, Hamada Shinzō. His father was the famous Hamada Yahei.

Hamada Yahei, this originally unknown Japanese, became a famous figure in the history of East Asian foreign relations because of his conflict with the Dutch East India Company, which led to the “Hamada Yahei Incident.”

Although the result of this incident was the submission of the Dutch side, a look at the whole process of the incident fully demonstrates the greed of the Dutch, the arrogance of the Japanese, the power of Zheng Zhilong, and the law of the jungle on the East Asian seas.

The “Hamada Yahei Incident” was, in the final analysis, crucially related to Zheng Zhilong’s monopoly on the coast of Fujian. And Hirado was where Zheng Zhilong started his career—it would not be an exaggeration to say that it was his base in Japan.

If they could cut off his trade here, break his monopoly, and replace it with the Senate’s monopoly, the Zheng Zhilong group would be greatly weakened due to the loss of a large amount of economic resources, and might even be defeated without a fight. This was also why the Executive Committee had approved the start of trade with Japan at this time.

In the summer, the Ming merchant ships would not sail to Japan. The Tang ships going to Japan would only set sail in the winter. This gap was enough for them to do many things. If Zhao Yingong was a little more capable, it would not be impossible to rewrite the new history of Sino-Japanese trade.

By the time Zheng Zhilong’s Anhai ships came to Japan again… Senator Ping couldn’t help but feel complacent.

The banquet was quite sumptuous, at least better than Ping Qiusheng had expected. He had read a few books and saw that the “imperial food” offered to the emperor was also very shabby, with just a few more dried fish. This was an island, so at most there would be more seafood—he was already tired of this stuff. But now, there was roasted meat with sauce, and the aroma was overwhelming. He took a bite, and it tasted like chicken.

“Is this Satsuma chicken?”

“Master Ping is very knowledgeable.” Hamada spoke Chinese, and although his Chinese had a strong Southern Zhili official dialect accent, the meaning was clear.

Ping Qiusheng then praised the deliciousness of the chicken. In fact, before coming to Japan, the cadres of the Agriculture Department stationed on Jeju Island had asked Ping Qiusheng to collect some Satsuma chickens and transport them back to Jeju Island. Satsuma chickens were fatty and grew well, and they could adapt to the environment of Jeju Island. They could be of great help in solving the island’s meat and oil supply in the short term. In the old time and space, Satsuma chicken was known as one of the three major native chickens in Japan. Although the Satsuma chicken in this time and space had not been systematically improved, it tasted excellent just now. If it were paired with the Lingao Tiachu series of seasonings, it would definitely be more delicious. He immediately made a note of it and prepared to ask Ping Kefu to arrange for it later.

In addition to the chicken breast, there were also some grilled fish and various kinds of shiokara made from shellfish and squid. There was also rice and rice cakes, and of course, the miso soup that the Japanese drank all year round and never got tired of.

The glass-bottled rum that Ping Qiusheng brought also amazed the young master of the house. He drank two bottles and was slightly drunk before he stopped. In the Tokugawa era of Japan, only wealthy merchants had both the financial resources and were not bound by the various etiquette of the samurai and nobility, so they could be a little particular about their food. But Japan’s material conditions were always limited, and they were quite backward in terms of food and enjoyment. In particular, Japanese sake—don’t be fooled by the fame of Japanese sake in the old time and space, which even formed a system similar to oenology on the international stage. But at this time, Japan’s brewing industry was still quite backward. The wine on the market was mainly grain fermented wine, and distilled liquor was still rare, let alone a high-grade distilled liquor like “Guoshi Wushuang.”

Finally, the servants brought two more after-dinner snacks: one was pickled plums, and the other was persimmon yōkan. Ping Qiusheng had some research on traditional Japanese snacks. Not to mention whether the pickled plums were Nanko plums, this persimmon yōkan was an authentic specialty of Mino, and it was not available locally in Kyushu. The enjoyment of the Hamada family was considered excellent.

Hamada repeatedly apologized, saying that his father was tied up with business at the main house in Nagasaki. Although Master Zhou had informed them that the Australian guests were coming, it was a hasty arrangement and they were not well prepared. From the conversation, Senator Ping learned that the Hamada family was actually an agent for the big merchant Yatojiro in Nagasaki. Their main business was importing raw silk from Quanzhou—this was the biggest business in the Sino-Japanese trade and was very profitable.

Speaking of his father, they inevitably talked about the “Hamada Yahei Incident.” Hamada Shinzō was inevitably proud. The envoys of the East India Company had already arrived in Japan, which was a complete surrender. One of the parties involved, the governor of Tayouan, would also be handed over to the shogunate for punishment. In return, the shogunate would agree to allow Dutch ships to re-enter Japanese ports.

From any perspective, this matter was a great victory for the Japanese. But Hamada Shinzō did not show too much joy, because the root of the problem, Zheng Zhilong’s monopoly, was still not resolved.

Under Ping Qiusheng’s gentle guidance, Hamada Shinzō drank a few more cups and couldn’t help but spill many things.

In recent years, the coast of Fujian had been controlled by the Zheng clan. The Zheng clan’s fleet almost monopolized the raw silk trade between the Ming Dynasty and Japan. If the Japanese wanted to buy raw silk in Quanzhou and then transport it back to Japan, the Zheng clan would absolutely not issue a permit flag. And a fleet without a Zheng family permit flag would basically have a hard time safely transporting the goods back to Japan. This almost strangled the neck of the Japanese sea merchants who held red-seal permits.

Either the Japanese sea merchants would honestly pay 2,100 taels of silver to exchange for a permit flag, or they would risk being intercepted by Zheng Zhilong and losing both their ship and cargo.

In particular, Hirado, since the time of Wang Zhi, had been an important gathering place for Chinese pirate merchants. Zheng Zhilong and his former father-in-law, Yan Siqi, both had residences here, and they had great influence among the local Japanese, with many eyes and ears.

“I heard that his wife and son have gone to China.”

“His father-in-law’s family, the Tagawa family, is still in Hirado,” Hamada Shinzō said, his face red and hot from the wine. “There are many people here who work for him. The lord of the domain also looks at him with special favor.”

Since the time of Yan Siqi, the Chinese pirate merchants in Hirado had enjoyed a power similar to extraterritoriality—almost the same treatment as the “foreign masters” of the old time and space.