This was especially true in the sixteenth-century after China had effectively forbidden legitimate trade with Japan following the violent rampages of opposing groups of Japanese tribute-traders during the Ningbo Incident of 1523. The situation was further amplified by the fact that Japan was divided and at war, tearing itself apart from within.
Illegal trade and smuggling – dubbed piracy by the Chinese Ming government – spread to fill the commercial and political void. The Japanese market, and traders that sold products from Japan, like the Portuguese, demanded Chinese goods. If they were unavailable legally, then there were plenty of men who were prepared to run the risk of supplying them illegally – of course, for a price.
Far faring pirates
The vast profits, and the relative weakness of Ming Chinese naval defenses compared to earlier periods, ensured that the trend in piracy spread beyond Japanese opportunists and ruffians from all over the region. Even new European interlopers began to get in on the action. And it was not just China that suffered. Japan-based seafarers of multiple ethnicities began to travel further abroad than their traditional trading destinations to the regions that today form Southeast Asia. They aimed to trade Japanese commodities, largely silver and sulfur. But if legitimate commerce was hard to come by, the mariners
