Tribute

• Japanese/Chinese: 貢 (mitsugi / gong)

"Tribute" refers to gifts, whether in the form of coin or precious metals, or that of goods such as rice, silk, aromatic woods, or horses, presented from one polity to another in acknowledgment of the superiority and suzerainty of the latter. Trade between China and most other polities, for the most part, for many centuries, formally and officially only took place in this manner. Giving tribute to the Chinese Court was an essential prerequisite for engaging in trade; once tribute was presented to be given to the Emperor, ships were permitted to trade or barter a considerable portion of their cargo, or to have it bartered for them by the local Chinese port official, as "private business."

Examples of tributary relationships can be seen especially in the relationship between Ming China and Muromachi period Japan (see kangô bôeki), and took place as well between the Kingdom of Ryûkyû and certain outlying islands, such as the Miyako Islands or Yaeyama Islands, which were not controlled directly, but which might be considered tributaries of the Kingdom.

Ming China

The Sinocentric world order and system of tributary relations was, in theory, in place from as early as the Han Dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE) until the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), but was strongest in the early Ming Dynasty, i.e. from 1368 until sometime around 1550. As Angela Schottenhammer explains, prior to the Ming dynasty, the Sino-centric worldview and tribute system were more a claim than a reality, and after the 1550s or so, Chinese maritime/economic power weakened.

Ming China regarded Korea, Japan, and Ryûkyû (through which it obtained access to Southeast Asian goods) as its most important tributaries, and categorized all of its tributary states into six categories:

• (1) The first category included 18 East and Southeast Asian polities, including Korea, Japan, Ryûkyû, Annam, Champa, Cambodia, Thailand, and Java.
• (2) The second category included the remaining Southeast Asian polities, especially island polities such as those in the modern-day Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka.
• (3) & (4) The third and fourth categories included Jurchens, Tatars, and other tribal peoples to the north.
• (5) & (6) The fifth and sixth categories included tribal peoples and other groups to the west.

Tribute missions were permitted on a regular, but limited schedule, thus limiting all official (legal) trade as well. For the most part, Korea and Ryûkyû were permitted to send missions once every two years; at times, for various political reasons, this was changed to once every three years. Similarly, Muromachi Japan was permitted, at times, to send missions only once every ten years. The system was managed by a Maritime Trade Office, or shibosi (市舶司); originally there was only one such office, but before long shibosi offices were established in the major ports of Fuzhou, Quanzhou, Ningpo and Guangzhou.

Foreign ships were required to send a certain portion of their cargoes as tribute, and a portion of their personnel as envoys, to the Imperial capital, though the remainder of the cargo could be sold privately, that is, independently, for profit, by the foreigners, or by the Chinese port officials on the foreigners' behalf. The Ming court paid for travel expenses, often providing horses and ships, but limited missions to 150 people.

Korea generally sent gold, silver, skins (especially leopard and sea otter), brushes, paper, ginseng, and silks, woven mats, and other kinds of textiles. Items such as cattle, horses, cotton, grain, pepper, materials for making weapons and gunpowder (e.g. sulphur), as well as human slaves, young girls, and eunuchs, were often requested by the Ming Court. In return, Korea obtained a variety of goods including silks, jades, medicinal products, musical instruments, books, and dragon robes.

Qing China

After the fall of the Ming, the Manchus lost no time in establishing policies and regulations for tributary relations. The Qing Court essentially continued the tributary relations of the Ming period, maintaining or putting into place procedures for receiving tribute ships and storing their cargoes, banning goods of strategic importance from leaving the country, and setting regulations for the size of incoming tribute missions.

Qing received tribute from Korea annually, from Ryûkyû once every two years, from Siam every three years, Annam every four years, and from Laos and Burma once in a decade. Though all of these tributary relationships had de facto ended by the mid-to-late 19th century, an 1899 document still lists all of those polities as tributaries.

Korea sent at least 435 missions to Qing China between 1637 and 1881, bringing goods such as deer and leopard skins, ox horns, gold, silver, tea, paper, various types of textiles, and rice, along with goods obtained from Southeast Asia or elsewhere, such as sappanwood, pepper, and swords and knives.

Japan

Japan is rarely discussed as requesting, or exacting, tribute out of neighboring polities in the way that China did; this is presumably largely because most of those neighboring polities, including Korea and Ryûkyû, were already Chinese tributaries. The Japanese did try, however, in some periods, to craft a Japan-centric world order after the Chinese model, and to exact tribute from others, presenting an image of itself to the world as a nation to which others pay tribute.

In the Yamato period, and into the Nara period, Japan did in fact receive tribute from outlying regions, such as from the Ryukyuan islands of Tanegashima, the Amami Islands, Tokunoshima, and Yakushima beginning in 699, and from the Hayato, a people of southern Kyushu outside of the boundaries of the Yamato state. Korea sent tribute to Japan as well, in this early period; we have the example of Kim Chhyun-chhyu, who gifted a peacock and a parrot to the court in 647. Polities based in the Japanese archipelago may have paid tribute to Korean or Chinese polities in ancient times as well, such as in the case of the state of Na, which is said to have sent tribute to Han Dynasty China in the year 57.

Japan also received tribute from Ryûkyû, Korea, the Dutch and the Ainu during the Edo Period. These took the forms of formal missions to Edo performed by Ryukyuan and Korean envoys on the occasion of the accession of a new shogun, or of a new king of Ryûkyû or Korea; Ainu chiefs met with the lords of the Matsumae clan on occasion, though it has been argued that the Ainu did not perceive these meetings to be acts of subordination, nor the gifts they brought to be "tribute" per se. Still, the Ainu of Sakhalin are said to have paid tribute to the samurai Takeda Nobuhiro and his descendants for a time, beginning in 1475. Similarly, representatives of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) made journeys to Edo on occasion, but they too are not likely to have seen these journeys, and gift-exchanges with the shogun, as acts of subordination or as payment of tribute. Tribute or taxes were also paid by Ryûkyû to Satsuma han.

Of course, the term "tribute" is also sometimes used to refer to gifts given by samurai lords to those to whom they formally submit. Particularly in the Sengoku Period, when daimyô defeated other clans and took them as new subordinates, they often received gifts, or "tribute."

Ryûkyû

The Kingdom of Ryûkyû actively engaged in tributary relations with China for nearly the entire period of its existence; however, the kingdom also received tribute from outlying islands within the Ryukyuan archipelago. Even before the formal establishment of "kingdoms" on Okinawa, the island was receiving tribute from the nearby islands of Iheyajima, Kumejima, and the Kerama Islands, beginning in 1264, and from the Amami Islands beginning in 1266.

Prior to the unification of Okinawa Island and the establishment of the Kingdom, China received tribute from three separate Okinawan polities. Chûzan, the kingdom which controlled the central areas of the island, conquered the other two kingdoms in 1419-1429. In the intervening time, Chûzan sent 52 missions to China beginning in 1372, Nanzan sent nineteen, beginning in 1380, and Hokuzan sent nine beginning in 1383, all of them vying as well for official recognition from the Ming Court as the only rightful king of Okinawa.

Following unification, Ryûkyû generally sent tribute once every two years, though the pattern changed at times along with shifts in Chinese politics. The Ming Court placed restrictions on the size and frequency of Ryukyuan missions in 1472, lifting these restrictions in 1507 after repeated Ryukyuan petitions, restoring the pattern to annual tribute missions.

Tribute was sent in a variety of forms, including Southeast Asian trade goods, aromatic woods, sulfur and saltpeter, horses, and sugar. Ryukyuan ships sent to China, like Chinese investiture envoys' ships to Ryûkyû, were known as okansen (O: ukwanshin); trading ships accompanying the embassies vessels were known as sekkôsen. While hosting Chinese envoys was quite expensive for the kingdom, the interaction was beneficial for the kingdom, which generally received more in gifts from China than it gave in tribute.

For a time, the Ryûkyû Kingdom also sent tribute to the Ashikaga shogunate once every three or four years. Tribute and trade goods carried by these ships included Chinese copper coins, wine, nanban silks, aloe, sappanwood, and other scented and medicinal products, many of them obtained from Southeast Asian ports or from Iberian traders.

Meanwhile, tribute from Ryûkyû was often demanded by the Shimazu clan of Satsuma province, who laid claims to the islands since the 12th century. The Shimazu were officially named "Lords of the Twelve Southern Islands" by the Kamakura shogunate in 1206, and were granted the islands by the Ashikaga shogunate in 1441; however, Ryûkyû was never informed of this, and no tribute was paid to Satsuma, nor any actual direct Japanese dominion exerted in the islands, until after the 1609 invasion of Ryûkyû by that same samurai clan.

Following the outbreak of the Ônin War, Ryukyuan tribute missions to the shogunate gradually disappeared, and Sakai merchants jumped to fill in the gap, sending their own ships to Ryûkyû. Losing profits, and control over the trade, in 1471, the shogunate sent an order to the Shimazu indicating that from henceforward, merchants traveling to Ryûkyû would be required to hold shogunate-issued licenses. The export of copper coins was especially singled-out as prohibited. The Shimazu were then allowed to be the ones to notify the island kingdom of these new policies; that Ryûkyû then got the impression that it was the Shimazu - and not the shogunate - which issued licenses, and which held monopolistic control over the Japan-Ryûkyû trade, is indicated by a 1559 letter from a Naha official to a Shimazu retainer noting that only merchants with Shimazu permits were permitted to trade at Naha.

The Kingdom of Ryûkyû, based on Okinawa Island, received ships from the other islands at the port of Tomari, where warehouses stood for storing tribute goods from those islands. The Tomari satonushi, the chief port official, oversaw in particular the reception of tribute payments and missions from the Amami Islands. Tribute from these outlying islands was sent in a variety of forms; for example, the Miyako and Yaeyama Islands, which had originally begun sending tribute in 1390, were permitted to send part of their tribute in the form of jôfu textiles beginning in 1659.

Of course, exacting tribute from the outlying islands did not always go smoothly; there were, at times, revolts and rebellions, such as that of Oyake Akahachi on Ishigaki Island in 1500, though most of these rebellions were eventually suppressed by royal kingdom forces from Okinawa Island, or those from other islands loyal to the center and acting in its service.

It was one such tribute ship from the Miyako Islands, on its way back from having delivered tribute at Tomari on Okinawa, that became shipwrecked in 1871 on Taiwan, leading to the so-called Taiwan Incident of 1871 in which the majority of the Miyakoan sailors were killed by Taiwanese aborigines, spurring an international incident in which China and Japan nearly came to all-out war over the question of who held responsibility over Taiwan, and over the Ryûkyûs.

Despite Ryûkyû's tributary relationship with China being an inferior one, i.e. one of subordination, Ryukyuans felt strongly about their strong ties to China, and in the 1870s in particular, when the kingdom's links to China, and indeed the kingdom's very existence, were threatened, many royal officials and political activists, including Rin Seikô and others, took action in support of maintaining (or resuming) tributary relations. Though in the end China took little action to block Japan's overthrow of the Ryûkyû Kingdom and annexation of the islands as Okinawa Prefecture, Beijing did issue formal complaints in the late 1870s against Japanese efforts to put an end to the sending of tribute.

References

• Schottenhammer, Angela. "The East Asian maritime world, 1400-1800: Its fabrics of power and dynamics of exchanges - China and her neighbors." in Schottenhammer (ed.) The East Asian maritime world, 1400-1800: Its fabrics of power and dynamics of exchanges. Harrassowitz Verlag, 2007. pp1-83.