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The ''wakô'' were raiders, pirates, or brigands active in East Asian waters in the [[Kamakura period|Kamakura]] to early [[Edo period]]s, the phenomenon peaking in the 16th century (the late [[Muromachi period|Muromachi]] or [[Sengoku period]]). The term might be literally translated as "Japanese pirates," the ''wa'' (倭) denoting Japan, but many ''wakô'' were in fact Chinese, Korean, or Ryukyuan.<ref name=arano186>Arano. p186.</ref><ref name=miki>Watanabe Miki, “Shifting Representations of Ryukyuans between Early Modern China and Japan,” in Caroli (ed.), ''Imagined Okinawa: Challenge from Time and Space'', Ca' Foscari University in Venice (2015), 197.</ref>

The ''wakô'' were raiders, pirates, or brigands active in East Asian waters in the [[Kamakura period|Kamakura]] to early [[Edo period]]s, the phenomenon peaking in the 16th century (the late [[Muromachi period|Muromachi]] or [[Sengoku period]]). The term might be literally translated as "Japanese pirates," the ''wa'' (倭) denoting Japan, but many ''wakô'' were in fact Chinese, Korean, or Ryukyuan.<ref name=arano186>Arano. p186.</ref><ref name=miki>Watanabe Miki, “Shifting Representations of Ryukyuans between Early Modern China and Japan,” in Caroli (ed.), ''Imagined Okinawa: Challenge from Time and Space'', Ca' Foscari University in Venice (2015), 197.</ref>

Chinese primarily sources of the mid-16th century identify the ''wakô'' problem at that time in particular as stemming chiefly from the activities of merchants and others in China, who hired or otherwise encouraged Japanese to be involved.

Chinese primarily sources of the mid-16th century identify the ''wakô'' problem at that time in particular as stemming chiefly from the activities of merchants and others in China, who hired or otherwise encouraged Japanese to be involved. Some scholarship suggests that from the very beginning of the [[Ming Dynasty]] in China ([[1368]]-[[1644]]), the anti-maritime policies of the [[Hongwu Emperor|first Ming emperor]] - forcing coastal communities to [[qianjie|move inland]], and trying to monopolize all maritime trade under the throne - were a chief ''cause'' of, rather than a response to, the proliferation of smugglers, who then became brigands or pirates.

Only after the [[Korean Invasions]] of [[Toyotomi Hideyoshi]] in the 1590s, in which organized samurai invasion forces were labeled by the Chinese and Koreans as ''wakô'', i.e. as pirates or brigands, it would seem, did the earlier history of the ''wakô'' come to be colored, in Chinese and Korean sources, by implications or assumptions that the ''wakô'' were somehow agents of a central Japanese authority. Though documents written in the 16th century generally identify Chinese as having been the source of encouragement for piratical activities, those written in the 17th century and later, especially the ''[[Ming shi]]'' ("Official History of the Ming Dynasty") generally implicate the Japanese authorities in organizing and backing the ''wakô'', or at the very least refusing to take action to curb ''wakô'' activities. In the 20th-21st centuries, scholarship and school textbooks, closely based upon these later 17th century sources, have come to link the ''wakô'', and the foreign relations policies of the Japanese authorities at the time, with transhistorical notions of the Japanese as militant and expansionist.

Only after the [[Korean Invasions]] of [[Toyotomi Hideyoshi]] in the 1590s, in which organized samurai invasion forces were labeled by the Chinese and Koreans as ''wakô'', i.e. as pirates or brigands, it would seem, did the earlier history of the ''wakô'' come to be colored, in Chinese and Korean sources, by implications or assumptions that the ''wakô'' were somehow agents of a central Japanese authority. Though documents written in the 16th century generally identify Chinese as having been the source of encouragement for piratical activities, those written in the 17th century and later, especially the ''[[Ming shi]]'' ("Official History of the Ming Dynasty") generally implicate the Japanese authorities in organizing and backing the ''wakô'', or at the very least refusing to take action to curb ''wakô'' activities. In the 20th-21st centuries, scholarship and school textbooks, closely based upon these later 17th century sources, have come to link the ''wakô'', and the foreign relations policies of the Japanese authorities at the time, with transhistorical notions of the Japanese as militant and expansionist.