Capturing Prestige: Human Trafficking in Japan’s Maritime Borderlands, c. 1350-1600

From the perspective of Japan’s maritime borderlands centered on the island of Tsushima, late medieval Japanese transformations in commercialization, local lordship, and the integration of the archipelago into domestic and East Asian shipping circuits all depended on flows of enslaved peoples. Dr. Peter Shapinsky (UI-Springfield) will discuss how the lords of Tsushima, the Sō family, integrated slavery into the administrative machinery of their territorial domain and incentivized military service with awards tied to trafficking. For retainers, local elites, and commoner mariners, such sanctioned trafficking became a source of prestige and family legacies alongside other commercial and violent enterprises. Incentivized by the promise of tax exemptions and other awards from the Sō, their piratical enterprises raided Korean and Chinese coasts and engaged in military campaigns in Kyushu. This history invites reconsideration of trafficking in medieval Japan as a low-status, opportunistic, and declining trade.