06 Japanese Pirates’ Medieval Times
Introduction
Taira Kiyomori (1118-1181), the second Japanese pirate king, learned a lesson from the failure of Fujiwara Sumitomo (?-941), the first Japanese pirate king. Sumitomo was so independent from the central power that he allowed the central noble clans to exploit local powerful families with promotion as lures. Kiyomori, in contrast, was successful in establishing himself as a member of the Cabinet in 1160, and, later, as a Prime Minister in 1167. Taira Clan was, however, too much involved in the central power struggles. At their height of their power and hegemony, they were losing the support and mandate from local powerful families or samurais, and lost recognition as a master samurai to Minamoto Clan, who later established the Kamakura Shogunate in 1185. What about sea people? Did they learn some lesson through successes and failures of Ancient Japanese piracy? We can hardly say they did. It almost took them the first half of Medieval times to accumulate enough experience to get along not only with land samurais but also with each other and to control the Seto Inland Sea.I The Trials and Errors by the Kamakura Shogunate
Even after the establishment of the Kamakura Shogunate in 1185, central noble clans such as Saionji, a branch clan of Fujiwara’s, kept attempting to profit from the sea people around the Seto Inland Sea as a provincial governor or as a lord of manors. Meanwhile, the sea people had to face new land forces, the shogunate itself (or Hojo Clan particularly, who dominated the shogunate as regents) and the eastern samurais sent by the shogunate.
Hojo Clan showed a great interest in the Seto Inland Sea areas, and consistently attempted to suppress pirates there. The suppression, however, was hardly effectual. That was partly because those who were supposed to suppress pirates, namely provincial commander samurais and manorial steward samurais, were colluding with pirates. The commander and steward samurais were groping for the way to control sea people, and the shogunate could hardly perceive what were happening at the bottom of the societies around the Seto Inland Sea.
Here, we are going to see 5 steps taken by the Kamakura Shogunate to suppress pirates around the Seto Inland Sea.
First, in 1231, they started to urge provincial commander samurais to order manorial steward samurais to mobilize soldiers and boats and to arrest pirates. These orders were repeatedly issued. However, toward the middle of the 13th century, the number of piracies reported increased, and the problems of those who pretend not to see or know piracies were raised.
In the meantime, in 1274, Kublai Khan (1215-1294, reigning 1260-1294), a grandson of Ghengis Khan, the fifth Khagan of Mongol Empire, and the first Emperor of Yuan Dynasty in China, attempted to invade Japanese islands.
After Kublai’s unsuccessful attempt, the Kamakura Shogunate’s Hojo Regency Regime pursued two-track countermeasures agains Kublai’s further attempts; the defense against foreign countries and the punitive expeditions against them. In 1275, the regime ordered samurais in today’s Kyushu to report the number of boats, and the names and ages of rowers and steerers in their possessions. The latter punitive expeditions turned out to be financially impossible at all, but the registration process itself worked as the direct control over sea people, and thus as the second-step measure against pirates.
Their third step was taken in 1301. All the boats became supposed to be engraved with its owner’s name and whereabouts so deeply as not to be erased easily. It was a kind of total boat survey, but it also shows that piracies had come to thrive so largely that the regency regime had to resort to a centralized detailed measure.
Actually speaking, in 1309, pirates in Kumano, the south-east part of Kii Peninsula, rose up in revolt, and it took armies from 15 provinces to put them down. As a result, protecting coast lines became common duties for samurais in Sanyo and Nankai Regions, which included the provinces around the Seto Inland sea, on Shikoku Island, and Kii Peninsula, since 1312.
In 1318, the Kamakura Shogunate sent delegates to 12 provinces around the Seto Inland Sea and along the Pacific Ocean as their 4th step; Harima, Bizen, Bicchu, Bingo, Aki, Suo, Awaji, Awa, Sanuki, Iyo, Tosa, and Kii. The delegation stayed there until the next year, 1319, and, during their sojourn, they helped provincial commander samurais to charge deed documents to manorial steward samurais, and tried to put all the forces together to chase and arrest pirates. However, the very fact that the delegates demanded written documents from subordinate samurais implies that those samurais were in cahoot with pirates.
One example of this step was Ijichi Nagakiyo, who was a magistrate in the Rokuhara office of Kamakura Shogunate, and two others. All the three were sent to Bingo Province as a delegation. They tried to arrest pirates at the Onomichi Bay in Ota Manor, the lord of which was Koya-san Temples, but could not accomplish the task due to the protest by the temples. The acting provincial commander samurai, Marukiyo, helped the process. After the departure of the three, he invaded Onomichi Bay, burned more than 1,000 houses there, and carried out all the properties and belongings on 10 big boats which had been prepared to arrest pirates. Marukiyo was a man of very contradicting deeds. He also salaried well-known pirates in the Seto Inland Sea areas, such as Shinkaku, Takao, Yoshimura, and etc. He also didn’t hesitate to accept bribes.
For Marukiyo, those who were working and fighting for Koya-san Temples were pirates, while, for the temples, Marukiyo himself was a chief of pirates.
In 1319, the delegation was replaced with a honorable respected samurais in each province. The new delegates mobilized not only subordinate samurais but also people in concerned manors, placed marine guard checkpoints, and started coast guarding by themselves. The checkpoints’ vestiges have been identified at Akashi and Nageishi in Harima Province, at Kamekubi on Kurahashi Island in Aki Province, in Suo Province, and at Kutsuna in Iyo Province.
The fifth step, which was taken in 1324, was far firmer. The Kamakura Shogunate, or more precisely Hojo Regency Regime, proposed to central noble clans that provincial commander samurais should request manor owners and administrators to turn in pirates. If not, the samurais should invade the concerned manor, appoint an arbitrary samurai as a manorial steward, and, at worst, condemn the manor.
What is the difference between Japanese ancient piracy and its medieval one? Why couldn’t Hojo Clan make a pirate king as Taira Clan did?
In Ancient times, in Taira’s times, those who organized sea people to do piracy were, as Fujiwara Yasunori (825-895), a competent governor at the time, put it on piracy, “Most leaders are not local registered people, but dropouts (from the hierarchic center, the Heian-Kyo Capital). Some are young members of good family who have pursued means of support. Some others are officers’ valets who have married local women. They have made the remote provinces their hometowns,” and those leaders could be easily organized or overpowered by more powerful central clans or families such as Taira Clan. However, in medieval times, those who organized sea people to do piracy were the local powerful families who had lived along the Seto Inland Sea for generations, or some sea people who had become powerful themselves. They did not care for the central powers either of the Heian-kyo Capital or of Kamakura. They did not obey those samurais sent from East provinces by Kamakura Shogunate, and, after all, even some of the Eastern samurais found their interests in colluding with those pirates. All in all, local forces, both provincial and manorial, were becoming more and more independent from the central power politics.
II Kobayakawa Clan: A Case of Samurais from the East
Dohi Sanehira (?-1191.11.25?) and his son, Tohira (?-?), did good jobs during the Genpei War (1180-1185), conflicts between Taira Clan (=Pei) and Minamoto Clan (=Gen) at the end of Ancient Japan, or at the beginning of Medieval Japan. They were from Dohi County, Sagami Province, and followed Minamoto Yoritomo (1147-1199.1.13) when he took up arms against Taira Clan in 1180. In 1184, Sanehira became a general pursuer in Bizen, Bicchu, and Bingo Provinces. Tohira was later appointed as a manorial steward samurai of many manors in Bingo and Nagato Provinces, as well as that of Nuta Manor, Takehara Manor, and others in Aki Province.
After Tohira, they started calling themselves Kobayakawa as Sanehira was the second son and had lived in Kobayakawa village near Dohi County in Sagami Province. Kobayakawa Clan, however, had no way but retreat from most of those manors only to be a steward samurai of Nuta and Takehara Manors as the alliances between ancient central forces and local powerful families were still so strong around the Seto Inland Sea.
Tohira, staying neutral, survived a military conflict between Hojo and Wada Clans in Kamakura in 1213, after which Hojo Clan established their regency regime. Tohira built Seishin-ji Temple in 1219 for his wife, who died young, and both Sanehira and Tohira themselves seem to have died in Nuta Manor.
Kobayakawa Clan lasted from the beginning of Kamakura Period to the beginning of Edo Period for 17 generations; 1 Tohira, 2 Kagehira, 3 Shigehira, 4 Masahira, 5 Tomohira, 6 Nobuhira, 7 Sadahira, 8 Haruhira, 9 Mochihira, 10 Hirohira, 11 Takahira, 12 Sukehira, 13 Okihira, 14 Masahira, 15 Shigehira, 16 Takakage, and 17 Hideaki. As you may guess from their names, the last 2 heads were adopted to Kobayakawa Clan from other clans; the second last one, Takakage, from Mori Clan, the most powerful clan around the Seto Inland Sea then, and the last one, Hideaki, from Toyotomi Clan, the ruling clan in Japan at the time, so, by blood, the clan continued for 15 generations to the end of the Warring State of Period.
The first head of newborn Kobayakawa Clan, Tohira, came to Nuta Manor, Aki Province, with his father, Sanehira (?-1191.11.25?). Tohira’s grandson, Shigehira, inherited the patrimony from his father, Kagehira, in 1206, and built Takayama-jo Castle in the same year, which would be the clan’s stronghold until 1552 for 13 generations. Shigehira also further exploited Nuta Manor in cooperation of Saionji Clan, an ancient noble clan. They built embarkments at the mouth of the Nuta River, and developed extensive rice fields called Nuta 1000 Cho Da, nominally (about) 1000-hectare rice fields in Nuta. He laid the foundations for the growth of Kobayakawa Clan thereafter.
Kobayakawa Clan’s 5th head, Tomohira, following Kamakura Shogunate’s orders, actively performed series of crackdowns on pirates around Nuta Manor. In 1314, he rounded up Uemon Goro and Saemon Jiro, and, in 1319, he even arrested a pirate of Iyo Province, Yagoro Hideie. Iyo Province was on the opposite side of the Seto Inland Sea from Aki Province. Kobayakawa Clan must have got control over some pirate(-like) people around Nuta Manor to execute these duties against pirates. During Tomohira’s time, Kamakura Shogunate collapsed in 1333.
Kobayakawa Clan, however, didn’t stop their jobs even during the disorder in Nanboku-cho Period (1334-1392), or Northern and Southern Courts Period, before the establishment of Muromachi Shogunate by Ashikaga Clan. Tomohira’s 3 successors tried to expand their advance into Geiyo Islands, which spread in the Seto Inland Sea between Aki (=Gei) and Iyo (=Yo) Provinces, even more eagerly and freely.
Tomohira’s grandson, Sadahira, inherited the patrimony from his father, Nobuhira, on October the 10th in 1341 as the seventh head of the clan. Sadahira had participated in Genko War (1331-1333), which terminated Kamakura Shogunate, in 1333 at the age of 16. In 1342, Sadahira moved his men south to cross the Seto Inland Sea with a reminder from Muromachi Shogunate in his hand, although the shogunate was still fighting against Southern Court over the national domination. They occupied Ikuchi-jima and Yuge-jima Islands, and invaded Inno-shima Island. They later went further down to Osaki-kami-jima, Osaki-shimo-jima Islands, and even advanced to Iyo-o-shima in the territory of Iyo Province, which was ruled by Kono Clan then. Kono Clan was too busy being under the pressure from the east, Hosokawa Clan. Sea people living around Geiyo Islands, who would be organized as Murakami Clan later, were still competing and fighting with one another.
Kobayakawa Clan at the time were also developing rice fields with the cooperation of traders in Nuta bazaar, and put Setoda Port on Ikuchi-jima Island under their rule The port used to be one of the most important ports in the Seto Inland Sea to wait for the changes of tidal currents. The rule over the port enabled the clan to keep the hegemony over the control of the transportation structures in the sea, and, later in Muromachi Period, to trade even with Korea. By this time, Kobayakawa Clan seemed to have already changed their character significantly from eastern samurais fighting on horses. Their entrance into the Seto Inland Sea, however, was performed with the leverage as a manorial steward samurai. That means they eyed sea people from “outside.”
What kind of shift which caused the change of the character of Kobayakawa Clan was occurring around the Seto Inland Sea? Put simply, ownership of lands and people had been changing; from ancient public ownership to medieval private one. Tax rice and salt, for example, had become commodity rice and salt. In ancient times, pirating meant pirating taxes, which might have damaged local and central governments, but those governments would never stop, as the matter of course, taxing, or at least trying to tax. In medieval times, however, pirating meant pirating commodities, which could just hinder trading, and might decrease marine transport. That meant less opportunities to pirate.
What sea people and powerful families in and around the Seto Inland Sea were facing was a kind of a “pirate dilemma.” If you were an only pirate in your region, you could build a fortune, more than a fortune, as Taira Kiyomori (1118-1181) did during the latter half of his life at the end of ancient times. If all the players in the region were pirates, no one would dare to trade through the region, and you could find no ship to rob. Pirates were to learn how to maximize their takings out of marine transport.
Kobayakawa Clan tried to occupy the islands between Aki and Iyo provinces across the Seto Inland Sea to control all the sea freight through the waters. That attempt would eventually turn out to be impossible. There were just too many small islands to occupy one by one, and too many straits to watch for smuggling and piracy.
It was sea people that would arrive at a solution to the pirate dilemma: to form a network among would-be pirates, and to rake off profits from trading ships, evenly and fairly. The question is what could hold the network together, and what might be a fair cut. We have to see what was happening on land to approach the answers.
What was the shift of land ownership like at the time? In the middle of the 14th century, a social class called “koku-jin” (namely “provincial people”) emerged. A “provincial person” was a lord of an estate and neighboring vicinities. Ancient manors used to be developed outside government-owned land, and were sometimes scattered disregarding the topography of the region. Pieces of land rewarded to steward samurais as vassals of Kamakura Shogunate were sometimes scattered disregarding geopolitics of the region.
By the middle of the 14th century, government-owned land had been diminished, manorial ownership by ancient noble clans had been weakened, and hierarchical up-and-downs had been played. As a result, land ownership had been centered around some powerful lords of estates.
Government-owned provincial land was easily taken over by provincial guardian samurais, but ancient ownership over manors did not die out so instantly. There could have been some resistance against samurais who newly arrived from the East. In the face of samurais, even descendants of those who had been categorized as villains by Fujiwara Yasunori (825-895) needed to be supported by farmers. In other words, medieval farmers, unlike ancient ones, had finally come to have the choice: to choose gentler hands. By supporting ancient forces, farmers could have gained some better conditions. However, to support sometimes meant to fight with spears in their hands. Farmers living in an estate’s vicinities also had become a source of combatants for the lord of the estate in case of emergency.
With physical strength, even a farmer could become a samurai. A local samurai could become a lord as far as he was resourceful. Seeds for the Warring States Period, the world in which inferiors overpowered superiors, were sown.
That was the case even on the sea.
III The Rise of Sea People
In 1340, Ashikaga Takauji, a general who supported Northern Court, ordered Taiji and Shiozaki Clans, who were both based at Kumano in Kii Province, to guard trading boats which sailed between Kaminoseki in Suo Province, the westernmost port of the Seto Inland Sea, and Amagasaki in Settsu Province, the easternmost port. In return, he allowed them to levy guarding charges at Hyogo Island, about 1 mile west of Amagasaki. This was the first appearance of the concept “guarding charge” in a written historical document.
In 1342, when Kobayakawa Clan started to move south, Wakiya Yoshisuke, Nitta Yoshisada’s younger brother, was sent to Iyo Province as a western general of Southern Court, and he went west, supported by sea people of Kumano, those of Awaji Province, and those of Kojima in Bizen Province.
Both Northern and Southern Courts tried to win over sea people, and the sea people had a good sense of balance.
Kumano sea people were composed of Koyama Family, Shiozaki Family, Taiji Family, and other families, each of which was based in a certain bay along the southeastern coast of the Kii Peninsula. Yet, they were more or less unified under Kumano Betto. Kumano used to be sacred mountains. Later, three shrines came to be formed in the mountains, and the three came to be recognized as one network of shrines. Kumano Betto was a managerial position which was established as early as in the 9th century and lasted till the 14th century. They practically governed the area under an honorary post, Kumano Kengyo, who usually stayed in the Heian-kyo Capital. Betto not only managed religious establishments and priests, but ran the shrines’ fiefs, and also kept law and order in the area. All the sea people in Kumano were, accordingly, glued together under Kumano Betto’s politico-economic, as well as religious, influence.
Kumano sea people entered Jisho-Juei War (1180-1185) on the Minamoto side, one of the two major military noble clans at the time. The war broke out at the end of Ancient Japan and led to the fall of Taira Clan, the other major military noble clan. The sea people had started their organized “labor” much earlier, and appeared on the sea between Kii Province and Shikoku Island as pirates, stretching their action even into the eastern part of the Seto Inland Sea.
Kumano sea people were militarily active even 2 centuries after the war. They not only sent Wakiya Yoshisuke (1307-1342), a western general of Southern Court, to Iyo Province in 1342, where and when he died at the age of 38, with the support by the sea people of Nushima Island in Awaji Province and those of Kojima Island in Bizen Province, but also shipped Prince Kanenaga (?-1383) to Kyushu Island in the same year, teaming up with Kutsuna Clan in Iyo Province. Kanenaga was another western general of Southern Court, and died at the age of 55 or 56 in Kyushu.
Kumano sea people actually went into battle for themselves, mobilizing other sea people as well. In 1347, for example, they formed a navy of thousands, invaded deep into Kagoshima Bay, and attacked Tofuku-ji Castle, which Shimazu Clan, who belonged to Northern Court, had captured in 1341. By a curious coincidence, Tofuku-ji Castle had been built in 1053 by Haseba Nagasumi, who claimed to be the fourth descendant from Fujiwara Sumitomo, the first pirate king in Japan.
As Medieval times passed down, more and more commodities were getting traded through the Seto Inland Sea, and more and more sea people who lived there were getting involved in the trading. Even in fisheries, where sea people made most of their livelihood, net fishing became widespread, and, as a result, their societies became more stratified. The stratified societies, then, produced powerful families who were called “mure-gimi” in Japanese, literally “number of powerfuls”. The Japanese phrase “mure-gimi” is supposed to have become their name later as a kind of clan name, Murakami.
Those powerful sea families learned 2 lessons through their experience as they fought with Kumano sea people. First, they should be networked, maybe under a religion or a legend, so as to avoid the pirate dilemma. Second, they needed to establish certain bases to claim just and reasonable pay as pirates.
IV Kono Clan, a Supplier of Legends and a Religion
Kono Michitaka (?-1379) surrendered to Southern Court in 1365, and escaped to Kyushu, counting on Prince Kanenaga (?-1383), who had been sent there as a western general of the court in 1342. However, interestingly enough, it was Kono Clan who later provided legends and a religion to the sea people, or more precisely to the powerful families, in the Western Seto Inland Sea to bundle them up.
Kono Clan used to be called Ochi Clan as they lived in Ochi County, Iyo Province, or rather Ochi County came to be named so as Ochi Clan came to live there. According to one legend, their ancestor, Ochi Miko, was a grandson of Emperor Korei, a legendary 7th-generation emperor. Miko’s mother, Waki Hime, had been picked up from a boat from Yue Province, China, by a fisherman named Goro Tayu. A Chinese character “yue” can be used as one of several ways to represent Japanese “ochi.”
Another more fantastic legend tells us that Masumi, who was a master of archery, fought against invaders from Baekje (18 BC-660 AD), Korea, by order of Emperor Suiko (554-628). They came with an ironman as their general. Masumi only just killed him by shooting his only weak point, the bottom of his foot. Some invaders surrendered to Masumi, and became fishermen in the Western Seto Inland Sea. So, all the fishermen there obeyed Kono Clan.
A third legend gives us another international account of the clan’s character. Ochi Morioki took part in Battle of Baekgang in 663, and had got a boy, Tamazumi, by a Chinese woman there. He also had an elder boy, Tamaoki, in Japan. Tamazumi later came to Japan, his father’s homeland, from Yue Province, China, and met Tamaoki in Namba, the nearest sea port from the Heian-kyo Capital.
Ochi Mochitada fought against Fujiwara Sumitomo (?-941), the first pirate king in Japan, and conferred as a local noble man in 948. Later, at the end of the Heian Period, Ochi Chikakiyo moved to Kono County in the same province, and started calling themselves Kono Clan. His father, Chikatsune did not have a successor son, and adopted Chikakiyo. Chikakiyo, who was appointed as a temporary assistant governor in 1160, did not have his successor son either, and, this time, his wife, Chikatsune’s daughter, stayed in Mishima Shrine, the highest-ranking shrine in Iyo Province, day and night. At the 6th night, a god appeared as a big snake, and she got impregnated with a boy. The boy, Kono Michikiyo (?-1181), later inherited the clan. As the Chinese character for “michi” can also mean to intercourse, all his successors had “Michi” in their names. Michikiyo had scale-like parts on both jowls. Was this a real story or a forth legend?
Let’s get back to the ancient times again, and we can find a fifth scrap of a legend. Ochi Tamaoki was a supporter of En Oduno, a legendary founder of Shugendo, a religious sect which combined Japanese folk mountain worship with Taoism and Buddhism. The two visited Mishima Shrine together.
A sixth scratch legend says that Kono Clan was descendants of Xu Fu (255 BC-?). In 210 BC, during Qin Dynasty, Xu Fu went on his second voyage to search for medicine of immortality in the east, only never to return. Some, both in China and in Japan, believe he landed in Japan. One of his supposed landing spot was Kumano. You can easily guess that the legendary story was brought to Kono Clan by Kumano sea people.
All the legends were gathered and assembled after Kono Michiyoshi’s death in 1394. The times had been entering a new age. In 1392, Southern Court gave up to Northern Court, and Muromachi Shogunate unified the nation. The unification, however, was a soft one and every samurai clan had to fight hard to stand out, or even just to survive.
In such an era, Kono Clan was a loser to Southern Court, and Southern Court was a loser to Northern Court. As a double loser, the clan was searching for their survival strategy. Meanwhile, the powerful families living on the islands, or rather living on the sea, between Aki and Iyo Provinces were searching for a way to face Kobayakawa Clan and for the solutions to their pirate dilemma. They chose a weaker clan, Kono Clan, to counterbalance Kobayakawa, and Kono Clan, instead, had to supply legends. As Kono Clan was ruling Iyo Province, they could share the same religion, beliefs in Mishima Shrine. Kono Clan became the third pirate king, but their ruling power was a soft one, something like the one emperors used to have over shogunates.
V Fair and Even Cuts for and among Pirates
The powerful sea families in the Western Seto Inland Sea, who would later compose Murakami Clan, were not only looking for a solution to the pirate dilemmas by forming a network among pirates, but also groping their way to rake off fair and even profits from trading ships. The way should look fair to the authorities, if not to the trading ships, and should seem somewhat even among pirates.
In 1340, Ashikaga Takauji (1305-1358), the first shogun of Muromachi Shogunate, ordered Kumano sea people to guard trading boats which sailed between Kaminoseki in Suo Province, one of the westernmost ports of the Seto Inland Sea, and Amagasaki in Settsu Province, one of the easternmost ones. In return, he allowed them to levy guarding charges at Hyogo Island, about 1 mile west of Amagasaki. This made a good example for charging fair cuts; “guarding charge”.
By the end of the Warring State Period in the 16th century, Murakami Clan came to put up and control various checkpoints in important ports, which used to be called fudaura in Japanese, and straits along the Western Seto Inland Sea. They collected some taxes, such as sekiyaku (checkpoint fees), uwanori-ryo (on-board fees), and as such. They called themselves seki or sekimori themselves, checkpoints or keepers of the checkpoints, and demanded fees forcibly and rightfully. However absurd it looked to sea travelers, that was sanctioned overtly in the medieval sea societies, and, above all, they had enough military power and maritime skillfulness over passing and making good use of sea rapids to impose the situation on the travelers.
There were several kinds of checkpoint fees they levied: Ho-betsu-sen, a sail tax, was imposed according to how big each ship was. Da-betsu-sen, a freight tax, was imposed on goods. Uwanori-ryo, an on-board fee, was imposed as a piloting fee. Uwanori, to board on, means to hire a pirate to board on a ship, and that saved the ship from being attacked by his fellow pirates. Now, they found a solution to pirate dilemmas, and the very existence of other pirates became the foundation to claim guarding charges. Their networking worked.
Pirates’ being worried about their fairness or righteousness might sound funny, but some parts of Japanese piracy seemed to have developed from ancient Japanese maritime customs and practices.
There seemed to have been maritime customs and practices that unmanned boats and washed-up goods should belong to those who lived there and found them, that is, sea people living around there.
When young, I read an ancient pirate story. In the story, pirates captured all the crews and passengers of a boat and threw them into the sea. I found one part of the story very funny and even comical: One of the passengers, a priest, didn’t get drowned, and the pirates kept making the priest down into the sea with a stick.
You can make a manned boat unmanned by removing its crews and passengers. That might be why, in a couple of pirate stories left, the pirates threw the crews and passengers into the sea. Meanwhile, you can get washed-up goods by making a boat run on the rocks, and that was not so difficult with lots of rapid straits and abundant reefs and rocks among the small islands between Aki and Iyo Provinces.
The captain of the pirates in the story, incidentally, turned priest, impressed with the priest’s “immortality.”
Another example of could-be expansion of ancient maritime customs and practices might have something to do with ordering boats to stop at certain religious spots. Boats sailing by off an important shrine used to be supposed to lower their sails to show their respects to the shrine. It means that they had to virtually stop sailing in front of the shrine.
Mishima Shrine, the highest-ranking shrine in Iyo Province, is on one of islands which lie between Aki and Iyo Provinces in the Western Seto Inland Sea. Sea people living on those islands had good chances and reasons to stop any boat sailing through the area, and to demand offerings to the shrine, or some money for offerings. Shu-kou-ryo, literally charges for food and drink, which used to be charged to boats in medieval times might have started that way.