Red seal ships

Red-seal ships (朱印船, Shuinsen^?) were Japanese armed merchant sailing ships bound for Southeast Asian ports with red-sealed letters patent issued by the early Tokugawa shogunate in the first half of the 17th century. Between 1600 and 1635, more than 350 Japanese ships went overseas under this permit system.

From the 13th to the 16th century, Japanese ships were quite active in Asian waters, often in the role of "wakō" pirates who plundered the coast of the Chinese Empire. Official trading missions were also sent to China, such as the Tenryūji-bune around 1341. Wakō activity was efficiently curbed in the late 16th century with the interdiction of piracy by Hideyoshi, and the successful campaigns against pirate activity on the Chinese coast by Ming Dynasty generals.

Between the 15th and the 16th century, the main trading intermediary in Eastern Asia was the island kingdom of the Ryūkyū (modern Okinawa), which exchanged Japanese products (silver, swords) and Chinese products for Southeast Asian sappan wood and deer hides. Altogether 150 Ryukyuan ships are recorded between the kingdom and Southeast Asia, 61 of them for Annam (Viet Nam), 10 for Malacca, 10 for Pattani, 8 for Java etc... Their commerce disappeared around 1570 with the rise of Chinese merchants and the intervention of Portuguese and Spanish ships, and corresponds with the beginnings of the Red Seal system. The Ryūkyū kingdom was finally invaded by Japan in 1609.

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