Liu, Mingkai (2026). “The Lifting of the Sea Ban by the Southern Ming Hongguang Regime and the Chinese Junk Trade in Nagasaki”, Tōyō Gakuhō 107:4, pp. 33–63.
Most histories treat the Southern Ming’s brief existence as a chaotic interlude of military collapse, where trade policy was either irrelevant or a footnote to the dynasty’s rapid disintegration. This view overlooks the specific administrative machinery the Hongguang regime built in its final year to fund its army, treating the surge in Japanese trade as a spontaneous reaction to chaos rather than a calculated state policy.
This article dismantles that assumption by tracing a direct line from a 1.5 million tael fiscal deficit to a specific October 1644 decree. The author argues that the regime, facing imminent military defeat, did not merely relax controls but actively legalized trade with Japan to generate immediate revenue through the “Ocean Tax.” By cross-referencing Chinese case records with Dutch factory logs, the work demonstrates that the regime appointed specific officials, such as Sun Yuande and Liu Anxing, to collect tariffs of 200 to 300 taels at ports like Chongming and Taicang. This was not a vague relaxation of rules but a structured tax regime modeled on the Linqing Pass, designed to turn merchant vessels into a reliable revenue stream for the collapsing state.
The evidence for this policy shift rests on a rigorous triangulation of sources that had previously been read in isolation. The author uses Wen Bing’s Cases of Jia and Yi and Tan Qian’s Guoque to reconstruct the administrative chain, and a Qing interrogation record to show how merchants like Qiao Fuchu obtained “tax permits” from Grand Eunuch Sun Yuande and “passes” from regional commanders like Wang Zhiren. These Chinese records are then matched against the Diary of the Dutch Factory Chief in Nagasaki, which explicitly notes in March 1645 that voyages to Japan were permitted upon payment of taxes to the “King” or high officials. This convergence of internal Chinese documentation and external Japanese-Dutch observation confirms that the trade surge was a state-sanctioned phenomenon, not only the work of smugglers.
The statistical impact of this policy is stark and verifiable. The work draws on Cheng Wei-chung’s count from Dutch factory records to show that Chinese ship arrivals in Nagasaki jumped from 34 in 1643 to 55 in 1644 and a peak of 82 in 1645. The 1645 rise in ships from north of Quanzhou, from 18 to 32, follows the timeline of the Hongguang decree. The author attributes this spike in part to the “Hongguang Opening of the Seas,” arguing that the legalization of trade created a sudden, massive incentive for merchants to sail to Japan without the bribes and risk of arrest that smuggling carried.
The scope of the study is tightly focused on the mechanics of this 1644–1645 window and the immediate aftermath of the regime’s fall in June 1645. It does not attempt to cover the entire Southern Ming period or the specific policies of the later Longwu and Yongli regimes, though it notes the Longwu regime’s continuation of the trend. It is a useful illustration of how a dying dynasty tried to monetize its own collapse. For those who have read our articles on the Dutch presence in Japan, this study shows the Chinese side of the ledger.
This article offers a rare, granular look at the “Nanjing ships” that formed a triangular trade network connecting China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. It clarifies why the Qing government, upon interrogating merchants like Miao Zhenshi, accepted that their voyages had begun under the Ming, not as illicit voyages under the Qing, and returned their goods.
Reviewed by Nanban.pt editorial, 2026-10-03.