There are two distinct eras of wokou piracy. The early wokou mostly set up camp on the outlying islands of the
Japanese archipelago in the
Sea of Japan, as opposed to the 16th-century wokou who were mostly non-
Japanese. The early wokou raided the Japanese as well as the Chinese and Koreans. The first recorded use of the term wokou (倭寇) is on the
Gwanggaeto Stele, erected in modern
Ji'an, Jilin, China to celebrate the exploits of
Gwanggaeto the Great of
Goguryeo (). The stele states that "wokou" ("Japanese robbers") crossed the sea and were defeated by him in 404. The term wokou is a combination of the Chinese terms
Wō (倭), referring to either
dwarfs or pejoratively to the Japanese, and
kòu () "
bandit".
Early wokou Fortress on the Fujian coast, originally built c. 1384 The origin of the term wokou dates back to the 4th century, but among wokou's activities, which are divided into two academic periods, the pirates called "early wokou" were borne from the
Mongol invasions of Japan. As a result of the war, the coastal defense capabilities of China and Korea were significantly reduced, and the people living in
Tsushima,
Iki, and
Gotō Islands in Kyushu suffered
extreme poverty. For these reasons, wokou gradually intensified their looting on the coasts of China and Korea.
Chŏng Mong-ju was dispatched to Japan to deal with the problem. During his visit, Kyushu governor
Imagawa Sadayo suppressed the wokou, returning their captured property and people to Korea. In 1405,
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu sent 20 captured pirates to China, where they were boiled in a cauldron in
Ningbo. According to Korean records, wokou were particularly rampant roughly from 1350. After almost annual invasions of the southern provinces of
Jeolla and
Gyeongsang, they migrated northwards to the
Chungcheong and
Gyeonggi areas. The
History of Goryeo has a record of sea battles in 1380 whereby one hundred warships were sent to
Jinpo to rout Japanese pirates there, releasing 334 captives. Wokou sorties decreased thereafter. The wokou were effectively expelled through the use of
gunpowder technology, which the wokou lacked, after Goryeo founded the Office of Gunpowder Weapons in 1377 (which was abolished twelve years later). On 29 June, they burned 15 wokou ships and 68 houses, killed 9 people, and rescued 15 people, including Chinese and Koreans, who had been held captive, but more than 100 soldiers were killed by wokou. On 3 July, the Korean army withdrew to Geoje Island and withdrew completely after giving up the re-landing and occupation of Tsushima because of the loss of Korean army and worsening weather. In the record of 10 July, the number of soldiers killed by wokou was rectified to 180. On the other hand, according to historical documents recorded by the Sō clan, the death toll of the Korean army was 2,500. When the
Treaty of Gyehae was concluded between the
Joseon and
Sō Sadamori of Tsushima in 1443 and the Sō clan was given trade privileges, wokou's activities along the Korean Peninsula calmed down.
Later wokou After the 1523
Ningbo incident, when order in offshore islands of Zhejiang and Fujian provinces like
Shuangyu collapsed, the Jiajing wokou raids that terrorized the coast of China in the 1550s emerged. In attempts to centralize political control, the Ming dynasty enacted trade bans with the consensus being that "unrestricted trade would lead to chaos". With maritime trade outlawed, China's navy was reduced, and as a result, they could not combat increased smuggling, which led to wokou control over the southeastern coast. Although wokou means "Japanese pirates", major wokou groups in the 16th century were led by Chinese traders whose livelihoods were halted by the Ming trade bans. According to historian
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, the existence of the wokou pirates stimulated clandestine private trade along the Fujian and Zhejiang coasts between local traders and the Portuguese. This allowed some travellers and Jesuits missionaries such as
Francis Xavier who recorded much information about China in 1540s and early 1550s. Example of such networks include the Portuguese who found their way to Japan in 1543, aided by a wokou merchant-mediator named
Wang Zhi (d. 1559) who helped the Portuguese communicate with the local lord after landing at
Tanegashima in the south of Japan. Two well-known Chinese military figures involved in combating the wokou were
Qi Jiguang and
Yu Dayou. Yu Dayou was a Ming dynasty general assigned to defend the coast against the wokou. In 1553, a young man named Qi Jiguang became the Assistant Regional Military Commissioner of the Ming dynasty. He was assigned to "punish the bandits and guard the people", which meant taking on the wokou attacking the Ming east coast. At that time, he was 26 years old. On the eve of the following year, he was promoted to the full commissioner in
Zhejiang because of his successes. The Wokou pirates were recorded as having been involved in human trafficking and
slavery in Japan around the 1550s. Zheng Shungong’s 1556 report noted 200–300 Chinese slaves in Satsuma treated “like cattle” for labor, a fate shared by many Japanese. The wokou even entered the
Philippines before their extermination in the 17th century.
Aparri in northern
Luzon was established as a pirate city-state under the patronage of the wokou. The area around Aparri was the site of the
1582 Cagayan battles between wokou and Spanish soldiers. The wokou were not limited to Aparri. The pirate-warlord
Limahong attempted and failed to invade
Manila and afterwards set up a temporary pirate state in
Caboloan (Pangasinan) before the Spanish expelled him. == Ethnicity controversy ==