巡撫朱紈の見た海 : 明代嘉靖年閒の沿海衞所と「大倭寇」前夜の人々

Abstract

Many scholars today consider the Late-Ming era, rather optimistically, as a new age of cultural flourishing during which various genres of books were published by mass production, while the authors of such literary works were themselves quite pessimistic about their contemporary world, describing it as a time of decline in all aspects of their civilization. Zhu Wan 朱紈 was one of the general inspectors 都御史 of the Jiajing 嘉靖 era court, and was also appointed the provincial commissioner of Zhejiang 浙江巡撫 and admiral of coastal Fujian 福建海道提督軍務 from 1547-1549. The records of his political career, which he compiled himself to demonstrate his justice and innocence, show the institutional corruption of the civil administration in the territory under his control, the chronic threat of the attacks by the "Japanese Pirates" 倭寇, and the desperate anarchy of the local people, who were no longer subject to the prohibition on maritime ventures 海禁, which had been repeatedly declared by the central government since the beginning of the dynasty. China was "illegally" involved in the global interactions of the 16th Century and in the multi-ethnic "underground" societies of the stateless colonies on the coastal islands where both freedom and violence prevailed. A close inspection of Zhu Wan's conception of the social order that he was charged with maintaining, his interpretaion of the reality that he faced, the internal logic of his decision to enforce the ban on maritime ventures, and his failure to achieve public consensus concerning the responsibility of the government for local welfare prove the great difficulty in ruling "the people" with the administrative hierarchy of the Chinese empire. Given the situation in which Zhu Wan found himself, the stereotypical model of despotism is not applicable to late-Ming China, particularly given the miserable circumstances of his death.