"Oh! The tally trade between the shogunate and the Ming!"
In the quiet room, the hearth fire was warm. The water in the kettle had just begun to boil, giving off steaming breaths of "huff, huff," mingled with the faint fragrance of tea. Kyoto merchant Morino Kiyoshi lowered his eyes and watched the gently seething water, much like the waves surging through his heart.
The Ming dynasty strictly enforced its maritime ban, forbidding foreign merchant ships from coming to trade and also prohibiting commoners from privately going to sea. The so-called tally trade between the shogunate and the Ming was, in form, "tribute trade," in which the "King of Japan," the Muromachi Shogunate, paid regular tribute to the Ming dynasty.
The shogunate dispatched Ming-bound tribute ships, which were boarded by great merchants of the country and loaded with large quantities of Japanese specialties. They arrived at the port of Ningbo and conducted formal trade with merchants officially permitted by the Ming government.
This open trade consisted of two parts: the tribute gifts presented to the Great Ming emperor and the return gifts, called "public trade," and the trade in goods carried aboard by merchants of both sides, called "private trade."
The goods traded by the two sides were as follows: the Japanese specialties the Ming dynasty needed were sulfur, copper, gold, silver, fans, swords, lacquerware, and folding screens. As for the Ming goods Japan needed, they were almost all-encompassing—Japan lacked everything. Among them, Ming copper coins, books and paintings, silk, and porcelain were especially major items.
Of course, whether it was "public trade" or "private trade," both were official trades backed by special privileges from the two countries. The profits from this official trade were generally more than tenfold for the merchants of both the Ming and Japan, while for