唐船貿易の変質と鎌倉幕府 : 博多綱首の請負から貿易使の派遣へ

抄録

The present article focuses on changes that were taking place in the routes and forms of trade involving the transport of Chinese goods between the late Heian and late Kamakura period, in an attempt to clarify the character of the China trade in Japan and the involvement in it by the Kamakura Bakufu. During the Heian period, when Japan's foreign trade was managed under the directorship of hakata goshu 博多綱首, Chinese shipowners residing at the Song Dynasty quarters in the port of Hakata, shoen estate proprietors in Kyoto were obtaining Chinese goods through powerful local estate managers for the purpose of gift-giving. During the final years of the period, aristocrats, including imperial regent Taira-no-Kiyomori and cloistered emperor Goshirakawa, began to participate in foreign trade for the purpose of profiting from the import of Chinese copper coins, as connections were established between the shoen estate proprietary elite in Kyoto and the hakata goshu. Then during the early Kamakura period, such influential members of that Kyoto elite as the Saionji and Kujo Families invested such capital goods as lumber in the import of copper coins, etc., thus also forming contract trade relations with the hakata goshu. However, between the middle and late Kamakura period, a change occurred in the character of the China trade from contracting with Chinese shipowners to directly dispatching trade envoys from the Kamakura Bakufu and allied Buddhist temples as passengers on trade ships. The author argues that the reason behind such a transformation was that Japanese shippers were assuming a larger share of the traffic than their Chinese counterparts. Concerning shipping routes during the time in question, at its early stage, the Bakufu would entrust through the agency of the Dazaifu Imperial Headquarters of Kyushu such precious materials as sulphur and gold as capital to the hakata goshu, who would also act as the venture's Chinese interpreter (gobun tsuji 御分通事). Upon transaction of trade, the ship would return to Japan via Hakata headed for Wakaejima, a port island off the coast of Kamakura, with its cargo of copper coins, ceramics and the like. Although the account that the 3rd Shogun Minamoto-no-Sanetomo dispatched an envoy to Mt. Yandang in Zhejiang Province cannot be verified, it is true that by mid-period it became possible to dispatch trading ships directly from Kamakura. As goshu of Japanese descent increased in number from the mid-Kamakura period on, the Bakufu altered its trade arrangements from hiring designated Chinese contractors to entrusting capital to reliable Buddhist priests, who would be dispatched directly to China as importers of copper coins and other necessities of Chinese manufacture. The account alleging that Sanetomo dispatched these clerical merchants for the purpose of obtaining a tooth from the funeral ashes of Gautama Buddha of course embellishes upon this actual transformation that took place in trade policy.