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Template:Slavery by location

During most of the history of the country, the practice of slavery in Japan involved only indigenous Japanese, as the export and import of slaves was significantly restricted by isolation of the group of islands from other areas of Asia. However, with the expansion of the Empire of Japan in the first half of the Shōwa era, millions of people from the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere were abducted and used to improve the industrial production and the war effort.

Indigenous slavery

The export of a slave from Japan is recorded in 3rd century Chinese historical record, but it is unclear what system was involved, and whether this was a common practice at that time. These slaves were called Seikō (生口) (lit. "living mouth"). The export of slaves from Japan ceased, in part because they were more expensive than those transported overland into China.

In the 8th century, slaves were called Nuhi (奴婢) and laws on slavery were issued. These slaves tended farms and worked around houses. Information on the slave population is sketchy. In one area of present-day Ibaraki prefecture around 2,000 individuals, out of a population of 190,000, were slaves, but this is believed to have been a relatively low proportion. Numbers are believed to have been significantly higher in western Japan.

By the Sengoku period (1467-1615) the attitude that slavery was anachronistic seems to have become widespread. Oda Nobunaga was presented with a black slave by Catholic priests, in the first recorded encounter between a Japanese and an African. He was freed by Nobunaga and made a samurai to serve by his side, under the Japanese name Yasuke. After the death of Nobunaga, and the suicide of his son Oda Nobutada at Azuchi castle, Yasuke was returned to the Jesuits' residence in Kyoto. At this point, he disappears from history, and his fate is unknown.

With the arrival of the leading Jesuit Francis Xavier in 1549, Catholicism developed as a major religious force in Japan. The tolerance towards Western "padres" was initially linked to trade concerns and part of that trade was slaves. There arose concern about the slavery of mainly Japanese women between the Christian Daimyo and the Portuguese Maranos, involving around 500,000 Japanese, mainly in a trade for gunpowder. which affected Hideyoshi's reaction to Christianity. In 1588, Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered all slave trading to be abolished. This was continued by his successors.

World War II

In the first half of the Shōwa era, as the Empire of Japan annexed Asian countries, from the late 19th century onwards, archaic institutions including slavery were abolished in those countries. However, during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, the Japanese military used civilians and prisoners of war as forced labor on projects such as the Burma Railway.

Correlations between slavery and the individuals conscripted into forced labor from 1939 to 1945 or military prostitution known as "comfort women" are made.

References

1. Onizuka, Hideaki (2006). The Rosary of the Showa Emperor. Bainbridgebooks/Trans-Atlantic Publications. p. 225. ISBN 4-88086-200-2. Japan would exchange a barrel of gunpowder for fifty slaves. (In this case it would be specified as white-skinned (light skinned) good –looking (pleasing to the eyes) young Japanese women/maidens) In the name of God, if Japan can be occupied/possessed I am sure the price can be increased.
2. Tokutomi, Soho (1998). History of Modern Japanese People: The Toyotomi Era. Bainbridgebooks/Trans-Atlantic Publications. pp. 337–387. ISBN 1-8916-960-5X.
3. Zhifen Ju, "Japan's Atrocities of Conscripting and Abusing North China Draftees after the Outbreak of the Pacific War", Joint study of the Sino-Japanese war, 2002, http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~asiactr/sino-japanese/minutes_2002.htm

• http://www.iiclo.or.jp/100books/1946/htm/050main.htm Template:Ja

• Slavery by country
• Slavery by location
• History of Japan
• Military history of Japan during World War II
• Second Sino-Japanese War
• War crimes in China