Chapter 585: The Great Ming's Fine Imperial Son-in-law

The music of the zither rose and fell, flowing and lingering, like a spring bubbling over stones, like jade pendants chiming softly; now and then a gliding note swept past, and though it was gone in an instant, its echo lingered in the ear for several breaths — truly a sound of endless aftertaste.

Outside the window, the grass was green and the flowers red, and the clear water rippled. Several men in plain clothes and Daoist robes sat in an octagonal pavilion by Xuanwu Lake within the Xuanhu Palace, smiling faintly as they listened in silence to Kou Baimen playing the zither in the pavilion.

When the piece ended, Kou Baimen, Left Dance Instructor of the Music Bureau, rose with a composed expression, made a curtsy of farewell, and withdrew gracefully.

Those who had come to Xuanhu Palace to pay their respects to the "divine Retired Emperor" Chongzhen included, besides the great filial son the Hongxing Emperor Zhu Cilang, also Chongzhen's two in-laws Wu Xiang and Zheng Zhilong, as well as Zheng Zhilong's two sons — the radiantly self-satisfied Zheng Sen and the shamefaced Tagawa Shichizaemon.

Zheng Sen's mission to Japan had at last been brought to a successful conclusion: bearing a "Ming–Japan Treaty" and accompanied by the Japanese envoy Tokugawa Mitsukuni, his mother Lady Tagawa, and his younger brother Tagawa Shichizaemon, he had returned in triumph to Nanjing.

The results of this journey to Japan could be said to have altered the course of history in the Eastern world!

After Tokugawa Iemitsu approved the annual call of five Ming merchant ships at the port of Shimoda in Izu, under the shogunate's red-seal permits, to conduct limited trade (no export of gold or silver, and no Japanese subject going to sea aboard ship without shogunate approval), a trans-Pacific trade route was thereby established — starting from Shanghai, stopping en route at the Japanese port of Shimoda, then sailing directly to North America, and finally following the west coast of North America southward all the way to New Spain.

Do not look down on this route, which could carry only five ships a year — it was a leap from zero to five! Moreover, at present there were no Han Chinese captains or sailors capable of sailing the Pacific route, so to get this five-ships-a-year trade going, it would be necessary to hire a number of Western captains and sailors from Macau and have them lead Han Chinese sailors on the voyages.

For the Hongxing Emperor, this was a superb opportunity to train naval talent, and to make good use of it, Zhu Cilang further intended to grant the Macau Senate the status of an internal vassal of the Great Ming!

This would be highly advantageous to the Portuguese of Macau: after becoming an internal vassal of the Great Ming, their existing autonomy would remain unchanged, and their special relationship with the Kingdom of Portugal could still be preserved — Zhu Cilang would not require the senators of the Senate to swear loyalty to the Great Ming, only that the Senate fulfill the obligations of a vassal.

At the same time, the Portuguese of Macau would be regarded as "one of our own" by the Great Ming dynasty, which would make it convenient for them to serve the Great Ming and profit thereby.

Furthermore, once the Macau Senate became a registered vassal of the Great Ming, the Dutch East India Company, which was hostile to Portugal, would not be able to make war on Macau — for that would mean making war on the Great Ming!

For the Great Ming, having the Portuguese of Macau declare themselves subjects in the name of the Senate was also conducive to the controlled introduction of Western knowledge and technology — in mid-seventeenth-century China, if one wished to "climb the tech tree," one first had to bring in Western technology and natural philosophy (in this era philosophy and the natural sciences had not yet separated); however distasteful the West might be, there was no other way.

Because China's own Confucian philosophy had already fixed its worldview system concerning the cosmos and nature into two great schools: the Learning of Principle and the Learning of the Mind. Although the Learning of Principle emphasized "investigating things to exhaust principle," it simultaneously elevated the doctrine of "Heavenly Principle and human desire" to the supreme position — in all things one must preserve Heavenly Principle, and every person must extinguish human desire. In effect, it placed what the Learning of Principle regarded as "Heavenly Principle" in the position of "Lord of Creation" and worshipped it absolutely.

At the same time, they linked this "Heavenly Principle," which had to be absolutely worshipped, with Confucian ethical doctrines, equating ethical norms with Heavenly Principle, while regarding everything that did not conform to Confucian ethical norms as "human desire."

Relying on this "traditional mode of thought" to climb the tech tree was indeed somewhat difficult! This tech tree was nothing but clever tricks and frivolous contrivances, all of it gross human desire, which must be destroyed!

As for the Learning of the Mind, which later generations have praised so highly, it too could not actually serve to guide the climbing of the tech tree, but it was conducive to the introduction of Western natural philosophy. For the Learning of the Mind held that "the innate knowledge of my mind is what is called Heavenly Principle," which in effect emptied out the Confucian worldview constructed by the Learning of Principle — that is, the Confucian explanation of ultimate questions such as the origin of all things in the universe.

To put it more plainly, Heavenly Principle was the Confucian God (more precisely, God should be called the Lord or the Creator), and the Learning of the Mind overthrew this God.

From the standpoint of preserving traditional Confucian culture, the Learning of the Mind was very harmful!

Because the source of Confucian Heavenly Principle was not revelation (that is, conveyed by Christ or a prophet), but speculative reasoning, its foundation was not solid, and it could not withstand the Learning of the Mind's digging to the roots!

And after the Learning of the Mind overthrew the doctrine of Heavenly Principle and human desire, it had no way of proposing its own ultimate truth, and so in the late Ming and the late Tokugawa period, when the Learning of the Mind flourished, that whole set of Western things quickly became popular.

Whereas in the late Qing and Joseon's Yi dynasty, where the Learning of Principle was strong, resistance from traditional culture and thought was far more stubborn.

Therefore Zhu Cilang, as the Hongxing Emperor, faced a situation different from that of the late Qing's so-called Self-Strengtheners or Reformists: in the southeast there was a great crowd of Confucian scholars of the "mind is principle" school, each with greater human desires than the last. Without waiting for Zhu Cilang to push hard, they had already begun introducing Western clever tricks and frivolous contrivances to study and research on their own.

Thus Zhu Cilang's urgent task was not to promote the eastward spread of Western science, technology, and philosophy, but to absorb them in a controlled manner — he could not allow God to come and seize the place of Heavenly Principle!

The Macau Senate, as a special vassal, could precisely help the Hongxing Emperor control the pace and direction of the eastward spread of Western learning.

And Western navigational technology, of course, had to be introduced as a priority. But introducing navigational technology was not simply a matter of hiring a few foreign captains to open a school and being done with it; one also had to open up profitable shipping routes. Only profitable routes could provide the graduates of a navigation school with sufficient practical opportunities. Only a sufficiently large maritime trade could support enough sailors, and enough sailors capable of long ocean voyages were the key to maritime supremacy in the seventeenth century.

Zheng Sen's journey to Japan had opened up just such an ocean route, one capable of earning great wealth!

Moreover, the return route from New Spain followed a waterway near the equator (because of wind and ocean currents), and this waterway lay close to the route to Australia — the significance of that could hardly be overemphasized, could it?

And in contrast to the exultant Zheng Sen was his brother Tagawa Shichizaemon: this young man, who closely resembled Zheng Sen, now wore an expression of deep shame and could scarcely lift his head — for before returning home with his elder brother, this young man had fought his first battle, commanding ten of the Zheng family's bird ships to transport two thousand shogunate troops under Matsudaira Nobutsuna on an expedition to Jeju Island to suppress the remnants of the Toyotomi faction entrenched there.

It should have been a certain victory, but it was botched because of Tagawa Shichizaemon's "incompetence"!

That day, the fleet he commanded arrived off Jeju Island in grand array, but before they could land, they spotted two Western-style soft-sailed ships flying the "five-seven paulownia" banner sailing away from Jeju Island!

Clearly the Toyotomi remnants were fleeing!

Tagawa Shichizaemon was of course unwilling to let the rebel faction escape; no matter how Shi Fu, the Zheng family headquarters commander accompanying him, tried to persuade him, he refused to "take the good and stop," and insisted on leading the ten bird ships in pursuit.

But the Zheng family's bird ships could not match the speed of the Westerners' soft-sailed ships; they chased from Jeju Island to the vicinity of the Ryukyu Kingdom without catching up, and finally lost the enemy among the islands of the Ryukyu Kingdom.

On the return voyage afterward, they encountered wind and waves and lost two bird ships, nearly drowning the Japanese supreme commander Matsudaira Nobutsuna.

As for Jeju Island, it was not taken either, but was instead brought under control by "Koreans" who arrived shortly afterward; Matsudaira Nobutsuna, having swallowed a bellyful of seawater, was unwilling to complicate matters further, and so he and Tagawa Shichizaemon returned to Nagasaki empty-handed!

The Toyotomi remnants had not been caught, Jeju Island had not been taken, two bird ships had been lost, and two or three hundred men drowned — this battle was of course a defeat.

So Tagawa Shichizaemon could only return to the Great Ming as a defeated general — truly humiliating. But beyond his expectations, his brother-in-law, the Hongxing Emperor of the Great Ming, cared not a whit about his failure, and was even prepared to grant him a tremendous favor — making him an Imperial Son-in-law of the Great Ming!

(End of Chapter)