Term
Wokou
also known as Wakō, 倭寇
Etymology
Chinese w\xC5\x8Dk\xC3\xB2u, literally “dwarf bandits”; w\xC5\x8D was the contemporary Chinese exonym for the Japanese, and k\xC3\xB2u meant raider or bandit.
Definition
Coastal raiders who operated against the China coast, the Korean peninsula, and parts of Southeast Asia from approximately the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The early phase (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) was predominantly Japanese in personnel; the later phase (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) was substantially Chinese in personnel, though the Chinese sources continued to use the Japanese-coded term. The Wokou era ended with the late Ming Dynasty’s coastal-defence reforms of the 1560s and 1570s and the contemporary reunification of Japan under Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
