Red Seal Ships

Red seal ships (朱印船, Shuinsen?) were Japanese armed merchant sailing ships bound for Southeast Asian ports with a red-sealed patent issued by the early Tokugawa shogunate in the first half of the 17th century. Between 1600 and 1635, more than 350 Japanese ships went overseas under this permit system.

Read more about Red Seal Ships:  Origins, Red Seal System, Ship Design, Import and Export, Destinations, Relative Importance, End of The System, Timeline

Famous quotes containing the words red, seal and/or ships:

    “With the gracious consent of the audience, you will be made to don the red tophat”Ma token phrase that the courts had evolved, whose true meaning was known to every schoolboy.
    Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

    To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surmise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more surely.
    Lillian Smith (1897–1966)

    Shuttles in the rocking loom of history,
    the dark ships move, the dark ships move,
    their bright ironical names
    like jests of kindness on a murderer’s mouth;
    Robert Earl Hayden (1913–1980)