Figure 1. The late Ming artist Chen Hongshou’s 陳洪綬 (1598–1652) delineation of the bandit hero Zhang Shun, from his collection ‘The Water Margin’ Playing Titles 水滸葉子 (c.a. 1630). The inscription reads: “White Streak in the Wave Zhang Shun, born in the Xunyang River, died in the Qiantang River” 浪裏白跳張順，生潯陽死錢塘. See Chen Hongshou 陳洪綬, Shuihu yezi 水滸葉子 (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin meishu chubanshe, 1979).

Figure 2. Chen Hongshou’s portrayal of the Chinese pirate Li Jun. The inscription reads: “River-Stirring Dragon Li Jun, living by the sea, followed by his people” 混江龍李俊，居海濱，有民人. See Chen Hongshou, Shuihu yezi.

Figure 3. A Portuguese trading ship in Nagasaki in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Artist: Kano Naizen. Source: Kobe City Museum. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 4. Bald-headed Japanese mercenaries, carrying Japanese swords and dressed in Japanese-style robes, in a Siamese army in the seventeenth century. See Charnvit Kasetsiri and Michael Wright, Discovering Ayutthaya (Bangkok: Social Science and Humanities Textbooks Foundation, 2019), 152. Reproduced with permission.

Figure 5. Illustration of the accidental encounter between Pan Jinlian and Ximen Qing in Jin Ping Mei cihua. When Ximen Qing catches sight of a beautiful young lady, the narrator says, “His anger had drilled straight into the country of Java and his facial expression transformed into a smile.” See Lanling Xiaoxiaosheng 蘭陵笑笑生, Jin Ping Mei cihua (Hong Kong: Xianggang taiping shuju, 1993), vol. 1, 93.

Figure 6. The country of Java in the Ming daily-used encyclopedia Wuche bajin 五車拔錦 (Beijing: Huaxia chuban she, 1999), 196.

Figure 7. A Persian-looking military general with a moustache, wearing a feathered dome-shaped hat and riding a leopard-spotted horse, in a late Ming illustration of the Java episode in Voyages. The Chinese characters read: “The country of Java stubbornly resists submission. The palace of frogs in the remote region is ignorant of the envoys of the Heavenly Kingdom; how dare they extend their mantis arms to defend—waves of anger mix with sounds of oceanic tides” 僻處蛙宮照夜不知天使節，敢撐螳臂怒濤偏雜海潮聲. Source: Sanbao taijian xiyang ji tongsu yanyi (xinke quanxiang), Taibei: Tianyi chuban she, 1985]

Figure 8. A chart of hiragana with phonetic annotations in Chinese scripts, from Hou Jigao 候繼高, Zensetsu heisei ko Nihon fudoki 日本風土記 (Kyoto: Kyoto University, 1961), 38.

Figure 9. A waka poem titled “Pine Wind Awakens Me from Sleep,” from Hou Jigao, Zensetsu, 39.

Figure 10. A Japanese pirate blowing a sea conch. From Qiu Ying’s Wokou tujuan, stored at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, Tokyo University. Reproduced with permission.

Figure 11. Japanese portrayed as pirates, in the Ming daily-used encyclopedia Wuche bajin, p. 189.

Figure 12. Japanese pirates portrayed in Kangwo tujuan. Image from Harvard University. Reproduced with permission.

Figure 13. Japanese race portrayed in Wokou tujuan.

Figure 14. A Japanese image in Cai Ruxian’s Dongyi tushuo.

Figure 15. Chinese pirate Wang Zhi’s statue in Nagasaki. Photo taken by Qian Jiang.

Figure 16. The facade of a household in the fortified city of Taozhu 桃渚, built to defend against piracy raids in the Ming. Photo taken by author.

Figure 17. The Great Wall by the sea built in the Ming dynasty. Photo taken by Wang Yixian in Linhai 臨海.