Cheng Kung was a Chinese military leader and Ming loyalist.
Background
Cheng Kung was born at Hirado in 1624. His name in Japanese pronunciation is Tei Seiko, and he is popularly known by the appellation Kokusenya, which has passed into European languages as Coxinga. He was born at Hirado in the province of Hizen, his mother a Japanese of the Tagawa family, his father a Chinese named Cheng Chih-lung, who came to Japan at the age of seventeen and eventually took over leadership of the Chinese residents there.
In 1644 Chih-lung became a pirate chief, his forces dominating the South China Sea. The imperial house of the Ming dynasty, which at this time was rapidly succumbing to the invading Manchu (Ch’ing) forces, appointed him an admiral and ordered him to launch an attack on its enemies. In 1646 Chih-lung requested military assistance from the Tokugawa shogunate but, his request denied, he surrendered to the Ch’ing and was later put to death.
Career
Ch’eng-kung first went to China in 1630 at the age of six. Inheriting his father’s warships and other property on the death of the latter, he carried on trade with Nagasaki and the regions of Southeast Asia. Using the rich pro-fits acquired through these enterprises to purchase arms, he carried on the resistence against the Ch’ing forces in Fukien and Kwangtung provinces of southern China.
In 1648, hoping to restore the Ming dynasty to power, he requested aid from the shogunate, and in 1658 he sent a second embassy to Japan with a similar plea, but his efforts met with no success. In 1661, having failed in an attempt to take Nanking, he drove the Dutch out of Formosa, which they had previously occupied, and took possession of the island. In the same year the Ch’ing dynasty ordered its subjects to move inland from the seacoast and forbade them to launch merchant ships or engage in foreign trade, a move which struck a severe blow to Ch’eng-kung’s ambitions for wealth and power, and the following year fever brought an end to his colorful career. His son Cheng Ching and others of the family for a time were active in transporting goods between Nagasaki and Southeast Asia, but in 1683 they acknowledged loyalty to the Ch’ing dynasty, bringing to an end the Cheng family's role in Nagasaki trade. Cheng Ch’eng-kung’s exploits, much fictionalized, are the subject of Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s dramatic masterpiece, Kokusenya hassen, or The Rattles of Coxinga.