Japan had an official slave system from the Yamato period (3rd century A.D.) until Toyotomi Hideyoshi abolished it in 1590. Afterwards, the Japanese government facilitated the use of "comfort women" as sex slaves from 1932 to '45. Prisoners of war captured by Japanese imperial forces were also used as slaves during the same period.
Early slavery in Japan
The export of a slave from Japan is recorded in 3rd century Chinese historical record, but it is unclear what system was involved, and whether this was a common practice at that time. These slaves were called seikō ( "living mouth").
In the 8th century, slaves were called Nuhi (奴婢) and laws were issued under the legal codes of the Nara and Heian periods, called Ritsuryousei (律令制). These slaves tended farms and worked around houses. Information on the slave population is questionable, but the proportion of slaves is estimated to have been around 5% of the population.
Slavery persisted into the Sengoku period (1467–1615) even though the attitude that slavery was anachronistic seems to have become widespread among elites. In 1590, slavery was officially banned under Toyotomi Hideyoshi; but forms of contract and indentured labor persisted alongside the period penal codes' forced labor. Somewhat later, the Edo period penal laws prescribed "non-free labor" for the immediate family of executed criminals in Article 17 of the Gotōke reijō (Tokugawa House Laws), but the practice never became common. The 1711 Gotōke reijō was compiled from over 600 statutes promulgated between 1597 and 1696.
Portuguese enslavement of Japanese people
After the Portuguese first made contact with Japan in 1543, a large-scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, mostly in Portuguese-colonized regions of Asia such as southern China and Goa but including Argentina and Portugal itself, until it was formally outlawed in 1595. Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Although the actual number of slaves is debated, the proportions on the number of slaves tends to be exaggerated by some Japanese historians. At least several hundred Japanese people were sold; some of them were prisoners of war sold by their captors, others were sold by their feudal lords, and others were sold by their families to escape poverty. The Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased a number of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church in 1555. Sebastian of Portugal feared that this was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization since the slave trade in Japanese was growing to larger proportions, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571. However, the ban of preventing Portuguese merchants of buying Japanese slaves failed and the trade continued into the late 16th century.
Japanese slave women were sometimes sold as concubines to Asian lascar and African crew members, along with their European counterparts serving on Portuguese ships trading in Japan, mentioned by Luis Cerqueira, a Portuguese Jesuit, in a 1598 document. Japanese slaves were brought by the Portuguese to Macau, where some of them not only ended up being enslaved to Portuguese, but as slaves to other slaves, with the Portuguese owning Malay and African slaves, who in turn owned Japanese slaves of their own.
Hideyoshi was so disgusted that his own Japanese people were being sold en masse into slavery on Kyushu, that he wrote a letter to Jesuit Vice-Provincial Gaspar Coelho on 24 July 1587 to demand the Portuguese, Siamese (Thai), and Cambodians stop purchasing and enslaving Japanese and return Japanese slaves who ended up as far as India. Hideyoshi blamed the Portuguese and Jesuits for this slave trade and banned Christian proselytizing as a result.
Some Korean slaves were bought by the Portuguese and brought back to Portugal from Japan, where they had been among the tens of thousands of Korean prisoners of war transported to Japan during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98). Although Hideyoshi expressed his indignation and outrage at the Portuguese trade in Japanese slaves, he himself was engaging in a mass slave trade of Korean prisoners of war in Japan.
Filippo Sassetti saw some Chinese and Japanese slaves in Lisbon among the large slave community in 1578, although most of the slaves were black.
The Portuguese "highly regarded" Asian slaves like Chinese and Japanese. The Portuguese attributed qualities like intelligence and industriousness to Chinese and Japanese slaves which is why they favoured them.