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This article analyzes Macau's exports to Japan of three commodities considered relatively insignificant — musk, calambac/aglewood, and mercury — and situates them within the maritime trade currents of East Asia between 1555 and 1640. Starting from the hypothesis that, although modest in volume, such items are part of the inter-Asian exchange networks that connected Macau, Japan, China, Southeast Asia, and the Ryukyus, the study argues that the importance of these commodities lies not in their isolated economic weight, but in their function of linking different trade networks, often negotiated by various agents beyond the Portuguese of Macau. The methodology combines a review of published primary and secondary sources (both European and Asian), with mapping of routes, partners, and flows, acknowledging the fragmentary nature of the available references. The article describes relevant routes and agents: Japanese ships licensed for Indochina, Siam, Philippines; trade with China (especially Fujian); Ryukyu networks; Wokou pirates and smugglers; interventions by Spaniards, Dutch, and English in the 17th century. Main conclusions: (i) the distribution of these goods shows that Japan received commodities from various origins, not only from Macau; (ii) musk, calambac, and mercury cross the boundaries between the animal, vegetable, and mineral worlds, articulating with the whole of Sino-Japanese and Southeast Asian trade; (iii) to assess Macau's role, comparative analysis of European and Asian sources is essential, recognizing the multifaceted and interconnected nature of these networks.

This article examines the historical significance of the *wugongchuan*, or “Centipede Ships,” and their association with early Portuguese maritime activities in Guangdong during the first half of the sixteenth century. Drawing on key Sinological sources, most notably Li Zhaoxiang’s *Longjiang chuanchang zhi* (1553) and Shen Qi’s *Nan chuan ji* (1541), Roderich Ptak analyzes how these vessels were perceived and eventually replicated by the Ming administration. The study details the technical specifications of the *wugongchuan*, highlighting their distinctive oar-driven speed, maneuverability, and the integration of *folangji* (Portuguese) breech-loading bronze cannons—weaponry that Chinese officials recognized as superior to existing domestic technology. The author investigates the process of technological transfer, specifically focusing on the 1525 imperial mandate to construct a prototype in Nanjing using specialized shipwrights from Guangdong. By comparing textual descriptions and contemporary illustrations, the article illuminates the intersection of naval architecture, military defense, and cross-cultural encounters prior to the formal settlement of Macao. Ptak demonstrates that the *wugongchuan* serves as a critical case study in the Ming dynasty’s pragmatic response to European maritime encroachment, illustrating a period of transition where foreign naval innovations were systematically adopted to bolster Chinese coastal security.

Roderich Ptak's note analyzes the Ryukyu network in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, examining how Ryukyuan merchants and rulers navigated the Ming tribute system to fashion a far-flung commercial network centered on Naha. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources (Lidai baoan, Ming shilu, Korean sillok, lishi dili, Chen Kan’s Shi Liuqiu lu, Chinese nautical treatises, local gazetteers) and supplementing with Iberian accounts and secondary literature, the study reconstructs the geography and modalities of Ryukyu trade. The article emphasizes that official tribute trade remained the legal channel for access to China, and that the three Ryukyuan polities (Zhongshan, Shannan, Shanbei) competed but also maintained rapid exchange networks with the Ming court, beginning with envoy missions to Nanjing from 1372 onward. Within this regime, Ryukyuan merchants built an extended network linking Fujian to Okinawa, mainly via tribute contacts, while integrating exchanges with Southeast Asia, and branches to Korea and Kyushu. Most commodities flowed through Naha, consolidating the island’s role as the hub of multi-regional trade. The piece also notes ancillary phenomena—Ryukyuan students studying in China, subsidies granted by the Ming, and mentions of a Mongol exile in Ryukyu—highlighting the deep political and cultural ties underpinning the trade system. The article concludes that the Ryukyu network exemplifies how tribute-era diplomacy and commerce coalesced into a durable but selective regional mercantile sphere in the fifteenth–early sixteenth centuries.

Roderich Ptak assesses Shih-Shan Henry Tsai’s Perpetual Happiness: The Ming Emperor Yongle (University of Washington Press, 2001) as the first English-language monograph devoted exclusively to the Yongle reign (1403–1424). Tsai presents a lively, largely narrative portrait that resists dry philology and conventional militarism, organizing a chronological account around Yongle’s life while interweaving the workings of court institutions, state finance, and political networks. The study foregrounds both the emperor’s formidable political and military achievements and his sustained cultural patronage, including the lavish Yongle dadian and the distribution of Gujin Lienü Zhuan for educational purposes. Ptak notes that Tsai balances traditional concerns with new insights, building a coherent picture of Yongle as a dynamic ruler who sought grandeur through centralization, expansive campaigns, and cultural projects. The reviewer traces chapters on Yongle’s formative years, his rise to power, major political events, and the concomitant economic strains and ministerial tensions that accompanied his efforts—tensions that ultimately affected the emperor’s health and the empire’s trajectory after his death. While praising the book’s readability and balanced approach, Ptak observes occasional instances where details could be presented with greater precision. Overall, Tsai’s monograph is a valuable, nuanced contribution to Ming studies, reframing Yongle as both autocrat and cultural patron and highlighting the period’s enduring legacies.

The article argues that the historiography of maritime trade in Southeast and the Far East, often constructed from Iberian and Dutch sources, overestimates the centrality of “silk–silver” as an explanatory axis for the transition from the 16th to the 17th century. Countering this interpretation, the author mobilizes complementary evidence from Chinese and Japanese texts (including merchandise lists and administrative compilations), as well as data on exchanges between Korea, the Ryukyu Kingdom, and the Japanese archipelago, to reconstruct the circulation of animals and animal products and contextualize it within broader flows of goods. The methodology is essentially historiographic and comparative: it compares the weight assigned to certain goods by European sources with the relative importance suggested by catalogs, registers, and local documentation for different periods. The conclusions point to a strong continuity in the composition of commercial “baskets” between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period: the increasing emergence of Japanese silver does not imply an abrupt decline in exchanges considered traditional. On the contrary, the “new” circuits of silver and silk tended to coexist and, possibly, to drive the expansion of previously circulating products, articulated by regional institutional and political networks that included the circulation of animals and animal-derived products.