Tagawa Matsu
Encyclopedia
Tagawa Matsu or Weng-shi (翁氏) (1601 - 1646), was the mother of Koxinga
Koxinga
Koxinga is the customary Western spelling of the popular appellation of Zheng Chenggong , a military leader who was born in 1624 in Hirado, Japan to Zheng Zhilong, a Chinese merchant/pirate, and his Japanese wife and died in 1662 on the island of Formosa .A Ming loyalist and the arch commander of...

, a Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 national hero, and Tagawa Shichizaemon (田川七左衛門), a servant to a Japanese feudal lord. She was a Nagasaki Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese who lived most of her life in the coastal town of Hirado, then later migrated to China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

. She was the daughter of a minor vassal or worker of the Marquis of Nagasaki.

Giving birth by the stone

Tagawa Matsu was married to Zheng Zhilong
Zheng Zhilong
Zheng Zhilong also known as Nicholas Iquan Gaspard, a native of Nan'an, Fujian, China. He was a Chinese merchant, pirate and admiral for the Ming Empire. He was the father of Zheng Chenggong , also a military leader. Under the Qing Dynasty, Zheng was elevated to the rank of Count of the Second Rank...

 (鄭芝龍), a Hokkien
Hokkien
Hokkien is a Hokkien word corresponding to Standard Chinese "Fujian". It may refer to:* Hokkien dialect, a dialect of Min Nan Chinese spoken in Southern Fujian , Taiwan, South-east Asia, and elsewhere....

 from Nan'an
Nan'an, Fujian
Nan'an is a county-level city within the Quanzhou prefecture level city, Fujian province, China. As of 2010 the city has a population of 1,500,000. More than 3,000,000 overseas Chinese trace their ancestry to Nan'an. -History:...

, Fujian
Fujian
' , formerly romanised as Fukien or Huguing or Foukien, is a province on the southeast coast of mainland China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south. Taiwan lies to the east, across the Taiwan Strait...

, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 who frequently traded with the Japanese in Nagasaki
Nagasaki Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyūshū. The capital is the city of Nagasaki.- History :Nagasaki Prefecture was created by merging of the western half of the former province of Hizen with the island provinces of Tsushima and Iki...

. She gave birth to Koxinga during a trip with her husband when she was picking seashell
Seashell
A seashell or sea shell, also known simply as a shell, is a hard, protective outer layer created by an animal that lives in the sea. The shell is part of the body of the animal. Empty seashells are often found washed up on beaches by beachcombers...

s on the Senli Beach, Sennai River Bank (川內浦千里濱), Hirado.

The stone beside which she gave birth still exists today as the Koxinga Child Birth Stone Tablet (鄭成功兒誕石碑), which is 80-cm tall and 3-metre wide, and submerged during high tide
Tide
Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the moon and the sun and the rotation of the Earth....

s.

Tagawa Matsu raised Koxinga in Japan by herself until he was seven, and her closeness with her son is evident in some of the accomplishment and decisions Koxinga made in his adult life.

In 1630, she was reunited with Koxinga by moving to Quanzhou
Quanzhou
Quanzhou is a prefecture-level city in Fujian province, People's Republic of China. It borders all other prefecture-level cities in Fujian but two and faces the Taiwan Strait...

, Fujian
Fujian
' , formerly romanised as Fukien or Huguing or Foukien, is a province on the southeast coast of mainland China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south. Taiwan lies to the east, across the Taiwan Strait...

. In 1646, when Koxinga was away, the city was invaded by the Manchu
Manchu
The Manchu people or Man are an ethnic minority of China who originated in Manchuria . During their rise in the 17th century, with the help of the Ming dynasty rebels , they came to power in China and founded the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which...

s. Koxinga, upon hearing of the invasion, immediately returned to Quanzhou, only to discover that his mother had hanged herself in a refusal to surrender to the Manchus. Some people say she was raped and killed by the Manchus. After this, Koxinga developed a growing and powerful antagonism with the Qing Empire.

Chinese relations

In the Zheng family genealogy, Tagawa Matsu is recorded under the Sinicized name of Weng-shi. Some Chinese records indicated that this is because after she moved to Quanzhou, an old iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

smith neighbour, Weng Yihuang (翁翌皇), treated this foreigner newcomer like his own daughter.

There are a small amount of Chinese sources mistaking Tagawa Matsu as Weng Yihuang's blood daughter, with a Japanese mother surnamed Tagawa. This is unlikely, as this would necessitate either Weng Yihuang moving to Japan (but he was an ironsmith, neither a sailor nor a trader) or the migration of the Tagawa women back and forth between the two nations (but travelling of women was restricted).

In Koxinga Memorial Temple (鄭成功祠) in Tainan
Tainan
Tainan City is a city in southern Taiwan. It is the fifth largest after New Taipei, Kaohsiung, Taichung, and Taipei. It was formerly a provincial city, and in 2010, the provincial city merged with the adjacent Tainan County to form a single special municipality. Tainan faces the Taiwan Strait in...

, Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

, Tagawa Matsu's ancestral tablet is placed in a chamber called the Shrine of Queen Dowager Weng (翁太妃祠). The title "queen dowager" is a posthumous title based on the princeship/kingship of Koxinga (Prince-King of Yanping Prefecture) in the Southern Ming Empire.
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