Song Suqing (宋素卿; died 1525), also known as Sō Sokei from the Japanese pronunciation of his name, was a Chinese-born diplomat of Muromachi and Sengoku period Japan.
Song Suqing was born in Yin County (鄞縣; present-day Yinzhou, Ningbo, Zhejiang) with the name Zhu Gao (朱縞).
Additionally, once the Japanese envoys landed at Ningbo, their designated port, they would have the opportunity to engage in trade with the local merchants in a controlled environment.
[2] This was how Tōshigorō chanced upon Zhu Gao in Yin County, near Ningbo, where he was impressed by the boy's voice and charms and started a close relationship with him.
Tōshigorō then entrusted Zhu Gao and his uncle to sell his merchandise of Japanese swords and fans in return for Chinese lacquerware.
By all accounts the Japanese goods were successfully sold, but the money from the transaction was squandered (either by himself or by another middleman) and Zhu Cheng could not fulfill the order of lacquerware.
[12] As the Hosokawa mission made its way to the capital Beijing, Song Suqing's uncle Zhu Cheng recognized him but did not dare make himself known.
[13] Song Suqing bribed the powerful eunuch Liu Jin with a thousand ounces of gold in Beijing and he was exonerated: the official mitigating reasons being his position as the head envoy of a foreign country, and that he had confessed to his crimes.
Failing to find Song Suqing there, the Ōuchi band burned and plundered their way back to Ningbo, kidnapped a Chinese official, and made off to sea on commandeered ships.
The recommendation was tentatively approved by the Jiajing Emperor, but members of the Censorate objected, saying Song Suqing's crimes were too grave to be pardoned.
[18] An investigation was hence opened by the Censorate, and in 1525 a verdict was reached: Song Suqing was sentenced to death along with two Ōuchi envoys that the Chinese managed to catch, but they all languished and died in prison in Hangzhou by spring of that year.
The Japanese Confucian writer Tsuga Teishō (都賀庭鐘; 1718–1794) wrote a fictionalized account of Song Suqing's life in his Shigeshige ya wa (繁野話), putting emphasis on the tragedy befalling the man stuck between two worlds.