Yamada Nagamasa - Japanese Settlement in Southeast Asia

Japanese Settlement in Southeast Asia

Yamada Nagamasa lived in the Japanese quarters of Ayutthaya, home to another 1,500 Japanese inhabitants (some estimates run as high as 7,000). The community was called "Ban Yipun" in Thai, and was headed by a Japanese chief nominated by Thai authorities. It seems to have been a combination of traders, Christian converts who had fled their home country following the persecutions of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, and unemployed former samurai who had been on the losing side at the battle of Sekigahara:

From the years of Gen'na (1615–24) through the later years of Kan'ei (1624–44), the Rōnin or warriors who lost their lords after the defeats of the battle of Osaka (1614–15) or the earlier battle of Sekigahara (1600), as well as the defeated Christians of the Shimabara uprising, went to settle in Siam in great numbers — Senrakoku Fudo-gunki, 17th century, quoted by Uchida Ginzo

The Christian community seems to have been in the hundreds, as described by Padre Antônio Francisco Cardim, who recounted having administered sacrament to around 400 Japanese Christians in 1627 in the Thai capital of Ayuthaya ("a 400 japoes christaos").

The colony was active in trade, particularly in the export of deer-hide to Japan in exchange for Japanese silver and Japanese handicrafts (swords, lacquered boxes, high-quality papers). They were noted by the Dutch for challenging the trade monopoly of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The colony also had an important military role in Thailand. Yamada Nagamasa is alleged to have carried on the business of a corsair or pirate from the period of 1620, attacking and plundering Dutch ships in and around Batavia (present day Jakarta). Stories of Yamada burying his treasure on the East Coast of Australia persist but it is highly unlikely that Yamada would have ventured along the east coast of Australia and, in particular, Magnetic Island off Townsville, as there were no trade routes in this region and the only ships to venture to this region were the ones blown off course during the summer storms. This is speculative, however: Yamada would have passed thousands of islands in the Torres Straits and Coral sea and these would have provided safe keeping for any treasure and avoided a very long recovery voyage in the future.