Difference between revisions of "Araki Sotaro"
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Revision as of 18:39, 3 April 2014
- Died: 1636
Araki Sotarô was a Nagasaki-based shuinsen merchant known for his travels in Southeast Asia and marriage to a daughter of a Vietnamese aristocratic family.
A samurai originally from Higo province (Kumamoto), he moved to Nagasaki in 1588, and shortly afterwards began sailing to Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia. In 1619, he returned to Japan with a wife, a daughter of the Ruan family & adopted daughter of the King of Annam known as Wakaku or Anio in Japanese. He and Wakaku then established a trading emporium at Nagasaki.
The Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture owns a Vietnamese mirror in gilded and lacquer mounting which was first brought to Japan by Wakaku as one of her personal possessions, along with a Japanese manuscript translation of an original letter from the Ruan family to Araki.
Araki and his wife are buried in Nagasaki; their gravesite at the temple of Daion-ji has been designated a city cultural property.
References
- Matt Matsuda, Pacific Worlds, University of Cambridge Press (2012), 89.
- "Mirror from Vietnam, owned by lady Araki Sotaro," Virtual Collection of Asian Masterpieces, 2013.
