Wada Rizaemon

Wada Rizaemon was a prominent Japanese trader in Southeast Asia in the early years of the 17th century.

A Japanese Christian, he fled to Macao when the Tokugawa shogunate issued bans on Christianity in 1614. He later found work as an agent for a Portuguese vessel, trading chiefly in raw silk in the ports of Quang Nam. He then relocated to Tonkin, where he established himself in the silk and copper trades, and eventually gained a position in the Le Dynasty imperial court. In 1654, he helped broker a treaty between the Tonkin authorities and the Spanish Governor of Luzon.

Wada was also a significant investor in Chinese and Dutch trading endeavors.

References

• William Wray, “The Seventeenth-century Japanese Diaspora: Questions of Boundary and Policy,” in Ina Baghdiantz McCabe et al (eds.), Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks, Oxford: Berg (2005), 79.