Yamada Nagamasa
Yamada Nagamasa was a leader of the Nihonmachi (Japantown) in early 17th century Ayutthaya (Siam), and of a Japanese contingent of the Siamese royal guard. Nagamasa led some 700 men (roughly half the Japanese population of the city) in suppressing rebellions and defending the kingdom against Burmese invasions, and by 1630 enjoyed high court rank, among other privileges. He served as governor of two provinces, and held a monopoly on managing trade in deerskin and certain other commodities.[1] His prominence made him a target, however, for Prasat Thong, who saw Yamada as a threat, or obstacle, to his plans to seize the throne. In 1630, Prasat Thong assassinated Yamada with a dose of poison, and then burned down the Nihonmachi in order to eliminate any further Japanese threat to his rule.
Biography
Born the son of a knife-maker in Sunpu in 1590, Yamada was not of samurai status. He lost his father while still a child, and after studying at the Meisetsu Rinzai Zen temple for a time, he earned a position at age 16 as palanquin-bearer for Lord Ôkubo Jiemon of Numazu castle. When Lord Ôkubo passed away with no male heirs, however, the domain was confiscated by the shogunate, and Yamada was forced to return home; there, he found that his mother had died as well, and that the family had sold the house and moved to somewhere in the North.
Yamada then found a job as a dockworker in Sakai, and in 1612 joined the crew of a red seal ship bound for Siam. Ten weeks later, after stopping at a number of other ports, they arrived at Ayutthaya. Kiya Kyûemon, head of the Japantown, took Yamada under his wing. He also began studying Siamese and at least one European language, and soon found a job working as a middleman in the lucrative deerskin trade. At some point while in Siam, or perhaps during his time in Sakai, Yamada Nizaemon took on the name Nagamasa.
At one point, Yamada traveled to the northern borders of Siam, and volunteered to help fight alongside Siamese warriors against a Burmese invasion. Killing the Burmese general, he found himself invited to the royal palace by King Songtham, and granted aristocratic title. When Kyûemon decided to return to Japan, he named Yamada his successor; by this time, Yamada had become a head of the royal guards, and a wealthy merchant in his own right, even owning his own ship.
In 1621, acting as representative of the royal court, Nagamasa sent three letters to Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada and two of the rôjû, in advance of Ayutthaya sending an embassy to Edo to negotiate for formal relations. This marks the first time anyone in the shogunate heard of (or from) Nagamasa, and as a result of Ishin Sûden investigating the identity of this mysterious "Yamada Nagamasa" and then recording it in his Ikoku nikki, it also marks Yamada's first appearance in official shogunate documents.
When King Songtham fell ill in 1628, he named a relative, known as the Kalahom (a military title), along with Yamada, to serve as regents for his underage successor. The Kalahom then began engineering the deaths of his political rivals, eventually ending in the death of the young king in 1629; when a rebellion arose in the southern province of Ligor, the Kalahom suggested that if Yamada led forces to suppress the rebellion, he could then become lord of that province. Yamada succeeded in this endeavor, and established himself and his Japanese compatriots as rulers of Ligor. In the meantime, however, the Kalahom seized the the throne, naming himself King Prasat Thom.
Yamada married a young woman from the royal family, and set himself to ruling his new territory. However, acting as an agent of Prasat Thom's agendas, his new wife poisoned him, applying poisoned plasters to a leg wound Yamada suffered while suppressing the rebellion. He died shortly afterwards, in 1630.
Legacy
Nagamasa was a prominent figure in patriotic culture of the 1940s. He was featured in Noh plays, patriotic songs, and history textbooks, in which he was represented as a pioneer, who contributed great things to "the southern countries," by virtue of his Japanese military ability; his role in Southeast Asia was thus used both as precedent for Japanese involvement in bringing benefit to those areas, and thus in supporting justification of expansionism. No fewer than three biographies of Nagamasa were published in the 1940s in Japan.
Following World War II, a number of works were published both in Japanese and English criticizing the 1940s interpretation of Yamada Nagamasa as a figure, and at times even questioning whether he existed at all. Though Nagamasa has very much faded today into being a rather obscure and peripheral figure in mainstream discourses on Japanese history, scholars today generally agree that he was real, however.
References
- Cesare Polenghi, Samurai of Ayutthaya: Yamada Nagamasa, Japanese warrior and merchant in early seventeenth-century Siam. Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2009.
- ↑ Wray, William. “The 17th Century Japanese Diaspora: Questions of Boundary and Policy.” Thirteenth International Economic History Congress, Buenos Aires 2002. Preconference: Corfu, Greece, 21-22 September 2001, 10.
