Yamada Nagamasa arrived in Ayutthaya during a period of instability at the Siamese court, in part caused by his own countrymen. However he is not mentioned in any contemporary document during the first 10 years or so that he spent in Ayutthaya. We can assume only that during this period he learned the language, found a Siamese companion – who gave birth to a son –, and started to climb the ladder of officialdom in the local Japanese community.
In Nagamasa’s early days, the leader of the Nihonmachi was a man called Kii Kyuemon who, from 1610, had succeeded Arima Sugihiro, thought to have been the first official head of the Japanese community in Ayutthaya. Kyuemon was a man from Nagasaki whose father was a trader in Japan. Once in Ayutthaya, he became a merchant, but he is most famous in Japanese stories as the man who helped the Siamese to devise a scheme to defeat the army of Ava (aka Burma) in early 1610s. (This exploit is wrongly attributed to Nagamasa by many sources.)
The Kyuemon we know from primary sources was a clever and capable man. In a letter sent in 1616 and addressed to Matsudaira Chikuzen no Kami, a resident of Kaga province in Japan, the Siamese minister Okya Phra Khlang stated that his king (Song Tham) had put Kyuemon in charge of the Japanese community in Ayutthaya. The missive also mentioned that newcomers arrived to Ayutthaya by junk or Portuguese ships, thus we have proof that some Japanese were actually arriving in Siam on Portuguese ships. Hence, we should not discount the possibility that Nagamasa could have reached Siam onboard one of them too.
The people “senior” to Kii Kyuemon, as the head of the Japanese community, were the deputy minister and the minister (Phra Khlang) himself. A Thai text, however, would never list Kyuemon first, followed by the names of such senior men.
In 1616, Kii Kyuemon travelled to Japan with a Siamese embassy. This mission was probably a minor enterprise. The only piece of evidence about it is the letter mentioned above – recovered by professor Iwao Seiichi from a little known manuscript entitled Ko-Un Zuihitsu (“Miscellaneous Writings by Buddhist Priests Kogaku and Ungai”).
If we accept that this first Siamese mission occurred, we may consider it the first of a series of six embassies that reached Japan in 1616, 1621, 1623, 1625, 1626, and 1629. This regularity shows how close relations were between the two countries during the 1920s.
It is reasonable to assume that both the Siamese Treasury and the leading Japanese traders in Ayutthaya were making big profits from this trade, since each depended in part on the other to make the venture successful.
We know that, back in Ayutthaya, Kyuemon had personal relations with British and Dutch merchants. In 1616, few months before his alleged trip to Japan, Kyuemon and William Adams (James Clavell’s inspiration for Anjin-san in Shogun) had exchanged gifts on 21 February. The English pilot was in Siam on a commercial operation. Perhaps it was their encounter that presented Kyuemon with the opportunity to obtain some of the logistical information concerning the preparations to visit Matsudaira in Kaga.
Thus, while we are left wondering about his bravery as a soldier, we can establish that Kyuemon was not at the head of the Japanese community by chance. He had diplomatic skills that he utilized with the Siamese, the Japanese and the Europeans. Japanese sources suggest that Kyuemon was promoted, presumably in 1917, on his return to Ayutthaya.
The year 1619 is the last time Kii Kyuemon is mentioned in the sources. Thus, we may assume that, if he didn’t die, either he remained in Ayutthaya as retired leader of the Japanese community or he returned to Japan between 1619 and 1621. The year 1621 was in fact when Nagamasa wrote to Hidetada, the second Tokugawa shogun, and his aids to introduce the forthcoming Siamese embassy and himself as the official head of the Japanese in Ayutthaya.
Resources: “Samurai of Ayutthaya – The Historical Landscape of
Early 17th Century Japan and Siam: Yamada Nagamasa
and the Way to Ayutthaya” by Cesare Polenghi (p. 39-42)
