Located halfway on the route between India and China, the Siamese capital Ayutthaya was predestined to become a hub for international trade. The few days necessary to reach the city from the mouth of the Menam might have been a temporary drawback, but gave the city a level of safety from maritime attacks that other ports in the region such as Malacca (today a state in Malaysia) did not have.
The Burmese never stopped threatening Siam. While this was certainly a liability, such constant pressure from their neighbour in the west made it necessary for Ayutthaya to keep welcoming a steady inflow of people and goods, including not only weapons and military technologies, but also every sort of intelligence and, most importantly, currency.
As a result, foreign bodyguards were a constant presence in Siam. First it was the Portuguese who were hired in King’s Chairacha’s army in 1534 and then it was the turn of the Japanese who became in charge of the king’s bodyguards. They were followed by Chams and Malays.
Besides the bodyguards, the Siamese army featured squadrons of asa, auxiliary troops formed by foreign residing in Ayutthaya, who fought alongside the local military. The Japanese asa were involved in an important battle in 1593.
At the beginning of the 17th century, most of the foreigners lived in villages built on land assigned by the Siamese king, and located outside the city walls. Westerner observers of the period wrote how some parts of the city inside the walls were not inhabited, thus the foreign settlements on the outskirts of the city were not there because of lack of space within Ayutthaya city. The reason had to lie elsewhere.
To begin with, it was practical for the arriving foreign ships to dock at the village they ‘belonged’ to, where they could immediately be taken care of by their countrymen. But more than that, from a Siamese viewpoint, to have the foreigners outside the main walls diminished the risk of rebellion and also created a buffer zone between potential invaders and the city.
The foreign enclaves of Ayutthaya did not move much during the 17th century. The location of the villages at the beginning of the century can be extrapolated from various sources, which basically confirm the position given in two maps dated 1686 and 1693. Going upstream, the Menam reached Ayutthaya at its southeast corner. On the west bank, thus south of the city, was the Portuguese quarter, and continuing westward, the Chinese, Malay, and Cochin-Chinese quarters. Counting clockwise, to the west and the north of the city there were for the most part Siamese dwellings, and on the east more Chinese. Coming down, on the east side of the Menam were the Dutch enclave and factory. From 1612 to 1625 there was the British settlement and finally Nihonmachi, the quarter reserved for the Japanese.
It is likely that the inhabitants of the Japanese quarter kept records, but we must assume they were destroyed in the fires that repeatedly burned down the entire Nihonmachi. There were at least three major fires in 1622, 1630 and 1633. No diaries or other sources describing how the Japanese lived in Ayutthaya have been preserved, thus we have only very scant records on their everyday existence, information that comes entirely from European sources.
The shipping movements between Ayutthaya and Japan were under management of the Siamese Department of Eastern Maritime Affairs and Crown Junks. At the head of this office was a Chinese administrator, who was a resident in Ayutthaya. The department operated using Chinese as its lingua franca. The head of the Nihonmachi community was a Japanese, chosen by its people and approved by the Siamese king. Intra-community problems were usually settled by the inhabitants and their leaders. However, it was not until 1664 that some foreigners (the Dutch) obtained extraterritoriality in Ayutthaya. Thus, in Nagamasa’s time, Siamese authorities still had jurisdiction over major crimes.
There were 400 Japanese Christians in the Japanese enclave in 1624 and 600 soldiers in 1628. These calculations might be incorrect in the case these “soldiers” included the Japanese royal bodyguards who might have resided at court, or outside the Nihonmachi. However, this is unlikely as we know that royal guards in the 19th century lived in their own houses elsewhere, and reported for duty in the palace during the times that they were required to serve. If these numbers are to be believed, the total numbers of inhabitants estimated by Japanese historians, circa 1,000-1,500, seems reductive. Other historians give two very different numbers: 700 or even 7,000.
A Dutch letter dated 1613 specifies how the Japanese did not trust the Siamese to work on the delicate and precious deer skins, and personally cut, treated and prepared for shipping 150,000 skins that year. Such a task would have required a considerable workforce, and proves that there were specialized Japanese employee who, in turn, may have had their own families. Thus, a number between 2,00 and 3,000, including non-Japanese residents, seems more realistic.
According to such an estimate, Ayutthaya featured one of the biggest Nihonmachi in Southeast Asia, probably second in population only to Manila (which featured two Japanese settlements, in Dilao and San Miguel). At the same time it was larger than Faifo and Tourane (both in Cochin-China, today Da Nang and Hai An in central Vietnam) and Ponhealu and Phnom Penh in Cambodia.
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. 21-24)
