ABSTRACT
Discussions of sixteenth to seventeenth century interactions between the people of the Japanese archipelago and those of other lands generally tend to focus on encounters with outsiders from China, Korea, and Europe who entered the archipelago. Even the largest and most influential Japanese trading communities in Southeast Asia at this time, typically referred to in scholarship as Nihonmachi, were quite small compared to those of their diasporic Chinese neighbors. The trade itself was quite significant as well, for both Japanese and Southeast Asian economies. Japan imported 50–60 tons of wood each year from the Siamese kingdom of Ayutthaya alone, as well as tin, rice, and some 150,000 deerskins, which were of vital importance in the production of certain types of clothing, arms and armor, bags, and shoes. Religious persecution also contributed significantly to the settlement of Japanese citizens in Southeast Asia.
