Araki Sotaro

Araki Sotarô was a Nagasaki-based shuinsen merchant and navigator known for his travels in Southeast Asia and marriage to a daughter of a Vietnamese aristocratic family.

At first he was a samurai in Kumamoto not far south of Nagasaki, and moved to Nagasaki in 1588 and started living there on an estate. Japanese were quite active in those days, going down south and building many Japanese towns in Southeast Asia.

Sotaro, getting aboard a goshuin-sen (officially-licensed trading ship), went to visit the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and was said to have acquired a vast fortune from trade.

In 1619 in what is now Hue, he met and married Wakaku, a woman of maternal bloodline of the Vietnamese King who adopted her as a daughter. The monarch also ennobled Sotaro under the name Gwan-taro.

After six voyages in these regions, in 1619 he returned to Nagasaki with his new bride where he built an emporium. His ships bore the name Araki-bune.

He was surely the first Japanese to have an international marriage and came back to Japan with a King’s daughter, albeit an adopted one. Princess Wakaku, while living in Nagasaki, was called Ani-o-san and was well-liked by the Nagasaki citizens.

Araki and his wife are buried in Nagasaki; their gravesite at the temple of Daion-ji has been designated a city cultural property. Their half-Japanese, half-Vietnamese son is represented by one of the chigo ("sacred boys") who rides a parade float in Nagasaki's annual Kunchi festival.