Chaya Shirojiro Kiyotsugu

Chaya Shirojiro Kiyotsugu was a member of the prominent mercantile Chaya family. Following the death of his brother Chaya Shirojiro Kiyotada in 1603, Kiyotsugu took over the Chaya family business.

Kiyotsugu worked to monopolize the trade in raw silk, and served as official suppliers of a variety of goods to the shogunate. He was also assigned by Tokugawa Ieyasu to help oversee shogunal operations at the formal trading post in Nagasaki, where he could keep an eye on the foreign traders and Christian missionaries, while working to his own commercial benefit as well.

In 1612 the Chaya family obtained official licenses (shuinjō) from the shogunate to continue trade with Cochinchina (aka Dang Trong, present-day southern Vietnam); and thus these merchant vessels came to be known as chaya-sen ("Chaya ships").

Besides in business Kiyotsugu had an interest in art, he was known as both a patron of the arts in general, and a collector of tea bowls and other implements of the Japanese tea ceremony.