Viet
The Vietnamese people ( vi, người Việt, lit=Viet people) or Kinh people ( vi, người Kinh) are a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to modern-day Northern Vietnam and Southern China (Jing Islands, Dongxing, Guangxi). The native lan ...
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
ese dutchy of the
Nguyễn lords
Nguyễn () is the most common Vietnamese surname. Outside of Vietnam, the surname is commonly rendered without diacritics as Nguyen. Nguyên (元）is a different word and surname.
By some estimates 39 percent of Vietnamese people bear this su ...
made contact.
He first arrived on the Vietnamese coast in 1585, with five ships, and began to engage in
pirate
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...
raids and coastal assaults. He was eventually driven off by a fleet of at least ten ships led by the sixth son of Lord
Nguyễn Hoàng
Nguyễn Hoàng (28 August 1525 – 20 July 1613) was the first of the Nguyễn lords who ruled the southern provinces of Vietnam between 1558 and 1613, from a series of cities: Ai Tu (1558–70), Tra Bat (1570–1600), and Dinh Cat (modern-day Hu ...
; two of the pirate ships were destroyed, and Shirahama fled. It is said that he was mistaken for a Westerner by the Vietnamese he encountered at the time.Li, Tana. ''Nguyen Cochinchina: Southern Vietnam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries''. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press
The Cornell University Press is the university press of Cornell University; currently housed in Sage House, the former residence of Henry William Sage. It was first established in 1869, making it the first university publishing enterprise in th ...
, 1998. pp60–61.
Fourteen years later, in 1599, Shirahama's craft was wrecked near the port of
Thuận An
Thuận An is a city of Bình Dương Province in the Southeast region of Vietnam. It is situated about northeast of the centre of Ho Chi Minh City. As of November 3, 2021 the city had a population of 618,984.
The town covers an area of 83.7 k ...
. The local magistrate, correctly believing him to be some variety of pirate or
brigand
Brigandage is the life and practice of highway robbery and plunder. It is practiced by a brigand, a person who usually lives in a gang and lives by pillage and robbery.Oxford English Dictionary second edition, 1989. "Brigand.2" first recorded usa ...
, attacked Shirahama and was killed. Shirahama was then imprisoned, and Nguyễn Hoàng sent a missive to
Tokugawa Ieyasu
was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, which ruled Japan from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was one of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan, along with his former lord Oda Nobunaga and fellow ...
, new ''
shōgun
, officially , was the title of the military dictators of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, though during part of the Kamakur ...
'' of Japan, asking how to deal with Japanese sailors in the future. This was the first official contact between the two governments, and marked the beginning of a friendly relationship lasting several decades.