THE STORIES ABOUT CULTURAL EXCHANGE BETWEEN FOREIGN COUNTRIES AND KYUSHU

The Tale of the Vietnamese Princess Anio and a Nagasaki Merchant

Araki Sotaro was a red-seal-ship merchant in the Azuchi–Momoyama period. He traveled from Nagasaki to Annam (today central Vietnam), where he won the trust of ruler Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên and married a princess.
The princess was well-known to the people of Nagasaki as Anio-san, and she spent her life in Nagasaki. The wedding procession of Princess Anio is re-created every seven years during the Nagasaki Kunchi festival (Oct. 7-9). It is part of the musical program “Goshuinsen,” or “red seal ships,” the name for shogun-authorized trading vessels.
The red seal ships were ships that carried out trade with major Southeast Asian areas such as Vietnam under licenses for foreign voyage (red seals) from the Tokugawa shogunate from the late 16th to early 17th centuries. During the Edo Period, Nagasaki was the only port of departure for the red seal ships and it was the base for red-seal-ship trade.

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