Nihonmachi

For modern-day Japanese communities, see Japantown.

Nihonmachi (日本町 or 日本街, lit. "Japan town" or "Japan street") is a term used to refer to historical Japanese communities in Southeast and East Asia. The term has come to also be applied to several modern-day communities, though most of these are called simply "Japantown", in imitation of the common term "Chinatown".

For a brief period in the 16th-17th centuries, Japanese overseas activity and presence in Southeast Asia and elsewhere in the region boomed. Sizeable Japanese communities, known as Nihonmachi, could be found in many of the major ports and political centers of the region, where they exerted significant political and economic influence.

The Japanese had been active on the seas and across the region for centuries, traveling for commercial, political, religious and other reasons. The 16th century, however, saw a dramatic increase in such travel and activity. The internal strife of the Sengoku period caused a great many people, primarily samurai, commoner merchants, and Christian refugees to seek their fortunes across the seas. Many of the samurai who fled Japan around this time were those who stood on the losing sides of various major conflicts; some were ronin, some veterans of the Japanese invasions of Korea or of various other major conflicts. As Toyotomi Hideyoshi and later the Tokugawa shoguns issued repeated bans on Christianity, many fled the country; a significant portion of those settled in Catholic Manila.

As a result of the Ming dynasty's ban on direct Sino-Japanese trade or travel, the various lands of Southeast Asia became the primary destinations. Beginning in 1567, the ban was lifted for trade and contact in Southeast Asia, and many traders who would otherwise have been deemed pirates for their violation of the ban were thus able to engage in legal activity, though trade and travel directly between China and Japan remained illegal. These factors combined with a number of others to create a vibrant trading scene across East and Southeast Asia, a period which Southeast Asian historian Anthony Reid has dubbed "the Age of Commerce."

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