Yamada Nagamasa

Yamada Nagamasa
Portrait of Yamada Nagamasa circa 1630
Native name	山田 長政
Born	1590 Numazu, Shizuoka, Japan
Died	1630 Ligor, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Ayutthaya Kingdom
Allegiance	Japan Ayutthaya Kingdom
Rank	Ok-ya Senaphimuk (Thai: ออกญาเสนาภิมุข)

Yamada Nagamasa (山田 長政^?, 1590 – 1630) was a Japanese adventurer who gained considerable influence in the Ayutthaya Kingdom at the beginning of the 17th century and became the governor of Nakhon Si Thammarat province, which is on the Malay Peninsula in present-day southern Thailand.

From 1617 until his death in 1630, Yamada Nagamasa was head of the Japanese village referred to as Ban Yipun in the Thai language. This village was within the city of Ayutthaya (the capital city of the Ayutthaya Kingdom). Ban Yipun was home to roughly 1,000 Japanese citizens, and was headed by a Japanese chief who was nominated by Ayutthayan authorities. Its inhabitants were a combination of traders, Christian converts who had fled their home country following the persecutions of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Rōnin (unemployed former samurai) who had been on the losing side at the battle of Sekigahara (1600) or the Siege of Osaka (1614–15). The Christian community seems to have been in the hundreds, as described by Padre António Francisco Cardim, who recounted having administered sacraments to around 400 Japanese Christians in 1627 in the city of Ayutthaya.

Yamada Nagamasa was born in Numazu, Shizuoka in 1590. He is said to have been a palanquin bearer for the lord of Numazu. He became involved in Japanese trade activities with Southeast Asia during the period of the Red seal ships and settled in the Ayutthaya Kingdom (modern-day Thailand) around 1612.