Hội An, located a short distance from Da Nang, was the largest port in early modern Vietnam. The Japanese community there was quite small, consisting of only a few tens of households, in contrast both to the Japanese community of other cities such as Ayutthaya, and to the Chinese population of Hội An, which numbered in the thousands.A 1642 report to the Dutch East India Company by a Japanese inhabitant of the port describes a Chinese population of 4,000-5,000 and a Japanese population of 40-50. (Laarhoven, Ruurdje (trans.) "A Japanese Resident's Account: Declaration of the Situation of Quinam Kingdom by Francisco, 1642." in Li and Reid (eds.) Southern Vietnam. p31.) Even so, the Japanese in the Nihonmachi of Hội An exerted a powerful influence upon the affairs of the trading port, the Japanese demand for silk being so great that the comings and goings of Japanese merchant ships every year caused dramatic cyclical shifts in market prices. On average, more than ten Japanese ships visited the port every year during the period of the "red seal ships", that is, between roughly 1590 and 1635. This represented fully a quarter of all Japanese maritime economic activity, more than that of any other individual port.
