Career
The Ming dynasty in China maintained an official ban upon all overseas trade, but the Japanese were able to carry out a lively trade in secret with the Chinese ships at Formosa. In 1624 the Dutch set up a base in the southern part of Formosa and thereafter began attempting to interfere with the Japanese trade. The Japanese, for their part, vigorously defended their prior claim to trading rights and did what they could to oppose the Dutch. In 1626 Hamada Yahyoe sailed to Formosa in one of Suetsugu’s ships, but because of Dutch interference, he was forced to abandon his cargo there and return to Japan.
Subsequently, Pieter Nuyts, the governor of the Dutch base in Formosa, came to Japan in an attempt to explain the affair to the shogunate officials, but his mission was frustrated by interference from Hamada and Suetsugu. In the fourth month of 1628, Hamada went to Formosa once more with two armed ships and a force of 480 crewmen. He and his men stormed the governor’s residence in Zeelandia and compelled Governor Nuyts to exchange hostages with the Japanese and to conclude a peace agreement before they withdrew and returned to Japan. As a result of this incident, Japanese-Dutch relations w'ere disrupted, and the shogunate for a time forbade the Dutch to carry on trade with Japan. Later, however, Nuyts was handed over to the Japanese, and with the death of Suetsugu in 1630, the affair came to an end. Nuyts was confined in the Omura prison but was pardoned in 1636 and left Japan for Batavia.