In the early seventeenth century, Japanese fighters found employment across Southeast Asia. In Siam, successive kings deployed a large contingent of these troops; in the Philippines Japanese recruits engaged in the bloody suppression of Chinese revolts on behalf of their Spanish masters; and in Cambodia, Japanese soldiers bolstered local forces gathered to resist a potential invasion.   The Dutch East India Company was unique, however, in that it set up a systematic program to recruit hundreds of these soldiers directly in Japan with the open permission of the Tokugawa shogun. Beginning in 1613, the Company set out to recruit hundreds of mercenaries from Japan to wage war on its behalf across Southeast Asia. Over the next decade until 1623, the Company would recruit hundreds of mercenaries from its base in Hirado in western Japan. In addition to service in garrisons, Japanese mercenaries featured in most major VOC campaigns in Southeast Asia between 1613 and 1623. They participated in an attack on the Spanish stronghold of Tidore in 1613, in an expedition against the Banda archipelago in May 1615, in the siege of Jakarta in 1619, and in the final, brutal conquest of Banda in 1621.