William Adams (pilot)

William Adams (Japanese: ウィリアム・アダムス, Hepburn: Uwiriamu Adamusu, kyūjitai: ウヰリアム・アダムス; 24 September 1564 – 16 May 1620), better known in Japan as Miura Anjin (三浦按針, 'the pilot of Miura'), was an English navigator who, in 1600, became the first Englishman to reach Japan. He did so on a trading ship called Liefde^[3] under the leadership of Jacob Quaeckernaeck; it was the only vessel reaching Japan from a five-ship expedition launched by a company of Rotterdam merchants^[3] (a voorcompagnie, or predecessor of the Dutch East India Company).^[4] Among the few survivors of the expedition who reached Japan, for more than a decade, the authorities did not allow Adams and his second mate Jan Joosten to leave the country. Earlier, they did permit Quaeckernaeck and Melchior van Santvoort to return to the Dutch Republic to establish formal trade relations. Adams and Joosten settled in Japan, and the two men became Western samurai.^[5]

Soon after Adams' arrival in Japan, he became a key advisor to the

Adams was born in Gillingham, Kent, England. His father died when he was twelve, and he was apprenticed to shipyard owner Master Nicholas Diggins at Limehouse for the seafaring life.^[7][8] He spent the next twelve years learning shipbuilding,^[9] astronomy, and navigation before entering the Royal Navy.^[9]

With England at war with Spain, Adams served in the Royal Navy under Sir Francis Drake. He saw naval service against the Spanish Armada in 1588 as master of the Richarde Dyffylde, a resupply ship carrying ammunition and victuals for the English fleet.^[10]

Adams became a pilot for the

..I am a

chiefe Pilot of a Fleete of five sayle, which was made readie by the chiefe of the Indian Company Peter Vanderhag, and Hance Vanderueke...

— William Adams letter, 22 October 1611^[12]

The Adams brothers set sail from Texel on the Hoope and joined with the rest of the fleet on 24 June.^[citation needed] The fleet consisted of:

• the Hoope ("Hope"), under Admiral Jacques Mahu (d. 1598), who was succeeded by Simon de Cordes (d. 1599) and Simon de Cordes Jr; this ship was lost near the Hawaiian Islands;
• the Liefde ("Love" or "Charity"), under Simon de Cordes, second in command, succeeded by Gerrit van Beuningen, and finally under Jacob Quaeckernaeck; this was the only ship to reach Japan;
• the Geloof ("Faith"), under Gerrit van Beuningen and in the end, Sebald de Weert; this was the only ship that returned to Rotterdam;
• the Trouw ("Loyalty"), under Jurriaan van Boekhout (d. 1599) and finally, Baltazar de Cordes; this ship was captured in Tidore;
• the Blijde Boodschap ("Good Tiding" or "The Gospel"), under Sebald de Weert, and later,
  Valparaiso.^[13]

The first major expedition around South America was organized by a voorcompagnie, the Rotterdam or Magelhaen Company. It organized two fleets of five and four ships with 750 sailors and soldiers, including 30 English musicians.[16]

After leaving

By early April, they arrived at the Strait, 570 km long, 2 km wide at its narrowest point, with an inaccurate chart of the seabed.[18] The wind turned out to be unfavorable and this remained so for the next four months. Under freezing temperatures and poor visibility, they caught penguins, seals, mussels, duck and fish. About two hundred crew members died. On 23 August, the weather improved.^[23]

In the Pacific

When the expedition finally reached the Pacific Ocean on 3 September 1599, the ships were caught in a storm and lost sight of each other. The Trouw and the Geloof were driven back in the strait. After more than a year, each ship went its own way.^[18] The Geloof returned to Rotterdam in July 1600 with 36 survivors of the original 109 crew.

De Cordes ordered his small fleet to wait four weeks for each other on

During the voyage, before December 1598, Adams changed ships to the Liefde (originally named Erasmus and adorned with a wooden carving of

In fear of the Spaniards, the remaining crews determined to leave Floreana Island and sail across the Pacific. It was 27 November 1599 when the two ships sailed westward for Japan. On their way, the two ships made landfall in "certain islands"^[citation needed] (probably either Hawaii^[26][27] or the Line Islands of Kiribati, both of which were officially discovered only about 200 years later), where eight sailors deserted the ships. Later during the voyage, a typhoon claimed the Hoope with all hands, in late February 1600.

Arrival in Japan

In April 1600, after more than 19 months at sea, a crew of 23 sick and dying men (out of the 100 who started the voyage) brought the Liefde to anchor off the island of

When the nine surviving crew members were strong enough to stand, they made landfall on 19 April off Bungo (present-day

Coming before the king,^[a] he viewed me well, and seemed to be wonderfully favourable. He made many signs unto me, some of which I understood, and some I did not. In the end, there came one that could speak Portuguese. By him, the king demanded of me of what land I was, and what moved us to come to his land, being so far off. I showed unto him the name of our country, and that our land had long sought out the East Indies, and desired friendship with all kings and potentates in way of merchandise, having in our land diverse commodities, which these lands had not... Then he asked whether our country had wars? I answered him yea, with the Spaniards and Portugals, being in peace with all other nations. Further, he asked me, in what I did believe? I said, in God, that made heaven and earth. He asked me diverse other questions of things of religions, and many other things: As what way we came to the country. Having a chart of the whole world, I showed him, through the Strait of Magellan. At which he wondered, and thought me to lie. Thus, from one thing to another, I abode with him till mid-night. (from William Adams' letter to his wife)^[29]

Adams wrote that Ieyasu denied the Jesuits' request for execution on the ground that:

we as yet had not done to him nor to none of his land any harm or damage; therefore against Reason or Justice to put us to death. If our country had wars the one with the other, that was no cause that he should put us to death; with which they were out of heart that their cruel pretence failed them. For which God be forever praised. (William Adams's letter to his wife)^[29]

Service for Tokugawa shogunate

Through Suminokura, Ieyasu offered to free Adams and his crew in exchange for support in the upcoming civil war. Adams and Joosten were released from Osaka Castle after six weeks and were sent back to their ship. Ieyasu ordered the crew to sail the Liefde from Bungo to

Following the victory at Sekigahara, Tokugawa awarded Adams 10,000 Portuguese reals, but did not allow the Liefde crew to leave Japan. Instead, in 1601, he decided to give each of them a regular rice allowance in exchange for serving as teachers and advisors to the shogunate. In May 1603, he further granted Adams a mansion in Edo with housekeepers, a monthly allowance of 50 ryo, and a daily allowance of a kilogram of rice, as well as an expanded allowance for his crew members.^[28]

Adams successfully piloted the first Spanish merchant ship into Edo Bay in the autumn of 1603, after which Edo became a trading port. Ieyasu dubbed Adams "Anjin" around this time, in recognition of his piloting skills.^[28]

Late in 1604, Tokugawa decreed that Adams would stay in Japan permanently, and in 1605 Tokugawa further granted Adams the status of samurai.^[28] Adams had a wife Mary Hyn and two children back in England,^[2] but Ieyasu forbade the Englishman to leave Japan. Adams also was given the title of jikatatori hatamoto (direct bannerman), a prestigious position as a direct retainer in the shogun's court.^[30]

Adams was given generous revenues: "For the services that I have done and do daily, being employed in the Emperor's service, the emperor

Adams is also recorded as having chartered red seal ships during his later travels to Southeast Asia. (The Ikoku Tokai Goshuinjō has a reference to Miura Anjin receiving a shuinjō, a document bearing a red Shogunal seal authorizing the holder to engage in foreign trade, in 1614.)

Adams appeared to have had a high regard for Japan, its people, and its civilization:

"The people of this Land of Japan are good of nature, courteous above measure, and valiant in war: their justice is severely executed without any partiality upon transgressors of the law. They are governed in great civility. I mean, not a land better governed in the world by civil policy. The people be very superstitious in their religion, and are of diverse opinions."^[31][32]

Shipbuilding

In late 1603, Adams and Quaeckernaeck oversaw the breaking up of Liefde, which had deteriorated beyond repair.^[28]

In 1604, Tokugawa ordered Adams and his companions to help

Hampered by

The Hollandes be now settled (in Japan) and I have got them that privilege as the Spaniards and Portingals could never get in this 50 or 60 years in Japan.^[31]

After obtaining this trading right through an edict of Tokugawa Ieyasu on 24 August 1609, the Dutch inaugurated a trading factory in Hirado on 20 September 1609. The Dutch preserved their "trade pass" (Dutch: handelspas) in Hirado and then Dejima as a guarantee of their trading rights during the following two centuries that they operated in Japan.^{[citation needed]}

In the same year, Ieyasu sent Adams to Onjuku, where the Spanish galleon San Francisco was wrecked while carrying the interim governor of the Philippines, Rodrigo de Vivero y Aberrucia. Friendly letters were exchanged, officially starting relations between Japan and New Spain.^[35] In 1610, the Japanese-built 120-ton ship, named San Buena Ventura, was lent to the Spanish. They sailed it to New Spain, accompanied by a mission of twenty-two Japanese led by Tanaka Shōsuke. Following the construction, Tokugawa invited Adams to visit his palace whenever he liked and said "that always I must come in his presence."^[29]

The Spanish sent Sebastian Viscaino to Japan to negotiate terms for a shogunate-sponsored mining expedition in New Spain in June 1611. Adams attempted to persuade Tokugawa Ieyasu and his successor Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada that the Spanish parlays were a precursor to a colonization attempt. In an effort to counter this, Adams arranged for a Dutch mining engineer to visit Japan in late 1611 to assist in developing the Toi gold mine in western Izu.^[36] Adams and Mukai Shogen oversaw the construction of the new ship for Viscaino's expedition, San Sebastian, which sank shortly after being loaded and sailed off in October.^[37]

The Jesuits and other Catholic religious orders considered Adams, as a Protestant who hated their religion, to be a very serious threat to the future survival of the Catholic Church in Japan. After Adams's power and influence had grown, the Jesuits tried to convert him to Roman Catholicism; when he refused, they allegedly offered to smuggle him out of Japan on a Portuguese ship. When Adams exposed this offer to defy the Shogun's orders to Lord Tokugawa, Roman Catholic priests asserted that Adams was lying and trying to discredit them. In 1614, Father Carvalho complained about the threat posed by Adams and other Protestant merchants in his annual report to Pope Paul V, saying that "by false accusation [Adams and others] have rendered our preachers such objects of suspicion that he [Ieyasu] fears and readily believes that they are rather spies than sowers of the Holy Faith in his kingdom."^[38][39] Adams apparently warned Ieyasu against Spanish approaches as well.

Tokugawa Ieyasu, influenced by Adams's anti-Catholic counsels and Jesuit conspiracy theories, and further disturbed by intrigues from samurai and daimyos who were Catholic converts (for example, the Okamoto Daihachi incident), banished all Portuguese Jesuits from Japan in 1614.^[40] He also demanded that all Japanese Catholics abandon their new faith, and launched what would become a centuries-long policy of religious persecution aimed at those who refused.^[41][42][43]

Anglo-Japanese relations

In 1611, Adams learned of an

In June 1613, the English captain John Saris arrived at Hirado in the ship Clove, intending to establish a trading factory for the Company. Adams traveled from Hemi to Hirado to meet Saris on July 27, the first meeting of Englishmen on Japanese soil.^[47] Saris noted that Adams gave "admirable and affectionated commendations of Japan" and that "it is generally thought amongst us that he is a naturalized Japaner." In Hirado, Adams refused to stay in English quarters, residing instead with a local Japanese magistrate. The English noted that he wore Japanese dress and spoke Japanese fluently. Adams estimated the cargo of the Clove was of little value, essentially broadcloth, tin and cloves (acquired in the Spice Islands), saying that "such things as he had brought were not very vendible".^{[citation needed]}

Adams traveled with Saris to

Although Adams had intended to give up his status and property in Japan to return to England on the Clove, he changed his mind after returning to Hirado with Saris.^[50] After thirteen years spent in Japan, Adams had a difficult time establishing relations with the English arrivals. He initially shunned the company of English sailors and could not get on good terms with Saris, but Richard Cocks, the head of the Hirado factory, came to appreciate Adams's character and what he had acquired of Japanese self-control. In a letter to the East India Company, Cocks wrote:

I find the man tractable and willing to do your worships the best service he may... I am persuaded I could live with him seven years before any extraordinary speeches should happen between us.^[51]

Instead of returning to England, Adams accepted employment with the newly founded Hirado trading factory, signing a contract on 24 November 1613, with the East India Company for the yearly salary of 100 English Pounds. This was more than double the regular salary of 40 pounds earned by the other factors at Hirado. Adams had a lead role, under Richard Cocks and together with six other compatriots (Tempest Peacock, Richard Wickham, William Eaton, Walter Carwarden, Edmund Sayers and William Nealson), in organising this new English settlement. Adams had advised the Company against the choice of Hirado, which was small and far away from the major markets in Osaka and Edo; he had recommended selection of Uraga near Edo for a post. However, Saris wanted to keep an eye on the Dutch activities, and also distrusted Adams.^[52]

Expeditions to Asia

During the ten-year operations of the East India Company (1613 to 1623), only three English ships after the Clove brought cargoes directly from London to Japan. They were invariably described as having poor value on the Japanese market. The only trade which helped support the factory was that organised between Japan and South-East Asia; this was chiefly Adams selling Chinese goods for Japanese silver:

Were it not for hope of trade into China, or procuring some benefit from Siam, Pattania and Cochin China, it were no staying in Japon, yet it is certen here is silver enough & may be carried out at pleasure, but then we must bring them commodities to their liking.^{[51][full citation needed]}

Adams tried to organise an expedition to the legendary Northwest Passage from Asia, which would have greatly reduced the sailing distance between Japan and Europe. Ieyasu asked him if "our countrimen could not find the northwest passage" and Adams contacted the East India Company to organise manpower and supplies. The expedition never got underway. In his later years, Adams made a number of trading voyages to Siam and Cochinchina, sometimes for the company, sometimes for his own account. He is recorded in Japanese records as the owner of a red seal ship of 500 tons. Given the few ships that the company sent from England and the poor trading value of their cargoes (broadcloth, knives, looking glasses, Indian cotton, etc.), Adams was influential in gaining trading certificates from the shogun to allow the company to participate in the red seal system. It made a total of seven junk voyages to Southeast Asia with mixed profit results. Four were led by William Adams as captain. Adams renamed a ship he acquired in 1617 as Gift of God; he sailed it on his expedition that year to Cochinchina. The expeditions he led are described more fully below.

In 1614, Adams wanted to organise a trade expedition to Siam to bolster the company factory's activities and cash situation. He bought and upgraded a 200-ton Japanese junk for the company, renaming her Sea Adventure, and hired about 120 Japanese sailors and merchants, as well as several Chinese traders, an Italian and a Castilian (Spanish) trader. The heavily laden ship left Hirado in November 1614. The merchants Richard Wickham and Edmund Sayers of the English factory's staff also joined the voyage. The expedition was to purchase raw silk, Chinese goods,

After a trip to Edo to meet with the ambassador from New Spain on Shogun Hidetada's orders, Adams left Hirado on 7 December 1615 for Ayutthaya in Siam on the refitted Sea Adventure, intent on obtaining sappan wood for resale in Japan.[55] His cargo was chiefly silver (£600) and the Japanese and Indian goods unsold from the previous voyage.^{[citation needed]} In Bangkok, Adams met with the King of Siam and obtained a trading license for the English, and then sailed the Sea Adventure to Japan with 143 tonnes of sappan wood and 3,700 deer skins, returning to Hirado in 47 days. (The return trip took from 5 June to 22 July 1616).^[56]

Less than a week before Adams's return, Ieyasu died, giving his son Shogun Hidetada practical control over the country. Hidetada was less interested in foreign affairs than Ieyasu, and excluded Adams from his next audience with the Company, in part due to distrust stemming from Adams's wife's conversion to Christianity.^[57] However, three weeks later, Hidetada met with Adams, and in September he agreed to maintain the English trading privileges and also issued a new red seal permit (shuinjō) to Adams, which allowed Adams to continue trade activities overseas under the shogun's protection. While Hidetada confined English trading activities to Hirado and Nagasaki, and barred Japanese merchants from purchasing goods from foreigners in Osaka and Kyoto, Adams retained his hatamoto status and was exempt from these restrictions.^[58]

Adams declined to join an English expedition from Hirado in December 1616; there is evidence that he was suffering from a mental breakdown around this time due to the death of Ieyasu and political aftershocks, as well as physical injuries Adams sustained on the way back from Edo after meeting Hidetada.^[59]

In March 1617, Adams set sail for Cochinchina, having purchased the junk Sayers had brought from Siam and renamed it the Gift of God. He intended to find two English factors, Tempest Peacock and Walter Carwarden, who had departed from Hirado two years before to explore commercial opportunities on the first voyage to Southeast Asia by the English factory in Hirado. Adams learned in Cochinchina that Peacock had been plied with drink, and killed for his silver. Carwarden, who was waiting in a boat downstream, realised that Peacock had been killed and hastily tried to reach his ship. His boat overturned and he drowned. Adams sold a small cargo of broadcloth, Indian piece goods and ivory in Cochinchina for the modest amount of £351.^{[citation needed]}

Adams then sailed Gift of God to Osaka, met with Hidetada at Fushimi Castle in September 1617, and obtained new red seal licenses. He agreed to sell both the ship and the licenses to the English factory in Hirado.^[60]

Rifts with English and Dutch

Adams joined a Dutch mission from Hirado to Edo in July 1618. Shortly thereafter, the Dutch brought the captured English ship Attendance to Hirado, sparking hostilities between the previously friendly English and Dutch merchants there. Adams refused to help the English appeal to the Shogun about the issue, arguing that Hidetada would not be interested.^[61] Adams later changed his mind and met with Hidetada in October, but due to Adams's prior sale of his Red Seal license to the English, and disturbances that occurred on the resulting voyage, Hidetada refused to grant further licenses to the factory. Adams returned to Hirado in December after spending months attempting to save the English factory.^[62]

Adams arranged a final voyage to Cochinchina and Tonkin from March to August 1619, using a personal Red Seal license rather than working for the English. During this voyage, England and the Netherlands went to war in Asia, and Adams contracted a tropical disease which caused his health to deteriorate remarkably. However, after returning to Hirado, Adams managed to rescue three English prisoners who were imprisoned on a Dutch ship.^[63] In the final months of his life, Adams assisted the English factory by acting as a broker for trade with the governor of Nagasaki.^[64]

Family

Adams was recorded to have married Mary Hyn in the parish church of St Dunstan's, Stepney^[9] on 20 August 1589. They had two children together: a son John^[65] and a daughter Deliverance.^[2] After Adams's voyage to Japan, Mary Hyn was forced to leave Limehouse and became destitute for some time, although she received a portion of Adams's wages from the East India Company in 1615.^[66]

Deliverance married Ratcliff mariner Raph Goodchild at St Dunstan's, Stepney on 30 September 1618. They had two daughters, Abigail in October 1619 who died in the same month, and Jane in April 1621. Deliverance would later marry for a second time, to John Wright at St Alfege Church, Greenwich on 13 October 1624. Mary died in 1620 at Gillingham in Kent.^[67]

After settling in Japan, Adams married a Japanese woman, although there is no clear evidence of her name and background in either Japanese or European historical records.^[68] A common account is that his wife was named Oyuki (お雪) and was the adopted daughter of Magome Kageyu, a highway official who was in charge of a pack-horse exchange on one of the grand imperial roads that led out of Edo. Although Magome was important, Oyuki was not of noble birth, nor high social standing.^[1] The family link to Magome is shown in Japanese historical accounts written in the 1800s, while the first known reference to the name "Oyuki" is from a fictional work in 1973, and earlier fictional accounts refer to Adams's wife by names such as Mary, Tsu, Bikuni, Tae, and Chrysanthemum.^[68]

Adams and his Japanese wife had a son Joseph and a daughter Susanna. Some accounts describe Adams having other children with concubines or mistresses, but no such children were named in his will.^[2][69] Richard Cocks wrote that Adams's interpreter, "Coshuro", claimed support for Adams's son "Cowjohns" in 1621, after Adams's death, and that he also made similar support payments for another alleged child of Adams.^[70]

Death and family legacy

Left: Jōdo-ji temple in Yokosuka City
Right: Memorial towers for Anjin Miura and Anjin's wife.

Adams died at Hirado, north of Nagasaki, on 16 May 1620, at the age of 55. In his will, he left his townhouse in Edo, his fief in Hemi, and 500 English pounds to be divided evenly between his family in England and his family in Japan. The English family's portion of the inheritance did not reach London until 1622, at which point Mary Hyn was already dead.^[71]

Cocks wrote: "I cannot but be sorrowful for the loss of such a man as Capt William Adams, he having been in such favour with two Emperors of Japan as never any Christian in these part of the world."^[51]

Cocks records that Hidetada transferred the lordship from William Adams to his son Joseph Adams with the attendant rights to the estate at Hemi.^[51] Cocks continued to remain in contact with Adams's Japanese family, sending gifts. On the Christmas after Adams's death, Cocks gave Joseph his father's sword and dagger. In March 1622, he offered silks to Joseph and Susanna. Cocks also administered Adams's trading rights (the shuinjō) for the benefit of Adams's children, Joseph and Susanna. He carried this out conscientiously.

In 1623, the unprofitable English trading factory in Hirado was dissolved by the East India Company and Cocks departed for England, the Dutch traded on Adams' children's behalf via the red seal ships. Joseph Adams inherited the title of Miura Anjin, became a trader, and made five voyages to Cochinchina and Siam between 1624 and 1635.

By 1629, only two of Adams's shipmates from 1600 survived in Japan: Melchior van Santvoort and Vincent Romeyn lived quietly in Nagasaki.^[72]

In 1635, Hidetada's successor Tokugawa Iemitsu enforced the Sakoku Edict for Japan to be closed against foreign trading; both Joseph and Susanna disappear from historical records at that time.^[73] All Japanese of mixed race were expelled to Jakarta, and it is presumed that Adams's children were among them.^[74]

Remains

Adams was buried in Hirado in 1620.[75] His gravesite is next to a memorial to Saint Francis Xavier. However, a few years later foreign cemeteries were destroyed and there was persecution of Christians by the Tokugawa shogunate.^[75] The bones of Anjin were taken for safekeeping and reburied.^[75] In 1931, skeletal remains were first discovered there and assumed to be of Anjin, but this could not be confirmed due to technological limitations at the time. The remains were later placed in a Showa period ceramic funerary urn and reburied where they were discovered.^[75]

In July 2017, the excavation of the skeletal remains began at the William Adams Memorial Park on Sakigata Hill, Hirado.^[76] In 2019, Japanese archaeologists announced the discovery of bones at the site believed to be those of Adams.^[77] These remains match the 1931 description.^[75] The subsequent biomolecular anthropological investigation of the genetic background showed the mtDNA analysis indicates Anjin's mitochondrial DNA likely belongs to haplogroup H. The analysis also showed aspects such as the dietary habits and burial style matched with Anjin.^[75] In April 2020, the University of Tokyo conducted conclusive forensic tests on the bones and confirmed it was William Adams' grave.^[76][78]

Honours

• A town in Edo (modern Tokyo), Anjin-chō (in modern-day Nihonbashi) was named after Adams, who had a house there. Anjin-chō no longer exists in Nihonbashi and is now known as Nihonbashi Muromachi 1-Chōme. However within Muromachi 1-Chōme a street, Anjin-dori, remains named after Adams.^[79]
• A village and a railroad station in his fiefdom, Hemi, in modern Yokosuka, were named for him.
• In the city of Itō, Shizuoka, the Miura Anjin Festival is held annually on 10 August. On the seafront at Itō is a monument to Adams. Next to it is a plaque inscribed with Edmund Blunden's poem, "To the Citizens of Ito", which commemorates Adams' achievement.
• Adams's birth town,
  Gillingham, has held a Will Adams Festival every September since 2000.^[80]
  Since the late 20th century, both Itō and Yokosuka have become sister cities of Gillingham.
• A monument to Adams was installed in Watling Street, Gillingham, Kent, opposite Darland Avenue. The monument was unveiled 11 May 1934 by Tsuneo Matsudaira GCVO, Japanese ambassador to the Court of St James.
• A roundabout named Will Adams Roundabout with a Japanese theme, just along from the Gillingham monument to Adams, with two roads named after the Gillingham sister cities "Ito Way" and "Yokosuka Way"
• The townhouse of Will Adams still exists in Hirado. It is currently a sweet shop called Tsutaya at 431 Kihikidacho. It is known as Anjin no Yakata (Anjin's House).^[81]
• Adams has a second memorial monument at the location of his residence in Hemi. Consisting of a pair of hōkyōintō, the tuff memorial on the right is that of Adams, and the andesite one of the left is for his wife. The monuments were erected by his family in accordance with his will, and the site was designated as a National Historic Site in 1923.^[82]

Media portrayals

• James Clavell based his best-selling novel Shōgun (1975) on Adams' life and changed the name of his protagonist to "John Blackthorne". It has been adapted in various forms:
  • 1980, as the NBC miniseries, Shōgun^[83]
  • 1989, as a video game James Clavell's Shōgun
  • 1990, as a Broadway production, Shōgun: The Musical
  • 2024, as the FX miniseries, Shōgun
• Michel Foucault retold Adams' tale in The Discourse on Language.^[84] According to Foucault, the story embodies one of the "great myths of European culture," and the idea that a mere sailor could teach mathematics to the Japanese shogun shows the difference between the open exchange of knowledge in Europe, as opposed to the secretive control of knowledge under "oriental tyranny". In fact, however, Adams was not a mere sailor but the chief navigator of the fleet, and his value to the Shogun was along the practical lines of shipbuilding.

There were numerous earlier works of fiction and non-fiction based on Adams.^[85]

• William Dalton wrote Will Adams, The First Englishman in Japan: A Romantic Biography (London, 1861).^[85]
• Richard Blaker's The Needlewatcher (London, 1932) is the least romantic of the novels; he consciously attempted to de-mythologize Adams and write a careful historical work of fiction.^[85]
• James Scherer's Pilot and Shōgun (1935) dramatises a series of incidents based on Adams' life.^[85]
• American Robert Lund wrote Daishi-san (New York, 1960).^[85]
• Christopher Nicole's Lord of the Golden Fan (1973) portrays Adams as sexually frustrated in England and freed by living in Japan, where he has numerous encounters. The work is considered light pornography.^[85]
• In 2002, Giles Milton's historical biography Samurai William (2002)^[86] is based on historical sources, especially Richard Cocks' diary.
• The 2002 alternate history novel Ruled Britannia by Harry Turtledove features a brief appearance by Adams, piloting cargo and passengers between England and Ostend, both of which are puppet states of the Habsburg Empire in this timeline.
• In the second season of
  Heroes
  , a story set in samurai-era Japan features an Englishman who seems to be based on Adams.
• A book series called Young Samurai is about a young English boy who is ship wrecked in Japan, and is trained as a samurai.
• Adams also serves as the template for the protagonist in the PlayStation 4 and PC video game series Nioh (2017) and non-playable character in its prequel/sequel hybrid game (2020), but with supernatural and historical fiction elements. Unlike the historical William Adams, the game portrays him as an Irishman. As of the end of the second game, some time after managing to arrest the Spaniard Maria, he married Okatsu and had an English-Japanese son named Joseph who inherited his mother's guardian spirit.
  • This version also appeared in the Warriors series' crossover game, Warriors All-Stars.

Depiction

According to Professor Derek Massarella of Chuo University in Tokyo:^[87]

Some in England were embarrassed that no similar monument to Adams existed in his native land and after years of lobbying a memorial clock was erected in Gillingham in honour of a native son who, according to the booklet produced for the dedication ceremony in 1934, a time of Anglo-Japanese alienation, had "discovered" Japan. Like the inscription at the anjin-tsuka, the booklet is a product of fantasy and hyperbole, only much more so. ... The booklet also contains a drawing of Adams, which is pure invention, depicting him standing on a ship's deck, chart in right hand, left hand resting on sword, gazing resolutely towards the unknown horizon.

There is however one genuine contemporary image: "It is a derivative drawing of William Adams, which appears to be based in a sketch attributed to Dorothy Burmingham, from a description given by Melchior von Santvoort. The original drawing is to be found at the Rotterdam Maritime Museum, whose specialist Marcel Kroon considers it to be from Adams' time. A copy is preserved at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford."^[88]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to William Adams (sailor).

• Anglo-Japanese relations
• Jan Joosten – known in Japanese as Yan Yōsuten, was a Dutch colleague of Adams, and the only known Dutch samurai. The Yaesu neighbourhood in Chūō, Tokyo was named for him.
• Bernardo the Japanese – the first Japanese who visited Europe
• Hasekura Tsunenaga – a Japanese samurai who traveled to New Spain
• Henry Schnell – known in Japanese as Hiramatsu Buhei, was a Prussian arms dealer, who served the Aizu domain as a military instructor and procurer of weapons.
• Eugène Collache – French Navy officer, who fought for the shōgun during the Boshin War (1868–1869).
• Jules Brunet (1838–1911) – French officer who fought for the shōgun in the Boshin War
• Japanologist
• Hendrick Hamel (1630–1692) – first European to live in the Joseon-dynasty era in Korea (1666) and write about it
• retainer briefly in the service of the Japanese warlord Nobunaga Oda
• List of foreign-born samurai in Japan
• List of Westerners who visited Japan before 1868

Notes