What Happened When a Protestant Pilot Met Japan’s Future Shogun
It was a voyage in which everything that could go wrong, did. A Dutch fleet of five ships left Rotterdam in June of 1598. The destination was the Spice Islands, what we call Indonesia today. Over the next two years, four of those ships were lost to mutiny, storms, and hostile encounters. Ultimately, the lone surviving ship, the Liefde, limped into Usuki Bay in southern Japan in April of 1600. Her crew numbered just 23 of the original hundred-plus mariners. Onto this foreign, unfamiliar island staggered a handful of Protestant foreigners with weapons, creating a tense first impression for both the visitors and their decidedly unenthusiastic greeters. The leader of these interlopers was William Adams, the inspiration for James Clavell’s Blackthorne in his Shōgun epic.
Adams was not the captain of the Liefde, but as the pilot, he was second-in-command to the captain. The respect of his crew and his deference to Japanese authority enabled him to gain the trust of the local political leaders. Eager to understand their culture, Adams immersed himself in the world of feudal Japan: a society of samurai code, political intrigue, and tightly ordered hierarchy. Though the rituals were foreign and the language impenetrable, the structure Adams stepped into—rank, loyalty, and power plays—felt oddly familiar to a man raised in Elizabethan England.
Initial Detainment and Interrogation
Local authorities detained the crew almost immediately. However, it was a reasonable precaution. The Japanese would certainly understand that 23 men handling a ship of that size meant something was wrong, and that something could have been a disease requiring containment. We can’t forget, either, that part about foreigners with guns…Protestant foreigners.
Port cities had concentrations of Portuguese Jesuits, who saw Adams’s party as intruders disloyal to Catholicism. As a result, the Jesuits weren’t eager to facilitate an easy entry to the social order. Within days of the sailors’ arrival, Tokugawa Ieyasu summoned Adams to his court.
Understandably, communication was labored and difficult, but Adams was dignified and respectful in his responses. However, through shared nautical terms, gestures, and persistent questioning, the language barrier crumbled by degrees. The questioning stretched for days, even weeks, as Ieyasu sifted through Adams’s answers with methodical curiosity. It was less a trial than a slow, deliberate examination of whether this foreigner was a threat—or an opportunity.
Service to the Shogun
In the early years, William Adams expressed a desire to return to England, to the life he knew there. He requested the consent of Ieyasu to leave Japan, but by that time, Adams had become too valuable as a military and naval advisor, a shipbuilder, and an interpreter of Western politics and trade. Over time, Adams came to accept his new life. He received land, a title of honor, a generous stipend, and considerable freedom. The official title he held was that of samurai, and, as such, he served and was under the legal protection of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Ieyasu received the title of shogun from the emperor in 1603, making him Japan’s military leader.
During his period in the service of Ieyasu, Adams provided military and diplomatic assistance, as well as interpreting both linguistic communication and cultural differences between Japan and the West. In fact, Adams oversaw the construction of Western-style ships, helped Ieyasu understand the religious (and political) divide between Protestants and Catholics, and acted as an intermediary between European traders and the Japanese government.
An Apt Entry to Our Radicals, Renegades, and Rebels Gallery
A humble beginning – a poor English boy apprenticed to a shipwright near London, making a name for himself as a mariner – doesn’t sound very radical. Additionally, succeeding in naval life isn’t likely for a renegade or rebel. It’s the next phase of William Adams’s life that opens him to an unfamiliar world where he becomes someone new. In his own native land, receiving a nobleman’s title and all that accompanied it would have been all but impossible. Also, rising to the rank of samurai – a noble status in Japan – was out of the reach of most Japanese, and an Englishman achieved it in four or five years. Sometimes it’s a radical change we don’t choose for ourselves that empowers us to become who we really are.
Your Turn
There’s so much more detail to the account of William Adams than I can provide here, but it’s all worth exploring. I’ll provide some links for you to start with, but in the meantime, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment with something you found inspiring about the first – and likely only – English samurai. The comments section is below the Related Posts.
William Adams: How An English Navigator Became A Samurai In Japan
William Adams: English Adviser to the Shogun | History Today
William Adams | English Navigator & Samurai Warrior | Britannica
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