William Adams
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Image:WilliamAdams.jpg William Adams (September 24, 1564–May 16, 1620), also known in Japanese as Anjin-sama (按針様, "Mr Pilot") and Miura Anjin (三浦按針, "the pilot of Miura"), was an English navigator who went to Japan, and is believed to be the first Briton ever to reach Japan.
Early life
William Adams was born at Gillingham, in Kent, England. After losing his father at the age of 12, he was apprenticed to shipyard owner Master Nicholas Diggins at Limehouse for the seafaring life. He spent the next 12 years learning shipbuilding, astronomy and navigation afterwards entering the British navy.
Adams served in the Royal Navy under Sir Francis Drake, and saw naval service against the Spanish Armada in 1588 as master of the Richarde Dyffylde.
Adams then became a pilot for the company Barbary Company. During this service, according to Jesuit sources, he took part in an expedition to the Arctic that lasted about two years in search of a Northeast Passage along the coast of Siberia to the Far East.
…I am a Kentish man, born in a town called Gillingham, two English miles from Rochester, one mile from Chattam, where the King's ships do lie: from the age of twelve years old, I was brought up in Limehouse near London, being Apprentice twelve years to Master Nicholas Diggins; and myself have served for Master and Pilot in her Majesty's ships; and about eleven or twelve years have served the Worshipfull Company of the Barbary Merchants, until the Indish traffic from Holland began, in which Indish traffic I was desirous to make a little experience of the small knowledge which God had given me. So, in the year of our Lord 1598, I was hired for Pilot Major of a fleet of five sails, which was made ready by the Dutch Indish Company…. (1611 Letter, William Adams)
Expedition to the Far East
Attracted by the Dutch trade with India, Adams, then 34, shipped as pilot major with a five-ship fleet dispatched from the Texel to the Far East in 1598 by a company of Rotterdam merchants (a voorcompagnie, anterior to the Dutch East India Company).
Image:LiefdeShip.jpg He set sail from Rotterdam in June 1598 on the Hoop and joined up with the rest of the fleet (Liefde, Geloof, Trouw and Blijde Boodschap) on June 24, under the command of Jacques Mahu.
The vessels, boats ranging from 75 to 250 tons and crowded with men, were driven to the coast of Guinea, where the adventurers attacked the island of Annabon for supplies, and finally went for the straits of Magellan. Scattered by stress of weather, and after several disasters in the South Atlantic, only three ships out of five made it through the Magellan Straits (The Blijde Boodschop drifted after being disabled in bad weather and was captured by the Spanish, and the Geloof returned to Rotterdam in July 1600 with 36 of the original 109 crew).
Adams changed ships to the Liefde (originally Erasmus because of the wooden figurehead of Erasmus on her bow). The following spring 1599 the Liefde with Adams on board, and the Hoop met at length off the coast of Chile, where the captains of both vessels, together with Adams's brother Thomas and 20 other men, lost their lives in an encounter with the Indians.
The Liefde waited for the other ships at the offshore Santa Maria Island. Only the Hoop arrived. It was late November 1599 when the two ships sailed westwardly for Japan.
The Trouw later turned up in Tidore, where the crew was eliminated by the Portuguese in January 1601.
Arrival in Japan
Image:JanJoostenLiefde.JPG In fear of the Spaniards, the remaining crews determined to sail across the Pacific towards Japan. On their way, the two ships arrived in "certain islands" (possibly the islands of Hawaii), where eight sailors deserted the ships. Later on this voyage a typhoon claimed the Hoop with all souls in late February 1600.
In April 1600, after more than nineteen months at sea, the Liefde with a crew of about twenty sick and dying men (out of an initial crew of about one hundred), was brought to anchor off the island of Kyushu, Japan. Its cargo consisted of 11 chests of coarse wollen cloth, glass beads, mirrors, spectacles, nails, iron, hammers, 19 bronze cannons, 5,000 cannonballs, 500 muskets, 300 chain-shot and three chests filled with coats of mail.
When the Liefde made landfall on April 19, 1600, off Bungo (present-day Usuki, Oita Prefecture) only nine of the remaining 24 crew members could even stand. The Portuguese Jesuit priests claimed that Adams's ship was a pirate vessel, and that the crew should be cruxified as pirates. The ship was seized, and the sickly crew was imprisoned at Osaka Castle on orders by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the daimyo of Mikawa and future Shogun. The 19 bronze cannons of the Liefde were unloaded and, according to Spanish accounts, later employed at the decisive battle of Sekigahara in October 21, 1600.
Adams met Ieyasu in Osaka three times between May and June 1600. He was questioned by Ieyasu, then a guardian of the young son of the Taiko (Toyotomi Hideyoshi), the ruler who had just died. Adams knowledge of ships and shipbuilding, and his nautical smattering of mathematics, appealed to Ieyasu.
Coming before the king, he viewed me well, and seemed to be wonderfuly favorable. 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 kinds 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 yeah, 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 religion, 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 midnight. (William Adams's letter to his wife)
Adams further explained that Ieyasu finally denied the Jesuit's request for punishment, 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)
Ieyasu ordered the crew to sail the Liefde from Bungo to Edo, where, rotten and beyond repair, she later sank.
Japan's first western-style sailing ships
In 1604, Ieyasu ordered Adams and his companions to build a western-style sailing ship at Ito, on the east coast of the Izu Peninsula. An 80-ton vessel was completed and the Shogun ordered a larger ship, 120 tons, to be built the following year (both were slightly smaller than the Liefde, which was 150 tons). According to Adams, Ieyasu "came aboard to see it, and the sight whereof gave him great content". The ship, San Buena Ventura, was lent to shipwrecked Spanish sailors for their return to Mexico in 1610.
Following the contruction, Ieyasu said that he invited Adams to visit the palace whenever he liked, and "that always I must come in his presence" (Letters).
Other survivors of the Liefde were also rewarded with favours and even allowed to pursue foreign trade. Although Adams could not receive permission for himself to leave Japan until 1613, Melchior van Santvoort together with another crew Jan Joosten van Lodensteijn reportedly made a fortune in trade between Japan and Southeast Asia. Both of them were reported by Dutch traders in Ayutthaya, onboard richly cargoed junks, in early 1613.
William Adams also is 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 in 1614).
The first foreign samurai
The Shogun took a liking to Adams, and made him a revered diplomatic and trade adviser and bestowing great privileges upon him. Ultimately, Adams became his personal advisor on things Western, and after a few years replaced the Jesuit Padre João Rodrigues as his official interpreter. Padre Valentim Carvalho wrote: "After he had learned the language, he had access to Ieyasu and entered the palace at any time"; he also described him as "a great engineer and mathematician".
Adams had a wife and children in England, but Ieyasu had forbidden the Englishman to leave Japan. He was presented with two swords representing the authority of a Samurai. The Shogun decreed that William Adams the pilot was dead and that Miura Anjin (三浦按針), a samurai, was born. This made Will's wife in England, in effect, a widow (although Adams managed to send regular support payments to her after 1613 via the English and Dutch companies), and "freed" Adams to serve him on a permanent basis. Adams also received the title of hatamoto (bannerman), a high-prestige position as a direct retainer in the Shogun's court.
He was provided with generous revenues: "For the services that I have done and do daily, being employed in the Emperor's service, the emperor has given me a living" (Letters). He was granted a fief, in Hemi (Jp: 逸見) within the boundaries of present-day Yokosuka City, "with eighty or ninety husbandmen, that be my slaves or servants" (Letters). His estate was valued at 250 koku (measure of the income of the land in rice, about five bushels). He finally wrote "God hath provided for me after my great misery" (Letters).
Adams's estate was located next to the harbour of Uraga, the traditional point of entrance to Edo Bay, where he is recorded to have been dealing with the cargoes of foreign ships. Saris related that when he visited Edo in 1613, Adams was in possession of the reselling rights for the cargo of a Spanish ship at anchor in Uraga Bay.
Adams's position gave him the means to marry Oyuki, the daughter of Magome Kageyu, a noble samurai and official of Edo Castle, which stood in present day Tokyo. Anjin and Oyuki had a son called Joseph, and a daughter, Susanna. The Anjin, however, found it hard to rest his feet and was constantly on the road. Initially, it was in the vain attempt to organize an expedition in search of the Arctic passage that had eluded him previously.
Adams had a high regard for Japan, its people, and its civilization:
The people of this Land of Japan are good of nature, curteous above measure, and valiant in war: their justice is severely excecuted 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 divers opinions. (William Adam's letter to Bantam, 1612)
Contacts with the Dutch East India Company
The Liefde's Captain, Jacob Quaeckernaeck, and the treasurer, Melchior van Santvoort, were also sent by Ieyasu in 1604 on a Shogun-licensed Red Seal Ship to go to Patani in Southeast Asia and contact the Dutch East India Company to bring trade to Japan. In 1605, Adams obtained a letter from Ieyasu inviting the Dutch to trade with Japan.
Hampered by conflicts with the Portuguese, the Dutch were not able to send a ship until 1609, to the harbour of Hirado. Through Adams's negotiation with the Shogun, they obtained free trading rights thoughout Japan (in contrast, the Portuguese were only allowed to sell their goods in Nagasaki at fixed, negotiated prices), and to establish a trading factory there:
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. (William Adams letter to Bantam).
Religious rivalries
Adams, a Protestant by religion, was seen as a rival by the Portuguese and Catholic religious orders in Japan. Catholic priests insisted that he was using his influence on Ieyasu to discredit them:
In his character of heretic, he constantly endeavoured to discredit our church as well as its ministers".. He and others "by false accusation ... have rendered our preachers such objects of suspicion that Ieyasu fears and readily believes that they are rather spies than sowers of the Holy Faith in his kingdoms. (Padre Valentim Carvalho).
Ieyasu, influenced partly by such counceling, and partly by social troubles, expelled the Jesuits from Japan in 1614, and demanded the Japanese Catholics abandon their faith.
Adams also apparently warned Ieyasu against Spanish approaches, explaining that they typically try to establish Catholic converts as a prelude to invading a country.
Establishment of an English trading factory
Image:Hirado castle.jpg In 1611 news came to him of an English settlement in Bantam, Indonesia, and he sent them a letter, asking them to give news of him to his familly and friends in England, and enticing them to engage in trade with Japan, in which "the Hollanders have here an Indies of money" (Adams's letter to Bantam).
In 1613 Captain John Saris arrived at Hirado in the ship Clove with the object of establishing a trading factory for the British East India Company (Hirado was already a trading post for the Dutch East India Company (the VOC)).
Adams met with Saris's ire over his praise of Japan and adoption of Japanese customs:
He persists in giving "admirable and affectionated commendations of Japan. It is generally thought amongst us that he is a naturalized Japaner." (John Saris)
In Hirado, Adams refused to stay in English quarters, and instead resided with a local Japanese magistrate. It was also commented that he was wearing 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".
Adams travelled with Saris to Shizuoka, where they met with Ieyasu at his principal residence in September, and then continued to Kamakura, where they visited the famous Buddha (the 1252 Daibutsu, on which the sailors etched their names), and then to Edo, where they met Ieyasu's son Hidetada (who gave Saris two varnished suits of armor for King James I, today housed in the Tower of London).
Image:HiradoVOCfactory(montanus-1669).jpg On their way back, they visited again Ieyasu, who confered trading priviliges to the British, giving them "free license to abide, buy, sell and barter" in Japan. They headed back to Hirado on October 9, 1613.
On this occasion, Adams asked for, and obtained, Ieyasu's authorization to return to his home country. He ultimately declined Saris's offer to bring him back to England however: "I answered him I had spent in this country many years, through which I was was poor... [and] desirous to get something before my return". His true reasons seem to lie rather with his profound antipathy for Saris: "The reason I would not go with him was for diverse injuries done against me, the which were things to me very strange and unlooked for." (William Adams letters)
He accepted an employement with the newly founded Hirado trading factory, signing a contract on November 24, 1613, by which he became an employee of the East India Company, for the yearly salary of 100 English Pounds, more than double the regular salary of 40 Pounds earned by the other factors at Hirado. Adams was to take a leading part, under Richard Cocks, and together with six other compatriots, in the organization of this new English settlement.
Adams had actually recommended against the choice of Hirado, which was small and very far away from major markets in Osaka and Edo, and instead had recommend to Saris, in vain, that they should select Uraga, near Edo.
During the ten year activity of the company between 1613 and 1623, apart from the first ship, the Clove in 1613, only three other English ships brought cargoes directly from London to Japan, invariably described as poor value on the Japanese market. The only trade which helped support the factory was that organized between Japan and South-East Asia and mainly undertaken by William 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 ther liking. (Richard Cocks Diary, 1617)
Character
After fifteen years spent in Japan, Adams's relations with his compatriots were not the easiest. He initially shunned the company of the newly arrived English sailors in 1613, and could not get on terms with Saris.
However, Cocks, the head of the Hirado factory progressively came to appreciate Adams's character and distincitively Japanese self-control. In a letter to the East India Company:
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. (Cocks Diary)
Participation in Asian trade
Adams later engaged in various exploratory and commercial ventures. He tried to organize the exploration of the Northern Passage from the East, which would have greatly reduced the traveling 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 organize manpower and supplies. The project never materialized however.
The latter part of his life was spent in the service of the English trading company. He undertook a number of voyages to Siam in 1616, and Cochin China in 1617 and 1618, sometimes for the English East India Company, sometimes for his own account. He is recorded in Japanese sources as the owner of a Red Seal Ship of 500 tons.
Given the small number of the ships coming from England (four ships in ten years, the Clove, the Hosiander in 1615, the Thomas and the Advice in 1616) and the poor value of their cargoes (broadcloth, knives, looking classes, Indian cotton...), William Adams played a key role in having the company partipate in the Red Seal system, by obtaining trading certificates from the Shogun. Altogether seven junk voyages were made with destination Southeast Asia, with mixed results, four of them headed by William Adams as Captain. Adams also owned the "Gift of God", a junk he used on an expedition to Cochinchina.
1614 Siam expedition
Image:RedSealShip.JPG Adams wished to organize a trade expedition to Siam to bolster the factory's activity. He bought for the factory and upgraded a 200-ton Japanese junk, renamed her the Sea Adventure, hired about 120 Japanese sailors and merchants, as well as several Chinese traders, and an Italian and a Castillan trader, and left on November 1614, during the typhoon season. The merchants Richard Wickham and Edmund Sayers of the English factory's staff also particpated to the voyage.
The ship was to purchase raw silk, Chinese goods, sappan wood, deer skins and ray skins (used for the scabbards of Japanese swords), and essentially carried silver (£1250) and only £175 of merchandise (Indian cottons, Japanese weapons and lacquerware).
His ship met with a typhoon near the Ryūkyū Islands (modern Okinawa), and he had to stop there to repair his ship from 27 December 1614 until May 1615, before returning to Japan in June 1615 without having been able to purchase anything.
1615 Siam expedition
Adams again left Hirado in November 1615 for Ayutthaya in Siam on the refit Sea Adventure, intending to bring sappanwood for resale in Japan. Again the cargo consisted mainly of silver (£600), with the Japanese and Indian goods unsold on the previous voyage.
He managed to buy vast quantities of the profitable products, buying two additional ships in Siam to transport everything. Adams sailed the Sea Adventure back to Japan with 143 tonnes of sappanwood and 3,700 deer skins, returning to Hirado in 47 days, between 5 June and 22 July 1616. Sayers, on a hired Chinese junk, reached Hirado in October 1616, with 44 tons of wood. The third ship, a Japanese junk, brought 4,560 deer skins to Nagasaki in June 1617, after having missed the monsoon.
Adams's voyage had taken eight months altogether. He returned to Japan less than a week after the death of Ieyasu, and accompanied Cocks and Eaton to court to offer presents to the new ruler Hidetada. Although the death of Ieyasu in 1616 seems to have weakened Adams's political influence, Hidetada aggreed to maintain the trading privileges of the English, and issued a Red Seal permit (Shuinjō) to Adams, allowing him to continue trade activities overseas under the Shogun's protection. His position as hatamoto was also renewed.
On this occasion, Adams and Cocks also visited the Japanese Admiral Mukai Shogen Tadakatsu, who lived near Adams's estate, and they discussed plans about a possible invasion of the Catholic Philippines.
1617 Cochinchina expedition
In March 1617, Adams set sail to Cochinchina, having purchased the junk Sayers had brought from Siam and renamed it the Gift of God. He intended to find two English factors that had left Hirado two years before to explore commercial opportunities (the first voyage to South East Asia by the Hirado English Factory). He returned to Japan with the knowledge that both had been killed and robbed of their silver.
The ship also sold a small cargo of broadcloth, Indian piece goods and ivory, for the modest amount of £351.
1618 Cochinchina expedition
In 1618, Adams is recorded as having organized his last Red Seal trade expedition to Cochinchina and Tonkin (modern Vietnam), and the last expedition of the English Hirado Factory to Southeast Asia. The ship, a chartered Chinese junk, left Hirado on 11 March 1618, but met with bad weather that forced it to stop at Ōshima in the northern Ryukyus. The ship sailed back to Hirado in May.
The expeditions helped the factory survive for some time (sappanwood resold in Japan with a 200% profit), until the factory fell into bankruptcy due to high expenditures.
Adams's legacy
Adams died at Hirado, north of Nagasaki, on May 16, 1620, aged 56. The English factory was dissolved three years later due to its unprofitability. He was buried in his fief in Hemi, Yokosuka.
In his will, he left his townhouse in Edo, his fief in Hemi, and 500 British pounds, to be divided evenly between his family in England and his family in Japan.
Cocks wrote: "I cannot but be sorrowfull 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" (Cocks's Diary)
Cocks remained in contact with Adams's familly, sending gifts, and in March 1622, offering silks for Joseph and Susanna. He handed to Joseph his father's sword and dagger on Christmas following Adams's death. He also records that Hidetada transfered the lordship from Williams Adams to his son Joseph Adams, with the attendant rights to the estate at Hemi:
He (Hidetada) has confirmed the lordship to his son, which the other emperor (Ieyasu) gave to the father (Cocks's Dairy)
Cocks was also in charge of using Adams's trading rights (the shuinjō) for the benefit of Adams's children, Joseph and Susanna, a task he performed conscientiously, and which was handled by the Dutch after 1623.
Image:WilliamAdamsMonument.JPG Adams's son also kept the title of Miura Anjin, and was a successful trader until the closure of the country in 1635, when he disappears from historical records.
Adams's memory is preserved in the naming of a town in Edo (modern Tokyo), Anjin-chō, where he had a house, and by an annual celebration on June 15 in his honour.
A village in his fiefdom, Anjinzuka (安針塚, "Burial mound of the Pilot"), in modern Yokosuka, bears his name.
Also, in the city of Itō, Shizuoka, the Miura Anjin Festival is held all day on August 10.
Today, both Itō and Yokosuka are sister cities of Adams's birth town of Gillingham.
Famous William Adams quotes
Altogether, four letters of William Adams are known, among which the letter to his wife and the letter to the English trading post at Bantam are the most informative. Some other famous quotes:
- "Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be."
- "Faith is a continuation of reason."
- "As a nation of free men, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
Bibliography
- England's Earliest Intercourse with Japan, by C. VV. Hillary (1905)
- Letters written by the English Residents in Japan, ed. by N. Murakami (1900, containing Adams's Letters reprinted from Memorials of the Empire of Japan, ed. by T. Rundall, Hakluyt Society, 1850)
- Diary of Richard Cocks, with preface by N. Murakami (1899, reprinted from the Hakluyt Society ed. 1883)
- R. Hildreth's Japan (1855)
- J. Harris's Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca (1764), i. 856
- Voyage of John Saris, edited by Sir Ernest M. Satow (Hakluyt Society, 1900)
- Asiatic Society of Japan Transactions, xxvi. (sec. 1898) pp. I and 194, where four more hitherto unpublished letters of Adams are given;
- Collection of State Papers; East Indies, China and Japan. The MS. of his logs written during his voyages to Siam and China is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
- Samurai William: The Adventurer Who Unlocked Japan; Giles Milton (UK 2002: ISBN 0-340-79468-2)
- William Adams and Early English Enterprise in Japan, by Anthony Farrington and Derek Massarella [1]
- Adams the Pilot: The Life and Times of Captain William Adams: 1564-1620, by William Corr, Curzon Press,1995 ISBN 1873410441
In James Clavell's Shogun, the fictional heroics of John Blackthorne are loosely based on Adams's exploits.
See also
External links
- Learning from Shogun. Japanese history and Western fantasy
- William Adams and Early English enterprise in Japan
