William Adams (world traveler)
William Adams (later Japanese 三浦 按 針 Miura Anjin ; born September 24, 1564 in Gillingham , Kent ; † May 16, 1620 in Hirado , Nagasaki ) was an English navigator who was the first Englishman on board with an expedition of five ships of a private Dutch Fleet traveled to Japan . Of the few survivors of the only ship that reached Japan, Adams and his second mate Jan Joosten were not allowed to leave the country, while others were allowed to return to the Netherlands.
Shortly after his arrival, he became an advisor to the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu . He directed the construction of the first western-style ships in Japan and supported the Netherlands and England in opening trading houses . He was involved in the trade in Japanese red seal ships and served as the captain of four expeditions to Southeast Asia .
Adams lived in Japan until his death, where he died at age 55. He is believed to be the first European to receive the title of samurai . His presence falls during the brief period of the opening of Japan known as the era of the Namban trade . William Adams is considered to be one of the most influential foreigners in Japan at the time.
Life
Early years
Adams was born in Gillingham (near Chatham ). When he was twelve years old, his father passed away. He then became an apprentice to Nicholas Diggins, the owner of a shipyard in Limehouse . During the next twelve years he learned shipbuilding , astronomy and navigation there . In 1588 he joined the Royal Navy and was given command of the Richard Duffield , a supply ship that supplied the English fleet with food and ammunition during the battle against the Spanish Armada . While Lord High Admiral Charles Howard of Effingham and Admiral of the Reserve Fleet Lord Henry Seymour wrestled with the enemy, Adams brought supplies. For the next ten years he sailed back and forth as a navigator on merchant ships between England and the North African Berber coast.
The trip to Japan
In 1598, on behalf of a company of Rotterdam merchants, the then 34-year-old Adams became chief navigator of a five-ship fleet under the command of Jacques Mahu , which sailed from Texel to the Far East . On June 24, 1598 he set sail on board the Hoop ('Hope'), accompanied by the ships Liefde ('Love'), Geloof ('Faith'), Trouw ('Faithfulness') and Blijde Boodschap (' Good News ').
The ships with a tonnage of 75 to 250 tons first sailed towards the Cape Verde Islands , where the attempt to stock up on new supplies failed. Then they headed for the coast of Guinea in West Africa, where the adventurers attacked the island of Annobón and stole the provisions. After that, they crossed the Atlantic and followed the coast of Brazil and Argentina to reach the Strait of Magellan . In the bad weather of the next spring, the ships lost contact with each other. Both the Liefde (with Adams on board) and the Hoop reached the coast of Chile , where the captains of both ships were killed in clashes with locals.
Adams waited on the island of Santa Maria for the other ships, but only the Hoop made it to the agreed destination. At the end of November 1599, the two remaining ships sailed westwards towards Japan .
The Geloof returned to Rotterdam through the Strait of Magellan in July 1600 with 36 survivors. The Blijde Boodschap fell into the hands of the Spaniards. The Trouw crossed the Pacific alone and reached the Spice Islands, where it was captured by the Portuguese; six survivors of the team returned to the Netherlands after years of imprisonment in 1604 as circumnavigators .
Out of fear of the Spaniards , the teams of the Liefde and the Hoop had agreed not to follow the coast of South America any further , but to sail out into the open Pacific . The Hoop went down in a typhoon at the end of February 1600 .
Arrival in Japan
In April 1600, the Liefde reached the island of Kyūshū in Japan with a decimated crew of sick and dying men and anchored in Usuki in the province of Bungo (today Präita prefecture ). Only nine of the remaining 24-man crew were able to stand on their own at this point.
Portuguese priests accused Adams and his crew of piracy . A member of the Regency Council, Tokugawa Ieyasu , then had the ship confiscated and the crew detained in Osaka Castle .
Tokugawa was the guardian of the young son of the regent Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had died two years earlier . Toyotomi was not in the Samurai was born booth so that the title of his Shogun was denied. However, his son Hideyori could have become a shogun, as his mother came from a samurai family.
Adams was questioned personally by Tokugawa. Adams showed an impressive knowledge of ships and shipbuilding as well as knowledge of nautical and mathematics . He also informed Tokugawa about the Treaty of Tordesillas from 1494, in which Pope Alexander VI. had given half the world (including Japan) to the Portuguese. The Jesuits missionary in Japan had not yet informed the Japanese about these and other facts of European politics and conditions. Adams made up for this comprehensively ( Reformation , liberation struggle of the Netherlands against Spain ). The possibility of an annexation by Portugal and Spain ( linked in personal union until 1640 ) hit the nationally proud Tokugawa hard, which was decisive for his later defense policy and that of his sons against the (Catholic) Christians. Adams became a close, probably even "friendly" adviser to Tokugawa.
Adams' shipmate, the second mate Jan Joosten , initially also enjoyed the shogun's favor, but later appeared only as a trader.
Awarded a samurai
Rivalries within the Regency Council split it into two parties. Tokugawa opposed the party of Toyotomi's widow and son. On October 21, 1600, there was the decisive battle at Sekigahara , from which Tokugawa emerged victorious against Ishida Mitsunari . The Tennō then appointed him Shogun.
In 1604, Adams received an order from Tokugawa to build a western-style ship in Itō on the eastern coast of the Izu Peninsula . Adams designed and built an 80-ton ship within a year. The Shogun then ordered him to build a larger ship. A year later, a 120-ton ship was ready. Through his work and his distrust of the Portuguese and the Catholic Church in general , Adams gained the sympathy of the Shogun, who made him his advisor on diplomacy and trade with the Europeans.
Adams had a wife and children in England, but Tokugawa forbade the Englishman to leave Japan. Adams was instead raised to the samurai status and received a fiefdom in Hemi ( 逸 見 , today Yokosuka ) in the Miura district on the peninsula of the same name , as well as the Daishō , the two swords that identify a samurai. Adams received the title Hatamoto , a designation for direct vassals of the Shogun. It was a special honor that only a few received. A Hatamoto was allowed to carry his swords in the presence of his liege lord, which was a very big vote of confidence. The Shogun ruled that the navigator William Adams was now dead and that Miura Anjin (the navigator of Miura) was born. This made Adams' wife de jure a widow. Adams married Oyuki, the daughter of Magome Kageyu, samurai and administrator of Edo Castle (now Tokyo). Anjin and Oyuki had a son named Joseph and a daughter named Susanna.
Still, Adams found it hard to get stuck in one place and remained adventurous. So he tried in vain to organize a new expedition to discover the Northeast Passage , this time from Japan.
The English trading office
In 1611, Adams received word of the establishment of an English branch in Bantam , and wrote there in the hope of help in leaving Japan. In 1613, Captain John Saris reached Clove Hirado with his ship . He was commissioned to set up a trading post for the British East India Company . After Adams had arranged the necessary permits for the Shogun, he postponed his travel plans (for the return trip to England he had now received the Shogun's permission) in order to help set up the new English branch under the direction of Richard Cocks . From this time came another child with a wife from Hirado, but Adams never gave more details.
For the rest of his life, Adams worked on behalf of the East India Company, for which he, like his former shipmate Jan Joosten , made a few trips on red seal ships , for example to Siam in 1616 and to Cochinchina in 1617 and 1618 .
death
Adams died on May 16, 1620 in Hirado, north of Nagasaki , at the age of almost 56 years of complications from a tropical disease, possibly malaria . His grave has been preserved, today there is a monument to the missionary Francisco de Xavier next to it . In his will , Adams distributed his property to his British wife and daughter, his Japanese wife and their two children, and some members of the English settlement.
Adams' Japanese son Joseph received all rights from his father by the Shogun, in particular the status of samurai and advisor at court. No records are known about the fate of later descendants.
In memory of Adams, a district in Edo (now Tokyo ) was given the name Anjin-chō (Navigator Quarter ), but it is no longer used. This former district located in what is now the district of Nihonbashi (Chuo-ku) in the city of sections 1-chome and Muromachi Honmachi-chome 1. The Anjin-dōri ( 按 針 通 り , 'Navigator Street') has been retained as the name . A celebration was held in Adam's honor on June 15 each year.
aftermath
In 1614, Tokugawa Ieyasu had Christianity outlawed in Japan . All Japanese baptized had to publicly dissociate themselves from their religion and be entered on lists of Buddhist temples, otherwise they would be executed.
After Adams' death, Japan largely isolated itself from the world ( Sakoku ) for about 250 years . Adams' advice to the shogun led him to distrust the Europeans to such an extent that he and his successors isolated Japan in the Edo period .
Literary, cinematic and pop-cultural implementation
William Adams was the model for the character John Blackthorne in the 1975 novel Shogun by the British-American writer James Clavell . The film adaptation of the book as a television series of the same name with Richard Chamberlain as Blackthorne and Toshirō Mifune as Shogun Toranaga from 1980 achieved world fame. (In the book and TV series, the ship that ran aground on the Japanese coast was called Erasmus . This was the original name of the ship Liefde that Adams took to reach Japan.)
Adams served as a template for the character of Adam Monroe in the US television series Heroes , who came to Japan as an Englishman in the 17th century, where he took the name Takezo Kensei and became a legendary samurai.
In addition, William Adams serves as a template for the protagonist William in the video game Nioh , which was released in February 2017.
See also
literature
- J. Harris: Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca . 1764, i. 856
- R. Hildreth's Japan . 1855.
- Asiatic Society of Japan Transactions ..xxvi. (sec. 1898) pp. I and 194 (with four previously unpublished letters from Adams)
- Diary of Richard Cocks with a foreword by N. Murakami. 1899 (reprint of the Hakluyt Society edition from 1883)
- Sir Ernest M. Satow (Ed.): Voyage of John Saris . Hakluyt Society, 1900.
- N. Murakami (Ed.): Letters written by the English Residents in Japan . 1900 (contains Adam's letters from T. Rundall: Memorials of the Empire of Japan . Hakluyt Society, 1850)
- W. Hillary: England's Earliest Intercourse with Japan. 1905.
- Anthony Farrington, Derek Massarella: William Adams and Early English Enterprise in Japan . ( online )
- William Corr: Adams the Pilot: The Life and Times of Captain William Adams: 1564-1620 . Curzon Press, 1995, ISBN 1-873410-44-1 .
- Bernd Liebner: Trapped in the realm of the shogun . In: Hans-Christian Huf (Ed.): Sphinx - Secrets of History. From Vercingetorix to the fairy tale king Ludwig II. 2004, ISBN 3-453-60007-X .
- Giles Milton: Samurai William. An English navigator in the service of the Shogun . Wunderkammer Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-939062-08-0 .
Web links
- Literature by and about William Adams in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ NIOH: 40+ hours of Death, yokai, NG +, Multiplayer, Durability answers by Fumihiko Yasuda. In: fextralife.com. Retrieved November 28, 2016 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Adams, William |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | ウ ィ リ ア ム ・ ア ダ ム ス (Japanese); Miura Anjin; 三浦 按 針 |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English navigator and probably the first European to receive the title of samurai |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 24, 1564 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gillingham , Kent , England |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 16, 1620 |
| Place of death | Hirado , Nagasaki , Japan |