Article: The blue-eyed samurai

The blue-eyed samurai

An 11-day tour follows the activities of the Englishman who became
key adviser to the Shogun in 17th-century Japan

PETER NEVILLE-HADLEY
Meridian Writers' Group

Saturday, February 26, 2005

"Miura Anjin?" replied the print-seller as he carefully wrapped up a
19th-century woodblock image of a stopping place on the Tokaido, the
great coastal highway from Tokyo to the west. "The most famous
Englishman in Japan," he said. "Except perhaps for David Beckham."

The soccer star's image has recently been dominating billboards and
broadcasts across the country with endorsements for cosmetics, cell
phones and chocolate. Miura Anjin, whose English name was William
Adams, died nearly four centuries ago, leaving no known image.

In the West, what small fame Adams retains is largely due to writer
James Clavell having loosely based the character of John Blackthorne
in his blockbuster novel Shogun on him. But in Japan, Adams is
remembered as a man who brought a wider understanding of Europeans,
adopted Japanese ways to a degree few foreigners master even today
and found himself adopted in return. Of modest education, he rose to
become not only a key adviser to the ruler of a nation vastly
different from his own, but also the lord of his own manor and thus
the first foreign member of the warrior samurai class.

Finding traces of him involves travelling to remote rural locations
that even today rarely see foreign visitors. Hong Kong-based Walk
Japan has put together an 11-day guided itinerary linking Adams's
various trading, advising and interpreting activities. The
organizers, not your run-of-the-mill tour guides, but academics who
have made a thorough study of Adams, have set out a route south from
Tokyo to small ports on the coast of the main island of Honshu, then
westward to the smaller island of Kyushu and then to tiny Hirado,
once the base for the British and Dutch traders. There's even a walk
on hidden remnants of the ancient Tokaido itself.

Adams was largely brought up in London's Limehouse dock area and was
apprenticed as a shipwright and pilot. But navigation became his
career, and, after 10 years on ships trading with North Africa, he
became the principal pilot of a disastrous Dutch expedition to the
Spice Islands of the East Indies.

A series of misfortunes led to the scattering or sinking of the tiny
fleet. The remaining two ships chose, in 1600, to cross the largely
uncharted and rarely sailed Pacific.

Only Adams's ship De Liefde survived, along with a handful of its
crew. The lord of the tiny Kyushu town where the ship docked sent
Adams as spokesperson for his group to the warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu,
then attempting to gain control of the whole of Japan.

Ieyasu had a healthy interest in foreign ideas and spent hours
interrogating Adams through an interpreter, then imprisoned him
until he decided what to do. Subsequent audiences improved both
Ieyasu's knowledge of Europe and his respect for the pilot, who was
eventually released and reunited with the remaining crew. Seeing a
future use for them, the lord had the men provided with funds and
ordered them to sail to his base at Edo, modern-day Tokyo, then
ignored them while he concentrated on winning control of Japan. The
cannon from De Liefde proved of more immediate value, helping him
clinch his final victory at the battle of Sekigahara.

As months went by, the decrepit Dutch ship sank and the crew
scattered, suspecting that they would never be allowed to return
home. But Ieyasu had thought of other ways in which their technology
could help him. With his battles won, he awarded each man an ample
daily ration of rice and set Adams an important task.

Our search for Adams/

Miura began at Nihon Bashi, the central Tokyo bridge that marked the
start of the Tokaido and four other ancient highways. It was
originally built in 1603, three years after Ieyasu's victory, and
the year he was officially confirmed as de facto ruler or shogun by
a powerless and impoverished emperor.

That year the shogun, having recognized Adams's worth as a truthful
adviser on everything foreign, gave him a town house near the new
bridge, among the warehouses and shops of Edo's rapidly developing
commercial quarter. A short walk from the current crossing, built in
1911, we found that the navigator had earned himself a place on
modern maps. In a narrow turning named Anjin-dori a small, rough-
hewn stele marked the site of his residence, mentioning that he had
instructed the shogun in gunnery, geography and mathematics.

The next morning we boarded a southbound commuter train. At the
wealthy suburb of Taura we took a taxi to a high point overlooking a
naval base where the modern equivalents of Adams's well-armed De
Liefde wallowed. Adams had a vast estate here, on the Miura
Peninsula, given him by Ieyasu as a reward for constructing ocean-
going ships in the Western style. A path led to a thick hedge and a
stout fence surrounding the graves of Adams, his Japanese wife and
his two children by her. A memorial ceremony for Adams, held every
April, is "one of the four magnificent international events" of the
area, a sign claimed.

A winding walk down steep residential backstreets led to the station
at Anjin-zuka (Anjin's Hill). A few minutes' ride and we disembarked
at Hemi station. Here a track, with tree-root stairways, wound over
hills, along ridge tops and down to the 13th-century Great Buddha of
Kamakura, a 13-metre-high bronze of a serene, seated figure, hands
together in its lap. In 1613 Adams came this way in the company of
John Saris, an emissary from Britain's King James, who had arrived
bearing a letter requesting trade. Saris and crew were the first
Englishmen Adams had seen since his arrival, and he brought them to
the shogun to help negotiate the privileges requested.

A picturesque train ride west around the coastline brought us to
Ito, the site of Adams's shipbuilding efforts. The city has erected
a statue of the man: gaunt, high-cheekboned and shovel-bearded,
gesturing out to sea.

We spent the night at a riverside inn of considerable antiquity, a
labyrinth of creaking boards, steep stairways and tatami-floored
rooms with sliding screens. We changed for the evening into cotton
yukata gowns, short haori jackets and slippers.

When the first Europeans arrived, 50 years before Adams, the
fastidious Japanese were struck by their gaudy doublets, but
marvelled that this finery contained men so uninterested in washing.
Adams eventually submerged himself in Japanese culture and adopted
local dress. Now we did the same. We flapped our way to a basement
bathing area, scrubbing ourselves spotless before slipping into the
geothermally heated waters for a soak, then headed for a feast of
colourful dishes, mixed with liberal quantities of beer and local
sake.

Continuing ever west, at Hatsudenshomae, a few hops by train and bus
later, we climbed one of the few remaining sections of the great
Tokaido, the main highway to the west. It snaked up the hillside
with some of its original uneven paving still in place - perhaps the
very stones Adams himself walked on many trips between the foreign
trading houses at Hirado and the capital at Edo.

At Kyoto we visited magnificent Nijo Castle, begun by Ieyasu in
1602. Its purpose was to make his dominance over the emperor clear.
Here he was formally installed as shogun with several days of
feasting. The luxury meant to impress Japan's nobles still remains
in the vast halls with their gilded walls and screens painted with
scenes of pines, birds and tigers.

We travelled to Miya-jima, a train and boat ride from Hiroshima, to
see the towering, orange-painted torii, or gate, which seems to
stride into the sea off the tiny island's coast. The torii, built in
1168, was ancient even when Adams passed by on his way to Kyushu. He
would have gone by ship; we took the bullet train through a tunnel
beneath Japan's Inland Sea.

Just off Kyushu's west coast is Dejima, a fan-shaped artificial
island constructed to house foreign traders. In 1639, Ieyasu's son
Hidetada, irritated by Catholic preaching that allegiance to the
pope took precedence over feudal allegiances, banned all foreigners.
The British had already left, but the Dutch, protected because Adams
had made clear the distinction between Catholic and Protestant
teaching, were merely moved to this tiny enclave connected to Kyushu
by a single, well-guarded bridge. Some of the Dutch colony's
buildings have been re-created and fitted out as excellent museums
explaining foreigners' impact on Japan. Adams is remembered in a
picture of the departure of De Liefde from Holland in 1598.

Our final stop was Hirado, the small island off Kyushu where Dutch
and British trading houses were first set up. Adams came to this
remote spot many times. On the hillside above the sleepy little town
and its quiet harbour we found a small, neat garden of bamboo, pines
and cycads, with a monument to 17 British merchant-adventurers. The
stone next to it was something of a surprise: "Miura Anjin's tomb."
We'd already seen his grave several hundred kilometres away, so it
seemed that even in death Adams was a traveller.

He died on Hirado on May 26, 1620, and given Japan's summer
temperatures it seems likely that the island still has him, although
it's impossible to say for certain: After the banning of foreigners
in 1639, the remains of English mariners were disinterred and flung
into the sea. Those of Adams may not have been among them, however:
Suspiciously long bones were discovered nearby in the 1920s. Perhaps
he was left undisturbed because of his samurai status.

In a land with few foreign heroes, Beckham's billboards will have
their day. But what greater sign of enduring respect than to have
your name carved in not one, but two tombstones?

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2005