#6884 [2005-03-31 01:23:26]
Article: Discovering Japan's blue-eyed samurai
by
kitsuno
Discovering Japan's blue-eyed samurai
By Peter Neville-Hadley-Contributing writer
Tokyo-"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 novelist
James Clavell having loosely based the character of John Blackthorne
on him in his blockbuster Shogun. 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 advisor to the
ruler of a nation vastly different from his own, but also the lord
of his own manor and the first foreign member of the warrior samurai
class.
Finding traces of him involves travelling to remote rural locations
which even today rarely see foreign visitors. Hong Kong-based Walk
Japan has put together an 11-day guided itinerary linking Adams'
various trading, advising and interpreting activities. The
organizers, not your run-of-the-mill tour guides but academics
who've 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, brought up in London's Limehouse dock area, apprenticed as a
shipwright and pilot. But it was navigation that 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 in which the tiny fleet was scattered or
sunk led to a decision by the remaining two ships, in 1600, to cross
the largely uncharted and rarely sailed Pacific. Only Adams' ship De
Liefde survived, along with a handful of its crew. The lord of the
tiny Kyushu town where they landed sent Adams as spokesman 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 survivors.
Seeing a future use for them, he 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 total 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 which 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' worth as a truthful
adviser on everything foreign, gave him a townhouse near the new
bridge, amongst the warehouses and shops of Edo's rapidly developing
commercial quarter. A short walk from the current crossing, built in
1911, we found 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 instructed the
shogun in gunnery 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' 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. These were far more seaworthy than
Japanese junks, and although Adams had no experience building one
from scratch he produced two vessels. A path led to a thick hedge
and a stout fence surrounding the graves of Adams, his Japanese wife
and their two children.
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 natural 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 successfully negotiate the
privileges requested.
A picturesque train ride west around the coastline brought us to
Ito, the site of Adams' 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,
some of its original uneven paving still in place-perhaps the very
stones Adams himself walked on numerous 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 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 on 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 here on his way to
Kyushu. He would have gone by ship; we took the bullet train through
a tunnel beneath the placid waters of 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 recreated 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.
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?
posted on 03/30/2005
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