The First Englishman in Japan

Will Adams, who was born in Gillingham, Kent, on 24 September, 1564, was the first Englishman known to have set foot in Japan.

When he was 12 years old, Adams was apprenticed to a shipyard owner at Limehouse in London, where he studied shipbuilding, astronomy and navigation. After his apprenticeship, he joined the Royal Navy, and he commanded a ship in Francis Drake’s fleet that battled the Spanish Armada in 1588. He then became a pilot for a merchant company called the Barbary Merchants and participated in a mission to find the Northeast passage to the Far East.

In 1598 he went to Holland and joined another fleet sailing to the Far East. Two years later, on April 19, 1600 he landed at Bungo, which is now called Usuki City, in Kyushu. There were only 24 survivors from the fleet that had set out with five ships and 500 men, and only six of these were able to stand.They had gone through hell on the voyage. Four of the ships were lost in storms, with all men on board, and disease ravaged the crew of the fifth ship. The men had to fight for their lives on the islands off Africa and South America. And they faced starvation in the South Atlantic and Pacific. They eventually ended up having to eat the rotting leather around the ship’s ropes to survive.

When the ship landed at Bungo, the survivors were utterly exhausted. Instead of being welcomed, however, they were imprisoned by the local authorities. The Spanish and Portuguese Jesuits learned of their imprisonment, and they tried to persuade the authorities to kill them. The prisoners were held in Osaka Castle for some time but, eventually, Adams made a good impression on the Shogun. Adams was freed and became an advisor to the Shogun.

Adams taught the Shogun geometry and mathematics and built two ships for him. The first was a ship of 80 tonnes and the other of 120 tonnes. These ships enabled the Japan to open its own trade with the East Indies. The association between Adams and the Shogun was beneficial to both men The Shogun learned a great deal about European thought, science and technology, while Adams was well rewarded for his service to the Shogun. He was given a substantial salary and a large new house in Edo—present day Tokyo—and permitted to wear two swords, the mark of a samurai. With this privilege came the title Miura Anjin (Pilot of the Miura Peninsular) and some land as his fief.

Although he already had a wife and children in England, Adams married Oyuki Magome, the daughter of a samurai and official at Edo Castle. They settled in Hemi, which is now called Yokosuka City, and they had two children, a boy and a girl.

In 1613, when the British East India Company arrived in Japan, Adams was controlling all foreign trade for the Shogun. The commander of the East India Company, a man called Captain John Saris, expected that Adams would give special treatment to men of his motherland. He was wrong on this. Adams acted as a neutral advisor to the Shogun, and this angered Saris.

Saris declared that Adams had become ‘a naturalized Japponer’, and started humiliating him. Nevertheless, Adams did give the East India Company much assistance. He helped it, for example, to set up a trading post near Nagasaki. And he sailed to Okinawa, Thailand and Indochina on an East India Company ship.

In the end, however, it was Adams who got the last laugh. When Saris returned to England he took with him a collection of Shunga (erotic Japanese paintings), and he committed the faux pas of showing them around. Consequently, he was disgraced and shunned by polite society for being a ‘man of lewd disposition.’

When he finally died near Nagasaki on 16 May 1620, Adams had spent more than one third of his life in Japan, something that no foreigner had ever done at that time—and not so many have done since.

Will Adams, or Miura Anji, is still one of Japan’s favorite foreigners, and every year a ceremony is held in Yokosuka to honor his memory.