Dan Snow's History Hit - The Real Shogun: The English Navigator Who Became a Samurai

Episode Date: March 24, 2024

In the year 1600, a bedraggled English sailor and his sick and dying crewmates anchored off the coast of Kyushu, Japan. His name was William Adams, and over the next two decades, he would rise through the ranks of Japanese society to become the first Western samurai. As a close advisor to the revered shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, Adams was a first-hand witness to a defining period in Japanese history.To hear about Adams' remarkable life, Dan is joined by Frederik Cryns, author of In the Service of the Shogun: The Real Story of William Adams and historical advisor for the Disney+ series, Shōgun.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/.We'd love to hear from you- what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. In the Japanese city of Ito, there are annual celebrations, as the Anjin Festival is held in August. They cast lanterns onto the Matsukawa River, and they're carried out to sea. There's a ceremony, there's a parade, there's a drum competition, and the highlight, the climax of the fireworks at night,

that shoot up, flash over the wine-dark sea. Now that festival commemorates a key point in Japanese history, when the shipbuilding industry took a giant leap forward thanks to the introduction of Western knowledge. Ships were made more seaworthy, facilitated an expansion of trade, and a sort of growth of Japanese horizons. And that knowledge was introduced by a man who had a quite extraordinary life, William Adams. Born in Gillingham in Kent, which is now the sister city of Ito, and after many, many adventures, including seeing off the Spanish Armada and perhaps attempting to go through the Northeast Passage into the Arctic and trading with North Africa. Anyway, Adams arrives bedraggled,

near death, friendless, hopeless on Japanese shores. He's denounced as a pirate, he's imprisoned, he's under the shadow of execution, but then he used his wits, his talents, his knowledge to wriggle out of trouble. And not just that, but then to make a very steep and rapid journey up the Japanese political pyramid. He won the trust of, he became intimate with, Tokugawa Ieyasu, who would become the first shogun. We've done other podcasts on this subject you might want to go back and listen to. But that shogun bestowed upon William Adams two swords representing the authority of a samurai. He decreed that William Adams the pilot, the navigator, was dead and that Miura Anjin, a samurai, was born. Adams was a senior advisor in the service of the shogun and just as importantly perhaps for posterity he left a profusion of letters that give

us a wonderful insight into his life, into Japan and into the shogunate. He wrote in one, the people of this land of Japan are good of nature, courteous above measure, and valiant in war. Their justice is severely executed without 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 diverse opinions. that people be very superstitious in their religion and are of diverse opinions. When Adams died, it was said by a contemporary that he had been such in favour with two emperors of Japan as never any Christian in these parts of the world.

Well, the life of William Adams has inspired the James Clavel novel Shogun, set in 17th century Japan. And that novel has now inspired a new massive Disney Plus series, also called Shogun, set in 17th century Japan. And that novel has now inspired a new massive Disney Plus series, also called Shogun. So we need to talk about it. Talk to me about the life of Adams. I've got Frederick Krentz. He's a professor of Japanese history at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, Japan. I talked to him from his beautiful, I talked to him from his beautiful traditional wood and earth built house in Kyoto, which he had constructed in the traditional fashion and which he insists is far better suited to the climate than these new modern apartment blocks that have rocketed up all around him. He's the author of In the Service of the Shogun, The Real Life of William Adams, and he's the historical advisor of the new Disney Plus show, Shogun. He went to enormous trouble during the production of that TV show to provide the program makers with super accurate historical information. He even went to the trouble of

composing all the poetry that you hear the samurai performing, because he couldn't bear for it to be wrong. Without attention to detail, I'm sure it's going to be a fantastic program. Can't wait to watch it. So folks, enjoy this podcast on William Adams. T-minus 10. The Thomas bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity

till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off. And the shuttle has cleared the tower. Frederick, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Hi Dan, thank you for having me. First of all, what I need to know, is William Adams famous in Japan in his own right,

or is he just famous with Westerners? This is our little piece of Japanese history, our little piece of the samurai story. Well, I heard that William Adams is not that famous in England. In Japan, of course, he was a retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu, so many Japanese know his name, but I don't think that many people know exactly what he did. Okay, well, that's what we're here to find out today. In that case, I'm glad that we haven't just inserted some Western actor into this great drama. Where did he come from? He was born in the UK, wasn't he? Or rather, England? Yes, he was a native of Gillingham, Kent,

that we know from his letters, in which he introduced himself as being born in Gillingham, and also of the baptismal register of the St. Maria Magdalena's church in Gillingham. So Gillingham was a small port town near London. They had a rich tradition of trading wool with the Netherlands. So probably because of that, and also because Chatham, where the Queen's fleet lay, was close by, he probably wanted to become a sailor. And was sailing in the family, do we think? We don't know anything about his family. We only know that he became an apprentice of a certain Diggins, who was a shipbuilder, but also a navigator. And he learned

the art of navigation from that person from the age of 12. He went to sea at 12? No, no, he started as an apprentice at 12. That's the age where most people at the time started to learn a profession. Right. So he's starting young. Does he stay in the merchant marine or does he switch across the Royal Navy? Well, when he finished his apprenticeship, at that time, the Spanish Armada was going to invade England. The news of that appeared in 1587, and Queen Elizabeth built a large navy to counter the Spanish fleet.

And she had, of course, the Queen's fleet, but that was not a very big fleet. So they engaged many merchantmen from all the towns. And one of those merchantmen was called Richard Duffield, in which William Adams became captain. in which William Adams became captain. So his first voyage on sea was in a ship, a supply ship for the Queen's Navy against the Spanish. And we can see if he's skippering that, he's experienced. He knows what he's doing by this point. Yes, he had 12 years of education. He was young and probably a very able pilot and captain. And his name is in a list of ship captains who faced the Spanish Armada in a document in the British Library. So we know that he participated in the sea battle against the Spanish and in the defeat of the Armada.

But we don't know exactly what he did there. Probably he was supplying the Armada. But we don't know exactly what he did there. Probably he was supplying the warships. There's obviously a fine line in the Tudor navy between supply ships, warships, merchant mariners, naval ships. If they saw an opportunity, I'm sure they'd have joined in. What did he do next? Do we know? Well, when the Armada was defeated, there was no need anymore to have so much warships in the Queen's fleet. So he became unemployed and he searched for new work, which he found in the Barbary Company. The Barbary Company was a company that traded with Barbary, that is the Berbers in North Africa,

an area now, let's say, Morocco, Algeria, somewhere there. So they traded between England and North Africa, but they were also a privateering company. So they would attack Spanish and Portuguese ships on the way. And that was probably their biggest income. So he had a lot of experience, not only of navigating, but also fighting the Spanish and the Portuguese. Isn't it extraordinary to have this man? He's like an embodiment of the great historical, the great strategic currents of the time. He's like Forrest Gump. He's everywhere he needs to be. He's growing up in the Thames estuary as England

gropes towards its maritime destiny. He's up there when the Armada is defeated. He's trading with ever more distant places. He's taking the battle to the Spanish and Portuguese. Yes, he really had a fascinating life. And we are happy that we have so many sources on him because there are a lot of people like him, but not many people left documents about what they did in their life. Because if you see letters at the time, it's really about, please send me this kind of product or greetings to that person or something. Well, William Adams, in his letters, he introduces himself and writes about what he experienced before he came to Japan. So we know a lot of William Adams, much more than other sailors or navigators at the time.

Well done to him for being so literate. That's excellent news. What else does he do? So he's trading with North Africa. Does he go further afield? Not that I know, but at a certain point, the Barbary Company is dissolved and he has to search for new work again. And that is 1598. At that point, the Dutch began to send fleets to Asia and the Dutch and English were brothers in arms. They both fought against the Spanish because both were Protestant and the Spanish were Catholics. And they cooperated a lot with each other. For example, during the independence war of the Dutch against Spain, the so-called 80

years war, there were many Englishmen who joined the Dutch in their fight against the Spanish. the Dutch in their fight against the Spanish. You also have Dutch sailors who joined Drake's and Cavendish fleets when they circled the earth. And on the other hand, the Dutch could also use the English sailors in their fleets. So when they tried to get to Asia, they hired a lot of Englishmen because originally the Dutch, they bought Asian products mostly in Lisbon. The Portuguese had a virtual trading monopoly with Asia and they brought Asian products to Lisbon where the Dutch waited for them. They bought those Asian products and they brought them back to Holland and distributed those products into Western Europe. Now, when they started a war with the Spanish, the king of Spain,

Philip II, he also became the king of Portugal in 1580 and he forbade the Dutch to trade in Portugal. So suddenly, they couldn't get any Asian products anymore. So then they tried to venture in the East by themselves. But of course, they didn't have much knowledge of what it was. So they first tried the northern route around Russia, which wasn't successful. Whoa, the Northeast Passage. Wow. Northeast Passage, indeed. So which wasn't successful. Whoa, the Northeast Passage. Wow. Northeast Passage, indeed. So that wasn't successful. There was one voyage which proved successful rounding the Cape of Good Hope. That was the fleet of the Houtman. And when that fleet came back, in a lot of Dutch cities, companies were erected to send fleets to Asia.

And one of those companies was in Rotterdam, and they sent a fleet of five ships. And somehow, Adams came to know that, and he joined the fleet as a pilot. Crikey. Now, this fleet was to sail around Cape Good Hope, trade in Asia and come back. That was the official mission, but they had a secret mission. And that was that they would sail around the Strait of Magellan. And then they would plunder Spanish strongholds and Spanish ships in South America.

And with that spoil, they would traverse the ocean and trade those goods in Asia before coming back to the Netherlands. So that was really what Drake and Cavendish had already accomplished. So the Dutch in Rotterdam, they wanted to do the same. And that's one of the reasons why they hired so much Englishutch in rotterdam they wanted to do the same and that's one of the reasons why they hired so much english men in their fleet i see so yes drake a few years before first englishman circumnavigate the world he'd done the same to go into the pacific steal a load of treasure off the coast south america and then buy up all the lovely spices and products in asia with that and then head

back to europe okay so how does this expedition go? Well, it really was a disaster. They started in June 1598, and they encountered much contrary winds, so they couldn't proceed at the pace they wanted to. So their food became very scarce, and you got a lot of cases of scurvy at the time. very scarce. And you got a lot of cases of scurvy at the time. Also, when they came in the climate of Africa, some febrile disease emerged. So a lot of sailors succumbed to disease and scurvy, and they desperately tried to find foods. They tried that in the Cape Verde Islands. foods. They tried that in the Cape Verde Islands. They also tried it in the island of Annobon, both colonies of the Portuguese. So they had to fight the Portuguese to obtain some foods,

and that wasn't really successful. So without much food, they traversed the Atlantic Ocean and finally arrived in the Strait of Magellan. But then winter set in and they couldn't proceed. So they had to endure the cold of the winter in the Strait of Magellan. And I think about 100 sailors died there from cold and starvation. When they finally could get out of the Strait of Magellan, they encountered a strong storm and the ships became scattered. And one ship had to sail back to Holland. Another ship was caught by the Spanish. Another ship managed to go to Asia on its own. But there it was captured by the Portuguese and the crew was slaughtered. So only two ships survived. On one of the ships we have Adams. And then they still had the problem

that in South America, in Chile, they got ambushed, lost a lot of their men too. Finally, they could escape the Spanish fleet and traverse the ocean. But then another storm, they were in, and one of the ships disappeared, probably sank. So finally, there was only one ship left, that was the Liefde. And Adams was pilot on that ship, so he was very happy because we had a crew of 500 sailors. And after they reached Japan, only 18 sailors survived. What? So it's taken two years, the entire expedition has been sunk, captured or abandoned. One ship has made it successfully to Asia, and there's 18 people left alive on it.

Yes. And only six people who can stand on their feet, as is written in Adam's letter. So this was really a terrible experience for those sailors. Oh my goodness. All right. Sadly, and it's not untypical, these would have been risks borne by so many expeditions in this period.

Certainly in the end of the 16th century, beginning of the 17th century, you have a lot of stories of four or five ships who depart and only one ship coming back or only two ships coming back and mostly the crew is decimated. So it's normal for the times, but still this voyage was really the most difficult one of all the voyages, I think. Perhaps the second voyage of Cavendish comes close to disaster at the time, but still two years, no food, always fighting,

very cold in the Strait of Magellan. It must have been a horrible experience for those sailors. Awful. So many ways to die. Now, you're an eminent historian of Japanese history. Let's look at it now from the Japanese point of view, when this ship, which must have had its sails shredded, shrouds hanging down any old howl, a couple of bearded, pale-skinned, although

sunburnt, broken men aboard, staggers into a Japanese harbour. What had been the response, do you think, among the Japanese? The response of the Japanese was one of surprise, because they had already traded with Europeans for half a century. The Portuguese in particular sent one ship every year to Japan. They had a base in Macau, which was on the Chinese coast, and from there they sent every year a huge ship of about 1,500 tons to Nagasaki, which was a harbor town on the western edge of Kyushu, which was the westernmost island of the four main islands of Japan. And there they traded with the Japanese because the Japanese needed Asian products, especially Chinese silk for their clothing industry. The aristocracy, the warriors, the rich merchants,

they all wore silk robes, which were called kosode at the time, and they needed silk for that from China. Now, the Japanese weren't allowed to trade with China, and the Chinas weren't allowed to trade with the Japanese. So the Portuguese had a sort of monopoly on this trade and they sent very large ships, which were called black ships at the time because of the tarnish on the hulls, to Japan. And the Japanese were used to that side. Japan, and the Japanese were used to that side. But when that ship came to Japan, it was the first time that they saw a galleon, because the Portuguese ships were really naos, or carracks, as they were called in English. So it was a smaller ship, but with a lot of cannons on it. Especially the Lievde was a heavily armed ship. It really was a warship.

Suddenly, they saw a warship which they had never seen. And on that ship, they had 18 starving men, which spoke a language they didn't understand. So they really scratched their head. What is this? What are they doing here? And were they impressed with the trade goods if there were still any left after that two-year experience? Did the Dutch have anything with which they could trade? Well, they didn't have much of trading goods in it because they couldn't loot the Spanish strongholds or ships. That part of the plan hadn't gone well. Hadn't gone well, but they had a lot of weapons on the ship. Over 20 cannon, I think 500 rifles, armor, a lot of ammunition, and so on. So they must have been, or they really were very surprised because we have Japanese sources that write about their surprise about all those weapons in their ship.

They couldn't imagine what would a warship from a country they didn't know anything about come to do in Japan. Yes, slightly disquieting. How did they treat the crew? Did they extend sort of first aid, as we might now call it? Did they sort of look after them and help keep them alive? Well, at first, they began looting the ship. But then the local lord, who is called Ota Kazuyoshi, he stepped in and he protected the crew and what was left of the products in the ship. So he was at a loss what to do with the ship. Now, at the time, So he was at a loss what to do with the ship. Now, at the time, you had Jesuits in Japan. It's quite a complicated story, but the Portuguese, when they traded with Japan, they also sent Jesuits to Japan to proclaim the Christian faith.

And the Japanese lords were not really happy with that, but they wanted to keep the trade. So reluctantly, they permitted the Jesuits to propagate their faith. And after a while, you had a lot of Christians in the island of Kyushu. So when Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who unified the country in about 1587, Tomohideyoshi, who unified the country in about 1587, also conquered the island of Kyushu. He was a little bit wary of the influence of the Jesuits, so he forbade the Christian religion. But then he became afraid that he would lose the trade also. So his edict was never really enforced. So still in Kyushu and in some other parts of Japan, the Jesuits were still free to go and do what they liked. And so the Liefde arrived in Bungo, which is the eastern part of Kyushu. And this Bungo was long a Christian stronghold. So you also had Jesuits there.

And they went to the warlord, Uta, and told him that these were pirates. We know these guys. You don't want these guys in Japan. Yes, indeed, because they were Protestants. They were Dutch and Englishmen, which were at that time enemies. The worst kind of Protestants, they were Dutch and Englishmen, which were at that time enemies. The worst kind of Protestants. Yes, the worst kind of Protestants.

Heretics. So they had to be banned from Japan. And another thing that the Portuguese feared was that if the Dutch would send ships to Japan, their monopoly would be broken. to Japan, their monopoly would be broken. So they tried hard to persuade the lords that these were pirates and that you had to execute them. But of course, this warlord, he wasn't ready to act on his own. So he sent a letter to the governor of Nagasaki, that was Terasawa Hirotaka. And this governor was in charge of international relations. And he then sent a letter to Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was then in Osaka, in the center of Japan. And this Tokugawa Ieyasu was at the time the most powerful warlord in Japan.

I've told about Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi unified the country, but in 1598 he died of an illness, so only a few months after the leader departed from Rotterdam. And he left an infant boy as his heir, so before this boy came of age, he asked five warlords, the five most powerful warlords, to look after his son and rule the country in the name of his son. So he established a council of five regents. And this Iyasa was the most powerful in this council. So he really ruled the country, to say so,

and the other regions followed his lead. It's to say they weren't particularly happy with his rule, so they tried to plot against him. And he also had five commissioners who were the magistrates of Hideyoshi's government before that, so they also plotted against Ieyasu, but at that time Ieyasu was still in control. So the natural choice for the governor of Nagasaki to report on the arrival of a mysterious warship was to Ieyasu. And when Ieyasu received this news,

ship was to Ieyasu. And when Ieyasu received this news, he immediately sent a few of his ships to Bungo to get one or two representatives of the ships to go to Osaka. Now, the captain of the ship called Krakennak, he was very ill, so he wasn't able to go. So they decided that William Adams, as a pilot, should go. And William Adams took with him Jan Joosten Loornestein, who was a Dutch merchant. So the two of them went to Osaka to be examined directly by Tokugawa Ieyasu, which was a very strange thing to do, because if such a ship with a lot of weapons in it, which was seen as a pirate ship, came to Japan, normally they would be executed on the spot. But somehow this Tokugawa Ieyasu was very interested in what this mysterious ship was about,

and he took it in his own hands to examine the crew, which were deemed pirates. And he did indeed. The plan works, right? Because he learns interesting and important things from that crew, I guess, politically, but also technically. Yes, indeed. And we are very happy that we have Adam's letters about the examinations of Iyasa. And normally, if you have a document of the time, there would be written, Iyasa examined the Dutch and let them go or found them guilty or something. or found them guilty or something, and that's it.

But Adams, he wrote down all the questions he asked him and all the answers he gave to Iyasa. So we really have a report of what was it like to be examined by such a prominent warlord at the time. What a resource. Wonderful. Something that we don't have in Japanese sources. There's almost no mention in Japanese sources. I found one mention that a Dutchman called Joosten and an Englishman called Anjin,

because Anjin was the name they called him. Anjin is Japanese for pilot, was examined by Iyase and they told him a lot of interesting things. That's it. That's all you have on the Japanese side. Listen to Dan Snow's history. Talk about William Adams, advisor to the Shogun. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis.

And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends.

Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Now, what does Tokugawa Ieyasu, what's your principally interest in here do you want to know about kind of european politics or way of life or do you just want to know about how do

you put big cannons on ships and fire them at the enemy like is it kind of what is primary interest the first question he asked is where are you come from? So Adams answers England, Iaose answers Holland. And Adams had a world map with him, so he could indicate from where he came. I think that Iaose never had heard about England or Holland at the time. So we had Portuguese and we had also Spanish trading in Japan sometimes, because the Spanish had a colony in the Philippines, which was quite close to Japan. But I don't think that they ever told him that there were other countries in Europe. So with examining those two persons, suddenly his

worldview became much more bigger. He suddenly knew about two Protestant countries. And the second question he asked, and this is really a question by a person with a very keen insight, he asks, does your country have any wars? To which Adams, of course, answers, yes, we are at war with the Spanish and the Portuguese, but with no other countries. I think this question was really meant to be, why do they come with such a heavily armed ship? They must be at war with someone. And when Iasse knew that Adam's crew of the ship were at war with the Portuguese and Spanish, he understands that they had to be heavily

armed and he could have said the irish the nato americans i mean the brits the english you know they were they're at war with quite a few people at this point yes indeed from that point on he's asking about a lot of things about england holland about, about what kind of products they have and so on. So he's very interested. On the other side, Adams catches the opportunity and says, we came here to trade. We want to have a win-win situation. We have products you don't have.

You have products we don't have. So if we trade with each other, both can become very affluent. And this must have sounded as music to the ears of Ieyasu because he was bothered by the Portuguese monopoly. He wanted to have trade relations with more countries. And as a matter of fact,

he already contacted the Spanish to send ships to Japan, something that didn't went very well because the Spanish didn't have any need to send ships to Japan because they had their own system in South America where they had silver mines and the only product the Japanese could provide them with was silver, which they had an abundance of. So that didn't work out well. Iase tried to get diplomatic relations with China so that China would send ships to Japan to trade in silk.

That didn't work out either. So then he tried to send ships by himself, Japanese junk ships, to various Asian ports like Patani, Tonkin, where there was trade in Chinese silk. But still, he didn't get enough silk from the other sources to break the Portuguese monopoly. So now suddenly, there are two other countries who are starting to trade in Asia, who potentially could also bring silk to Japan. So Iyase was very pleased with this opportunity and the Jesuits and the Portuguese, they did everything in their might to convince Iyase

that these were pirates. If you let them trade in your country, they come to your country and they come looting your treasury. So please execute them. And in Japanese sources at the time, you have many Japanese who were convinced that they really had to deal with pirates. But one person who wasn't convinced was Ieyasu. So after three examinations and a long time spent in what Adams calls in his letter prisons, but what I think was not a prison but was confinement in a room of perhaps in

Osa Castle or in a residence of a vassal of Iyasa, after about one month and a half, they were set free. Well, I say free in the sense that they weren't imprisoned anymore, but they didn't get permission to go outside of Japan. They had to stay in Japan. And then, interestingly, Iyasu starts to realize he's got a potential asset here. He could perhaps get him to build ships in the Western fashion and talk about navigation and things. He suddenly becomes a really interesting character in the Japanese story. Yes, indeed. The first thing that Adams was asked to do was to build a Western-type galleon. Now, Adams himself was a navigator, so I think he had a rudimentary knowledge of shipbuilding, but there were Dutch shipbuilders in the crew. So with their help and the help of Japanese shipbuilders,

they were able to build two small Western-style galleons. And one of those galleons was even used to voyage all the way to Mexico. So these were sturdily built ships. But the main reason why Iyase wanted them to build those ships was something he already mentioned. He wanted to get the skills of Western shipbuilding, that his shipbuilders could absorb that knowledge. And he really succeeded in that because Japanese built junks at the time. And after that, there were certain features of Western shipbuilding incorporated

in the junks the Japanese built. So they made those ships more seaworthy. And in the first about 30 years of the 17th century, you have a lot of Japanese junks traveling to several parts of Asia to trade there. And you even have small Japanese communities springing up in the Philippines, in Macau, in Patanish, Siam.

We had a very large community of Japanese living there. So because of this knowledge, which was transferred by Adams and his crew, Japan really became open to the world at the time. So that was one achievement of his. And then this is the most amazing part of the story. This is a guy with scurvy, racked, starving, bedraggled mariner washes up effectively on the Japanese shore. And within a few years, he's transmitted knowledge,

but he becomes a really important person. It's one of the great social climbs of all time. Tell me about his career in Japan after this. Well, he becomes a really important person. In fact, he becomes a direct retainer of Ieyasu. So that means that he got a lordship, a fief in Hemi, which was a small village in the Miura Peninsula, which lays a little bit at the start, the beginning of the mouth, to say so, of Edel Bay. It's interesting that this position of this Hemi village could be compared with Gillingham at the Thames. A little bit before the ships arrive in London. The same you have with Hemi, a location where the ships go through before they arrive in Edo. But mostly the ships

came to Edo, they harbored in Uraga, which was very close to Hemi. So he had there a fiefdom with about 100 families serving him. Now, most of the time he wasn't there. He was residing in Edo, where he had a residence, and he also had a residence in Sumpu, because this Tokugawa Ieyasu, he was a warlord, originally from the Mikawa region in the heart of Japan, and his power grew. At the beginning, he became a vassal of Oda Nobunaga, which was the first great unifier of Japan. But Nobunaga was slain by one of his vassals. Immediately afterwards, Toyotomi Hideyoshi defeated that traitor. So then Hideyoshi became the second great unifier and he really managed to put the whole of Japan under his rule. And in that process, he fought a large battle against Ieyasu,

which in fact Ieyasu won. But still Hideyoshi was the absolute ruler. He lost a battle, but still he had all the power. So finally, Iase succumbed and he became a vassal of Hideyoshi. And the first thing Hideyoshi did was to give Iase a new fief, much more to the east, in the Kanto region, a region where there was a small village called Edo, which Ieyasu made his castle town. He built a new town from scratch there. This is now modern Tokyo, so the modern capital of Japan. Tell me about some of the things he did, some of the jobs he did. So when Hideyoshi died, Ieyasu became the, let's say, primus inter pares in the Council of Regions.

But then a large battle occurred between many members of that council and the commissioners, and on the one side and on the other side, Ieyasu. That is the Battle of Sekigahara, which Ieyasu won, and he became the undisputed leader of Japan, and he received the title of shogun, which means the military leader of Japan, the leader of the samurai class, the warrior class, that he did in 1603. But then in 1605, he ceded this title to his son, Hidetada, 1605, he ceded this title to his son, Hidetada, and he became a retired shogun. He was called Ogosho. And in his new status as retired shogun, he ruled the country. His son, Hidetada, was there, but Hidetada wasn't the real ruler. He just was the ruler in name. All decisions were made by Ieyasu. And Ieyasu

didn't reside anymore in Edo. He changed his residence to Sumpu Castle, which is in the middle of Japan. So Adams had a residence in Edo, but also in Sumpu. And he had a lot of opportunities to talk to Ieyasu because he became a hatamoto. A hatamoto is literally translated a warrior under the banner or near the banner of the Lord. And this was not the highest, to say so, rank. You didn't have a large fief because you were a direct retainer. So you weren't a warlord. But still, you were allowed to speak directly to the shogun or to Iyase. So Adams was allowed to speak directly to Iyase.

And he had a lot of opportunities because he writes in his letter that he really became a tutor to Iyase. He told him about the world. He taught him geometry, mathematics, and so on. Ieyasu was very keen on learning new things. He was also very keen to have able persons around him. Normally, someone, a lord in the samurai caste, would only have members of the samurai caste allowing him.

But Iyase employed a lot of people, a Buddhist monk, some merchants for his finances, and also William Adams and Jan Jostel-Lodestan. So he had two foreigners in his service who could meet him directly. So in this way, William Adams really made a career in Japan. Some describe him as the English samurai. Well, he did have several swords, and swords were really the symbol of a samurai,

of members of the samurai caste. It wasn't allowed. Other people, merchants and peasants, weren't allowed to wear swords, but he was. So in that sense, he really was a member of that caste. But you mustn't think about Adams as someone who fought wars for Iase wielding swords or something. He was an advisor, advised Iase on matters of the world, on matters of diplomacy, on shipbuilding and so on. Although you say he's writing all these wonderful letters back to his wife, he takes

a Japanese wife. Yes, indeed. That was something he hides for his wife, but I think his wife knew that was blasphemy for a Christian to do. But in my opinion, there's not much known about his Japanese wife, but probably it was Iyase who introduced him to a wife, because when he became a member of the samurai class, he had to be adopted into a samurai family. So my view is that his Japanese wife came from a samurai family. And by marrying her, Adams was accepted as a Hatamotlo. And he had two children with his wife and one, his son, later became a Miura Anjin and traded in junk ships until the 1630s. But afterwards, nothing is known. I think

his lineage died out. So he spends the rest of his life in Japan? Yes. He wasn't allowed to go out of Japan. And he tried a lot of times to persuade Iase to let him go. And for that, he used the argument that if Iase let him go, then he would contact the Dutch and the English who were already sailing in Asia at that time, and persuade them to send ships to Japan. And then Iase could have a thriving trade with not only the Portuguese, but also other countries but Iyasa didn't want to let him go. So after a time Iyasa gave permission for the captain of the Liefde and a merchant called Van Zandvoort to leave Japan and do what Adams wanted to do. So they went to Patani where they encountered Dutch and they told him that Iyasa wanted

to trade with the Dutch. But the Dutch at the time were entangled in a fight between the Portuguese in Asia so they didn't have the means to send ships so it took a little while but in 1609 the Dutch East India Company

finally sent two ships to Japan and they had an audition with IASE, and they received permission to establish a trade house that was called factory at the time. So a Dutch factory in Hirado, which was a very small island on the western coast of Kyushu. So very close to Asia, very easy to reach. And from then on, the Dutch began to trade in Japan. But still Adams wasn't allowed to leave. What he did is

he began to work for the Dutch. I have found letters from the Dutch East India Company, which is clear that while he was a Hatamoto, he also worked for the Dutch. And one of the things he did was he sold lead, which was used for bullets, and iron sand to Ieyasu. That was used to make Japanese swords. And he also sent, again, letters to the English.

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So he took John Ceres, which was the captain of the English fleet, to Sumpur, to Iyasa. And Ceres got the same trade privileges which the Dutch got. So he also established a trading house in Hirado. When he met his Englishmen after decades, did he get on with them? Or was he more Japanese now than he was English? He spent 13 years in Japan at the time. And it's really funny because we have a lot of records about Adams in Dutch and also English sources. And one of those sources is Sadie's journal of his voyage to Japan.

And he describes how he saw Adams when he first met him. And this Adams is always talking about the Japanese and how good Japan was and so on. And we, the English, really see him as a naturalized Japanese. And you have a lot of references to that. The head of the English factory also writes that this guy has just become a Japanese. He doesn't know his countrymen anymore. And I can understand that.

In the beginning, I think he really wanted to go back to England. But after so many years in Japan with no contacts at all, he spent there nine years without any contacts just around the Japanese. Perhaps he had some contacts with the other members of the remaining crew, but probably mostly he was just surrounded by Japanese. So at a certain time, you get acclimatized to that new culture. And when after 13 years his countrymen arrive, then he has become a totally different person. And I think he was really glad to see his countrymen again. But still, he was a little bit alienated from the Westerners, I think.

And when does he die? He dies in 1620, so seven years after the English arrive. So a lot has happened because in 1613, when the English has arrived, he again asks Iyase to be allowed to leave Japan. And since he has built ships for Iyase, he has had the Dutch and English come to Japan, establishing trading houses. He also has acted as a diplomat for Iase with the Spanish, for example. Iase says, you have done enough for me, you are allowed to leave. But then

he had a lot of problems with Seiris. The two men couldn't get along well with each other. So he didn't want to leave with Seiris sailing ship. And he became employed now for the English factory. And for the English factory, he made a few voyages with junk the English had chased to Siam, to Tonkin. He stranded two times in the Ryukyu Islands. Oh, so his adventures haven't ended. So he goes off to what is now Thailand and ends up stranded. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, so he's back where he wanted to be, adventures at sea. And I think he really liked it.

But still, he returns to Japan every time. And at one point, I think it was 1618, he wanted to board an English ship and finally sail back to England. But then one Chinese merchant, I think, asked him, would you be captain on my junk for a voyage to Siam? So he said, okay, I want to make that voyage and then I go to England. But when he came back, then it was too late. He had a disease and it went worse and worse.

And in 1620, he died in Hirado. So he never went back to England, and I had a conversation with Cosmo Jarvis, who plays John Blackthorn, which was modeled on William Adams' life in the TV show Shogun. And he said it would be marvelous if he could go back to England and talk about what he saw and what he did in Japan to King James. But that never happened. Well, speaking of which, it must be very exciting for you as a professor of this part of history to translate that into a mega historical TV show. I'm sure there are frustrations, but is it exciting to see your research, your words, suddenly projected onto this great big canvas? Indeed it is. And you have scenes in episode one

and two, which are almost entirely based on Adams' letters. So it is fiction. It's only, let's say, half a year in William Adams' life. And James Clavel has made a very big novel of it and has put a lot of fiction in it. But still, it is based on a real story. And as a historian, I'm very pleased that they put that into a great television show. I am a professor of Japanese history and especially of the Sengoku period. And originally, I was drawn into Japanese history by seeing the TV show Shogun in 1980. So I went to Japan and studied history and I came up studying the lives of Tokugawa Ieyasu, which is the model for Toranaga, Hosokawa Gracia, which is the model for Mariko, and then of course William Adams, which is a model of John Blackstone. So when they asked me to do the historical parts,

the historical research for the TV show, the remake. This was really, how you call it, the culmination of my academic career. That's great. Your childhood self will be proud of you. Yes. With the big movie releases we've had recently, I mean, there's always debate about historical fiction and inaccuracy and accuracy and whether it should just be we enjoy it or whether we should judge things. As someone now who's an eminent professor but has also been involved in this

production, what is the case for these kind of TV shows? Well, the showrunner, Justin Marks, with which I worked very closely, he was really obsessed to have as much historical accuracy as possible. So we ended up with an enormous amount of details. I've worked three years for Shogun. I've been there in the very beginning when they were still writing the script. And I had to work every day on hundreds of questions that they asked me about accuracy. I also introduced many aspects which I found had to be in the show to make it more accurate. And I must say they probably incorporated perhaps 80 or 90 percent of what I told them. So it really is a very historical, accurate, almost academic TV show to say. So you could

watch Shogun and present it, for example, to university students as an introduction to Sengoku culture, because they also have incorporated a lot of cultural aspects that I told him, like the tea ceremony. They have a no play, which wasn't in the original novel. I told them that they had to incorporate poetry because poetry was very important at the time for the samurai. You weren't a real samurai if you couldn't compose poetry. And all kinds of other stuff. For example, they rebuilt the city of Osaka, which was one thing I really wanted to do them very accurately because the city of Osaka was built by Hideyoshi

from scratch. He was the first urban planner to say so. So it was really built on a very large scale and following certain structures, patterns. We have Osaka Castle, which, for example, the keep of Osaka Castle, which is called Tenshikaku, was rebuilt several times. And I really wanted them to have the keep of 1600, which we have one picture of, which they used to model it after. The structure of Osaka Castle, of everything around there.

So the sets are something which was never made in Japan. They never made such a historically accurate city of Osaka in 1600. The same goes for the costumes. So mostly if you have period dramas in Japan, they would use kimonos. But kimonos were something that evolved in the Edo period, after the Sengoku period. Well, in this show, we used kosode, another thing that I advised on, and really many other details. Also, we spent a lot of time about the behavior of the warriors the samurai at the

time this need they want me to tell that this is entertainment and it really is entertainment what they have done is they have put all those historical elements into a format which is entertaining they really have used all those elements and put them in the story to make a really authentic, an original story with something which you have are some things that they didn't accept, which afterwards seen wasn't that bad, because those elements would perhaps have looked alien to a modern Japanese public too. I think one aspect that they incorporated, which is quite different from what modern Japanese think, are the courtesans. So they are really based on how courtesans looked like in 1600s and not the geisha, which we know from the end of 18th century, 19th century.

So they look very exotic, very Chinese to modern Japanese. But that's how they looked in 1600s. They wanted to look exotic because in that way they could attract customers. Well, I'm so glad that they had such a fantastic expert advising on this series. Sounds like it's the perfect mix of great drama and great history. I can't wait to watch it. Thank you, Frederik. Thank you for giving me so much of your time.

What an extraordinary story. Thank you, Dan, and thank you everyone for listening. you