Williams Adams

In 1600 a Dutch ship, the "Leifde" landed on the beach of Bungo(Oita Prefecture). There was an English pilot, Williams Adams among the Dutch in the ship. It was said that he was the first English to set foot on Japan. It took 142 days to reach Japan from Saint Maria. The "Leifde" was the only survivor of a squadron of five vessels that had left Amsterdam two years before. At that time there survived only seven people including W. Adams and other 30 people died on the way to Bungo.

The crews of the"Leifde" were imprisoned while Adams went to Osaka to await the orders of Shogun Ieyasu. Then Shogun Ieyasu was fighting with his rival, Toyotomi Hideyori. Shogun Ieyasu asked Adams the reason why he came to Japan. Adams answered Dutch people wanted to trade with Japan and showed Ieyasu the world map. Both Ieyasu and Adams changed their views about the situations of the world. Ieyasu was a shrewd shogun and Adams and his friends were released, given permission settle wherever they pleased and Adams told to remain at court. Portuguese and Christians told Ieyasu not to trade with Holland but he did not accept their advice.

A friendship spring up between the Shogun and the simple English seaman that that was to last until Yeyasu's death. Adams was given land at Itsumi(Yokosuka) and Edo (Tokyo) and the rank of samurai with retainers to server him; the only thing denied him being the right to leave the country.

But he was able to communicate with his wife in England through the Dutch, who were allowed to come and go as they pleased and, as a result of his letters to people in London the East India Company dispatched a mission under the command of Capt.John Saris in order to open up trade with Japan. Adams seeing that the Dutch were well established at Hirado suggested the English would do well to set up their trading station at Uraga, Edo, so as to be near the court at the Shogun. The English mission in the ship "Clove" arrived at Hirado in summer of the year 1613.

Adams constructed ships for Iyeyasu and certain daimyo. They were the first ocean-going vessels to be built in Japan. He made several voyages to various parts of the East and visited China, Siam, and the Ryukyu Islands. Adams was the first that brought back sweet potato with him from the Ryukyu Islands.

It was on his return from a long voyage that Adams learnt of the death of his friend and benefactor Shogun Ieyasu. He had died in 1616,being succeeded by his son, Hidetada, Tokugawa whose policy with respect to religion in particular was different from that of his father. Hidetada was not the patron and friend that his father had been. Consequently, the Shogun restricted English trade to Hirade. This decree dealt the English a sever blow and the East India Company soon found the conditions of trade almost impossible.

Williams Adams died in 1620 at the age of forty -five, and his tomb is at Yokosuka with that of his Japanese wife on the Pilot Mound, where stands a monument to his memory.

Every year they have a festival in memory of William Adams in Yokohama and Ito in spring.

An English writer, Clavell's "Shogun; a novel of Japan "was published in 1975 and immediately became a best seller of eight million copies. Williams' patron Iyeyasu was said to be a model of the fiction, which was screened and televised nationwide in the U.S.