Giles Milton - Samurai William

Samurai William is an historical portrayal of the life and adventures of William Adams (sailor) – an Elizabethan adventurer who was shipwrecked in Japan in 1600. William Adams's story inspired the 1975 best-selling novel, Shōgun by James Clavell., recounting the history of early European contacts with the Japanese shogun and the ultimately doomed attempts of the English East India Company to forge profitable trading links with Japan.

William Adams set sail from Rotterdam in 1598, having been employed as pilot on the Dutch ship Liefde (Love). The Liefde was one of five vessels whose ostensible purpose was to head for the Spice Islands or Maluku Islands of the East Indies. But the expedition's financiers also encouraged their captains to attack and ransack Spanish possessions on the coast of South America. The fleet was scattered as it emerged through the Strait of Magellan and into the Pacific Ocean. The captain and crew of the Liefde – concerned that their cargo of broadcloth would not have a ready market in the tropical Spice Islands – took the extraordinary decision to head to Japan, a land of which they were wholly ignorant.

The voyage was fraught with hardship and suffering: atrocious weather and diminishing supplies soon have a deleterious effect on the men's health. On 12 April 1600, William Adams sighted the coast of Japan: by this time, only 24 crew members were still alive.

The book makes use of original source documents – including manuscript letters and journals – to construct a vivid portrayal of Adams's two decades in Japan. The book reveals Adams's personal skill in dealing the Japanese and suggests that he was adept at adapting to Japanese culture. He helped his cause by deliberately creating a divide between himself and the Portuguese Jesuit missionaries who were becoming increasingly unpopular in Japanese courtly circles.

He soon came to the attention of the ruling shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, for whom he built two European style sailing vessels. Ieyasu rewarded Adams with gifts – including a country estate near the imperial capital of Edo. Adams was also honoured with the title of hatamoto or bannerman, a prestigious position that made him a direct retainer of the shogun's court. It also linked Adams to the warrior class that had dominated Japanese history for centuries: all of Adams's fellow hatamoto were samurai. Adams was by now living like the native Japanese. He spoke the language fluently, wore a courtly kimono and changed his name to Miura Anjin (Mr Pilot). He also married a Japanese woman of good birth, even though he had left behind a wife and daughter in England.

Much of Samurai William deals with the ultimately doomed attempts of the East India Company to make use of Adams's influence at court in order to open a trading station at Hirado in south-west Japan. The account of life in Hirado is told through original sources – notably the personal diary of Richard Cocks, head of the factory in Hirado, and the journal of Captain John Saris, commander of the ship that brought the East India Company merchants to Japan. The author quotes widely from original documents now housed in the British Library: these were edited and published by Anthony Farrington in his The English Factory in Japan.

Samurai William provides an account of Adams's death in May 1620, and the sorry decline of the doomed trading post. It ends with the brutal suppression of Christianity in Japan and the closure of the country to foreign trade for more than two centuries.