William adams

In 1600 a Dutch galleon arrived on the shores of a small fief on Kyushu, the westernmost of Japan’s four main islands. It was the first Dutch ship to reach Japan. Among the crew was an English navigator, William Adams, who managed to gain the trust of Tokugawa Ieyasu, a powerful warlord who became a shogun (the military leader of the samurai caste) in 1603. Adams eventually rose to the rank of Hatamoto, the shogun’s direct retainer. How did an English navigator come to serve the shogun? To answer this, we must first look at the situation in Japan at the time and the policies of Ieyasu.

By 1600 Japan had endured several centuries of warfare, known as the Sengoku period (Sengoku means ‘the country at war’). Originally ruled by the emperor in Kyoto, from the 12th century the shogunate had ruled the country, leaving the emperor with only nominal power. However, as the influence of the Ashikaga shoguns waned the country descended into chaos, with numerous warlords vying for supremacy. In the middle of the 16th century, great unifiers a

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