Will Adams, the First Englishman in Japan. A Romantic Biography
Author : William Dalton (Miscellaneous Writer.)
Publisher :
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 26,63 MB
Release : 1868
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ISBN :
Author : William Dalton (Miscellaneous Writer.)
Publisher :
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 26,63 MB
Release : 1868
Category :
ISBN :
Author : Giles Milton
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 370 pages
File Size : 11,2 MB
Release : 2003-01-18
Category : History
ISBN : 0374706239
An eye-opening account of the first encounter between England and Japan, by the acclaimed author of Nathaniel's Nutmeg In 1611, the merchants of London's East India Company received a mysterious letter from Japan, written several years previously by a marooned English mariner named William Adams. Foreigners had been denied access to Japan for centuries, yet Adams had been living in this unknown land for years. He had risen to the highest levels in the ruling shogun's court, taken a Japanese name, and was now offering his services as adviser and interpreter. Seven adventurers were sent to Japan with orders to find and befriend Adams, in the belief that he held the key to exploiting the opulent riches of this forbidden land. Their arrival was to prove a momentous event in the history of Japan and the shogun suddenly found himself facing a stark choice: to expel the foreigners and continue with his policy of isolation, or to open his country to the world. For more than a decade the English, helped by Adams, were to attempt trade with the shogun, but confounded by a culture so different from their own, and hounded by scheming Jesuit monks and fearsome Dutch assassins, they found themselves in a desperate battle for their lives. Samurai William is the fascinating story of a clash of two cultures, and of the enormous impact one Westerner had on the opening of the East.
Author : Philip George Rogers
Publisher :
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 25,58 MB
Release : 1956
Category : British
ISBN :
Author : Hiromi T. Rogers
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 23,36 MB
Release : 2016
Category : British
ISBN : 9781898823223
The year is 1600. It is April and Japan's iconic cherry trees are in full flower. A battered ship drifts on the tide into Usuki Bay in southern Japan. On board, barely able to stand, are twenty-three Dutchmen and one Englishman, the remnants of a fleet of five ships and 500 men that had set out from Rotterdam in 1598. The Englishman was William Adams, later to be known as Anjin Miura by the Japanese, whose subsequent transformation from wretched prisoner to one of the Shogun's closest advisers is the centrepiece of this book. As a native of Japan, and a scholar of seventeenth-century Japanese history, the author delves deep into the cultural context facing Adams in what is one of the great examples of assimilation into the highest reaches of a foreign culture. Her access to Japanese sources, including contemporary accounts - some not previously seen by Western scholars researching the subject - offers us a fuller understanding of the life lived by William Adams as a high-ranking samurai and his grandstand view of the collision of cultures that led to Japan's self-imposed isolation, lasting over two centuries. This is a highly readable account of Adams' voyage to and twenty years in Japan and that is supported by detailed observations of Japanese culture and society at this time. New light is shed on Adams' relations with the Dutch and his countrymen, including the disastrous relationship with Captain John Saris, the key role likely to have been played by the munitions, including cannon, removed from Adams' ship De Liefde in the great battle of Sekigahara (September 1600), the shipbuilding skills that enabled Japan to advance its international maritime ambitions, as well as the scientific and technical support Adams was able to provide in the refining process of Japan's gold and silver.
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 1244 pages
File Size : 16,28 MB
Release : 1909
Category : Great Britain
ISBN :
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 1230 pages
File Size : 27,62 MB
Release : 1909
Category : English literature
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Author :
Publisher :
Page : 916 pages
File Size : 13,58 MB
Release : 1861
Category : England
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Author : James Silk Buckingham
Publisher :
Page : 944 pages
File Size : 49,75 MB
Release : 1860
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Author : British Museum. Department of Printed Books
Publisher :
Page : 1092 pages
File Size : 11,45 MB
Release : 1882
Category : English literature
ISBN :
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 780 pages
File Size : 31,91 MB
Release : 1860
Category : Bibliography
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