Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

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The ship was seized and the sickly crew were imprisoned at Osaka Castle on orders by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the daimyō of Edo and future shogun. The nineteen bronze cannon of the Liefde were unloaded and, according to Spanish accounts, later used at the decisive Battle of Sekigahara on 21 October 1600. The battle is depicted here in an extraordinary five panel screen (though it does not show the cannon)

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Adams met Ieyasu in Osaka three times between May and June 1600. He was questioned by Ieyasu, then a guardian of the young son of the Taikō Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the ruler who had just died. Adams' knowledge of ships, shipbuilding and nautical smattering of mathematics appealed to Ieyasu.

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Coming before the king, he viewed me well, and seemed to be wonderfully favourable. He made many signs unto me, some of which I understood, and some I did not. In the end, there came one that could speak Portuguese. By him, the king demanded of me of what land I was, and what moved us to come to his land, being so far off. I showed unto him the name of our country, and that our land had long sought out the East Indies, and desired friendship with all kings and potentates in way of merchandise, having in our land diverse commodities, which these lands had not… Then he asked whether our country had wars? I answered him yea, with the Spaniards and Portugals, being in peace with all other nations. Further, he asked me, in what I did believe? I said, in God, that made heaven and earth. He asked me diverse other questions of things of religions, and many other things: As what way we came to the country. Having a chart of the whole world, I showed him, through the Strait of Magellan. At which he wondered, and thought me to lie. Thus, from one thing to another, I abode with him till mid-night.

 

Taking a liking to Adams, the shogun appointed him as a diplomatic and trade advisor, bestowing great privileges upon him. Ultimately, Adams became his personal advisor on all things related to Western powers and civilization.

 

He was presented with two swords representing the authority of a Samurai. The Shogun decreed that William Adams the pilot was dead and that Miura Anjin, a samurai, was born. According to the shogun, this action "freed" Adams to serve the Shogunate permanently, effectively making Adams' wife in England a widow.

 

Soon after Adams's arrival in Japan, he became a key advisor to the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. Adams directed construction for the shogun of the first Western-style ships in the country.

 

He died in Japan at age 55.

Edited December 25, 2017 by Flex Mentallo

[Flex Mentallo]

Of course, as one who has lived much of my life in India, becoming culturally assimilated in the process (to the extent that I feel more comfortable in my own skin, more relaxed, when there than in the West), Adam's story is of special interest to me.

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The Battle of Sekigahara was a decisive battle on October 21, 1600 that preceded the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate.

 

Legend has it that the rōnin Miyamoto Musashi was present at the battle on the losing side but escaped unharmed. Musashi would have been around 16 years of age at the time.

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Musashi was an expert Japanese swordsman, martial arts philosophy writer and rōnin, widely acknowledged to be the greatest of all time. He became renowned through stories of his excellent and unique double-bladed swordsmanship and undefeated record in his 60 duels - almost twice as many as anyone else in recorded history. Many stories were told of his deeds including entirely mythic battles with giants and monsters.

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I have trained in the way of strategy since my youth, and at the age of thirteen I fought a duel for the first time. My opponent was called Arima Kihei, a sword adept of the Shinto ryū, and I defeated him. At the age of sixteen I defeated a powerful adept by the name of Akiyama, who came from Tajima Province. At the age of twenty-one I went up to Kyōtō and fought duels with several adepts of the sword from famous schools, but I never lost.

Miyamoto Musashi, Go Rin No Sho

 

 

There is no hard evidence to prove if Musashi was present or not for the battle. According to one account, the Musashi yuko gamei, "Musashi's achievements stood out from the crowd, and were known by the soldiers in all camps." Musashi is reticent on the matter, writing only that he had "participated in over six battles since my youth".

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Though Tokugawa Ieyasu took three more years to consolidate his position of power over the Toyotomi clan and the daimyōs, but Sekigahara is widely considered to be the unofficial beginning of the Tokugawa bakufu, the last shogunate to control Japan. A not exactly unbiased historian wrote in 1664

 

"Evil-doers and bandits were vanquished and the entire realm submitted to Lord Ieyasu, praising the establishment of peace and extolling his martial virtue. That this glorious era that he founded may continue for ten thousands upon ten thousands of generations, coeval with heaven and earth."

 

The Tokugawa shogunate ruled from Edo Castle and the years of the shogunate became known as the Edo period. The period was characterized by economic growth, strict social order, isolationist foreign policies, a stable population, "no more wars", and popular enjoyment of arts and culture.

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It is at the beginning of the Edo period that Japan built its first ocean-going Western-style warships, such as the San Juan Bautista, a 500-ton galleon-type ship that transported a Japanese embassy headed by Hasekura Tsunenaga to the Americas and then to Europe.

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After 1635 and the introduction of Seclusion laws, inbound ships were only allowed from China, Korea, and the Netherlands. This had the effect of isolating Japan from unwanted outside influence until the Meiji restoration which followed in 1868.

 

Japan turned down a demand from the United States, which was greatly expanding its own presence in the Asia-Pacific region, to establish diplomatic relations when Commodore James Biddle appeared in Edo Bay with two warships in July 1846.

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The Boshin War (Boshin Sensō, "War of the Year of the Yang Earth Dragon"),sometimes known as the Japanese Revolution, was a civil war in Japan, fought from 1868 to 1869 between forces of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and those seeking to return political power to the Imperial Court.

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This is vividly portrayed in the movie Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise.The film achieved higher box office receipts in Japan than in the United States.

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In the late 19th Century Japan was often referred to as a ‘sealed book’.

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However the gradual thawing of diplomatic relationships led to an influx of Japanese arts to Europe and America. Prints by the great Edo period printmakers such as Utamaro, Hokusai and Hiroshige began to be imported in vast quantities.

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This led to the establishment of Japonisme, best exemplified in the art of James McNeil Whistler, whose society models were often depicted in kimonos.

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Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room is James McNeill Whistler's masterpiece of interior decorative mural art, located in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. He painted the paneled room in a rich and unified palette of brilliant blue-greens with over-glazing and metallic gold leaf. Painted between 1876–77, it now is considered one of the greatest surviving aesthetic interiors, and best examples of the Anglo-Japanese style.

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To capitalize on this surge of interest, books on the depiction of life in Japan began to be produced from the 1870s onward.