Samurai William

William Adams reached Japan in 1600 after the Dutch ship Liefde crossed the Pacific with most of its crew dead or dying. His knowledge of navigation and shipbuilding brought him into the service of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who granted him rank, land and a Japanese household. Adams became an intermediary between the new shogunate and European merchants while remaining unable to return to his wife and children in England.

Giles Milton then follows the English East India Company’s attempt to exploit Adams’s position. John Saris established a factory at Hirado in 1613, but cultural misunderstanding, poor commercial judgement and competition from Dutch and Portuguese traders undermined the enterprise. The book uses Adams’s divided life and the factory’s failure to examine early Tokugawa diplomacy, European rivalry in Asian waters and the limits of England’s first sustained encounter with Japan.