Found: the last resting place of the Limehouse Samurai
He was nearly crucified, but won over a warlord and became a Japanese legend. Now there’s an astonishing development...
On the island of Hirado, off the north-west coast of Japan’s Kyushu Island, a revered samurai lay dying from a debilitating illness. He summoned his colleagues to his bedside and began to dictate his will.
It was May 1620 and Miura Anjin, whose warrior status bestowed on him the right to carry two razor-sharp curved swords wherever he went, had a large country estate to leave his family, and £500 — around £66,000 today.
But Anjin’s family, wife Oyuki and their two children, were only to receive half his fortune. For Anjin had another family whom he had not seen for 20 years. They lived nearly 6,000 miles away and belonged to his former life, when Miura Anjin had been William Adams, a sailor from Limehouse, East London.
The swashbuckling story of the ‘blueeyed samurai’ — one that takes in a devastating shipwreck, fierce combat and a terrifying Japanese warlord — was fictionalised by James Clavell in his 1975 novel Shogun, which became a hugely popular television series in the 1980s, starring Richard Chamberlain as John Blackthorne, the character based on Adams.
But it is only now, in a timely twist on the 400th anniversary of Adams’ death, that we finally know the concluding chapter of the Limehouse Samurai’s epic story.
When the real Adams died, aged 56, he was buried on Hirado where, since the exact location of his body was lost to history, a memorial stone has born his name for centuries. But last week, researchers from the University of Tokyo, who were studying an urn found on an excavated hill, used advanced genetic sequence techniques to identify Adams’ bones — even though just five per cent of his skeleton still remained.
‘The skeletal remains...are completely consistent with the known characteristics of Adams himself, in terms of sex, country of ancestral origin, age at death, and year of death,’ said Professor Richard Irving, a member of the Tokyobased William Adams Club, dedicated to preserving the unlikely samurai’s memory.
BUT how did this Londoner become the first Englishman to set foot in Japan in 1600, and how did he become Samurai William, one of the most important men in Japan?
As Giles Milton relates in his biography, Samurai William: The Adventurer who Unlocked Japan, Adams’s desire to explore the world was established at a young age.
Although he was born in Gillingham, Kent in 1564, when Adams was 12 he was apprenticed to a master shipbuilder in Limehouse, where he became bewitched by the exploits of far-flung sailors passing through.
Fast-forward 14 years and he had become one of them, commanding a supply ship for the English fleet against the Spanish Armada, evading the pirates who terrorised the north African coast.
Adams was bold and ambitious, so when in 1598 he heard of a Dutch expedition heading for the famed Spice Islands of the East Indies (in today’s Indonesia), he left behind his wife Mary, whom he had married ten years earlier, and their young daughter, and set sail as the pilot of the fleet’s flagship, the Liefde, hoping to return in a few years as a wealthy man.
But the voyage was beset by problems from the start. The commander was overly generous with the rations and by the time they had crossed the Atlantic, the sailors were reduced to eating the leather that clad the ship’s ropes. Soon the men were dying by the dozen from starvation and dysentery, but whenever they tried to land to buy provisions, they were attacked: one landing party was torn limb from limb. Another, which included Adams’s brother Thomas, was ambushed and massacred. With their plans in tatters, the Liefde decided to head to the kingdom of fabled riches — Japan — hoping it would prove a lucrative market for their cargo of woollen cloth. But finding Japan proved almost impossible and by April 1600, after 20 months at sea, only 24 of the 100strong crew were still alive, and only six of them, including the tough, resilient Adams, were strong enough to stand. Death seemed inevitable when, with delirious relief, Adams spotted land. They had reached the Japanese island of Kyushu. They were saved. Or were they? Ieyasu, the powerful shogun — warlord — of the city of Osaka, soon heard of their arrival and, curious to learn more about other lands, summoned Adams for an audience. Portuguese Jesuit priests had arrived in Japan 50 years earlier, determined to spread Catholicism, and one of them acted as Ieyasu’s interpreter. no doubt
Adams knew the meeting could be the difference between life and death. And the odds were not encouraging. Ieyasu was renowned for being mercilessly ruthless.
Indeed, when an allied clan demanded proof of his loyalty some years before Adams arrived, Ieyasu took it upon himself to execute his wife and demand his son commit suicide.
FORTUnATELy for Adams, the warlord was impressed by his navigational skills, and fascinated by the Englishman’s confident manner and his information about European trade, politics and religion.
But fearing the possibility of being displaced, the jealous Jesuit secretly told Ieyasu that Adams and his sailors were actually pirates and demanded they pay the penalty for piracy: crucifixion while being slowly speared to death. Ieyasu agreed and Adams was thrown into a filthy cell.
But, miraculously, Ieyasu had a change of heart. Recognising that Adams might be useful, the warlord told him that he and his men could go free, but they must remain in Japan and build him a ship like the Liefde.
Adams had never built an entire ship, but with their lives depending on success, he managed to construct a replica of the Liefde. Utterly bowled over, Ieyasu immediately commissioned another. And so Adams soon became the Shogun’s trusted adviser and confidante, replacing the Jesuits.
The Shogun, who had now become the ruler of all of Japan, rewarded him with a salary, gifts of silver and a large estate with 90 slaves. He had come a long way from Limehouse.
He was soon rewarded with the courtly title of ‘hamamoto,’ making him an honorary samurai with the right to carry two swords. Such an honour was extremely rare. Traditionally, you could only be born into the ‘samurai’ ruling class, where you trained to become a master swordsman from childhood.
Resigning himself to remaining in Japan, Adams became fluent in the language, took the name, Miura Anjin — Mr Pilot — and adopted the samurai custom of ‘Bushido’ — the way of the warrior. He also remarried, and his wife bore him two children, Joseph and Susanna.
Then in 1613, an English ship arrived in the harbour, keen to start trading on behalf of the East India Company. Hearing that an Englishman was in favour with the Shogun, they sought out Adams to plead their cause. But when they found him, they were shocked to see him wearing a kimono and speaking Japanese as if ‘he is a naturalised Japanner’.
For his part, Adams was appalled
by the behaviour of his unwashed, uncouth countrymen — especially the ship’s captain, John Saris, an avid pornography collector who filled his cabin with erotic carvings.
Nonetheless, he lobbied the Shogun on their behalf and he duly granted the English trading rights. He even gave Adams permission to return to England with Saris.
Adams was delighted, but then it dawned on him that returning would mean he would have to exchange his wealth and status as a samurai for the life of an ordinary sailor.
Instead he agreed to remain in Japan as a salaried agent of the East India Company. For the next few years, Adams led several trading expeditions to South-east Asia on behalf of the Company.
But he remained aloof from his fellow English traders who spent much of their time drinking, whoring and boasting to each other of their sexual escapades with prostitutes, and concubines.
Although Adams had a mistress and an illegitimate child, he was rather more discreet.
But when Ieyasu died in 1616, Adams and the English lost their powerful patron. And soon after, Adams himself became terribly ill — probably with malaria — and died in 1620.
Without the patronage of a ‘local’, the East India Company immediately recalled its traders.
It was just as well. For in 1637, the new Shogun, wary of the colonial influence on his country, expelled all foreigners from Japan and for the next two centuries Japan became ‘sakoku’ — a closed country.
When Englishmen eventually returned to Japan, they were amazed to discover that ‘Samurai William’ was still revered and remembered.
There were monuments to him and his admirers made an annual pilgrimage to say prayers for his soul in the temple in Tokyo, where he used to worship.
Even today, a district of Tokyo is still called Anjin-cho in his honour and there is an annual Anjin festival.
And so the Limehouse lad who sailed in search of riches attained something else altogether: immortality.