Scots and samurai mingled in Japan 241 years earlier than first thought
Professor reveals links to man who inspired Shogun
Critics and viewers have lavished praise on Disney+’s historical samurai epic Shogun, a series which reaches its conclusion on Tuesday.
As well as its opulent costumes, gritty action sequences and twisting plot, the show has been lauded for its historical accuracy.
The story, taken from the novel by James Clavell, is based on the exploits of 17th Century sailor William Adams, the first Englishman to arrive in Japan, who would later serve in the court of the Emperor.
New evidence suggests he would have had company, however, in the form of several Scots, including a rowdy sailor from Leith.
Professor Ian Gow, chairman of the Japan Society of Scotland, has uncovered documents from the East India Trading Company about three Scots who lived on Hirado, near Nagasaki, on Japan’s southwestern coast.
“There were three Scots who, from 1617, landed and stayed for periods at the East India Company base at Hirado – where William Adams, the character who Shogun’s John Blackthorne is based on, lived. They would have lived in the same port and worked for the same organisation.
“The best source for the existence of the Scots is the diary of Richard Cocks, head of the East India Company at Hirado,” explained Professor Gow. “William Adams only wrote six letters home about Japan. Interestingly, he doesn’t mention these Scots, despite them likely being among the few people on Hirado who could speak English.
“You have to remember, though, that the early 17th Century was a torrid time between Scotland and England.
“Perhaps it was a bit like Celtic and Rangers fans, who are generally friends when they’re abroad, or perhaps the rivalry was deeper.”
The first Scot to arrive, according to records, was Leith sailor Harry Shanks.
“Unfortunately, the first records about Shanks aren’t too positive – in that he appears to have been somewhat rowdy,” added the professor.
In records at the time, Cocks wrote that Shanks was a gunner on a Spanish vessel who is believed to have deserted his post. He arrived destitute and was put to work.
Initially, he was reported to be good company. However, Cocks soon changed his mind showing that Shanks reverted to the common sailor behaviour when ashore of excessive drinking, fighting and whoring.
“Cocks wrote he was a quarrelsome, drunken fellow, and said he threw a prostitute out of a window and attacked her father.”
The following year, in 1618, Shanks was joined by fellow Scot, John Portis, a rich, cosmopolitan sailor who had visited Mexico and Manila.
While working for the East India Company, Portis was also linked with a plot to murder a Portuguese captain.
Portis, according to Professor Gow, had a consort called Madellina, who had the first Scots-japanese baby, who unfortunately died shortly after birth. The final Scot is Reverend Patrick Copland, from Aberdeen, who was a missionary and educator, who arrived in 1620. There is little record of his time in Japan, however, he wrote vividly about the dangerous storms in the seas surrounding the island nation following a trip to Nagasaki.
Copland’s work as a clergyman was notable, and his coat of arms is on the great stained-glass window at Mitchell Hall, Aberdeen University. The Scottish travellers arrived 241 years prior to Thomas Blake Glover, the merchant and so-called Scottish Samurai who is credited with kickstarting Japan’s “economic miracle” in the 19th Century.
Admiral James Stirling, from Coatbridge, is famed for persuading the then isolationist Japan to sign a trade treaty with Great Britain in 1854. Professor Gow praised the Disney+ Shogun series for its accuracy and attention to the complex political situation at the end of the Sengoku period, when the country experienced internal strife, as it moved to the Edo period.
“James Clavell wrote the book in 1975, and he was a former prisoner of war of the Japanese,” he explained. “I think what the latest series does so well is show how difficult it was to communicate when no one can speak English. I think he experienced that when communicating with his captors. He’s a brilliant storyteller.
“This series was filmed in Japan, by Japanese production staff, and you can tell. The language used is a more classical form of Japanese, it would be the equivalent of a TV show set in mediaeval England using lots of words like thou and thy.
“It is extremely violent at times, but that’s not an exaggeration. The Japanese elite certainly valued honour more than life. There’s a wonderful quote by the actor who plays Mariko, who is a Christian.
“She tells the Englishman that,
‘Of course I love God. But first I am Japanese.’”
Professor Gow singled out actor Anna Sawai’s portrayal of Mariko, who becomes the lover of John Blackthorne, played by Cosmo Jarvis. “She is based on a real Japanese woman who was a superbly talented daughter of a great Samurai, and an ally of Tokugawa called Hosokawa Gracia.
“People have said she couldn’t possibly have had an affair with him because of a rank, but she died in 1600 and never met the real Blackthorn, William Adams.
“Clavell created this fictional character who Blackthorn found, courted and lost as a technique to tell a story, but it works terrifically well.
“Also, the mini series from 1980 is wonderful, too, and so is the book. For me, before Game Of Thrones was Game Of Thrones, there was Shogun.”