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William Adams: English Advisor to the Shogun
- stuartcw 3y agoI live on the Miura peninsular not too far from William Adams fiefdom. It’s possible to walk up the hill from Anjinzuka Station (The navigator’s hill) and see his and his wife’s grave.
- pipes 3y agoI've read shogun and now i'm watching the latest TV show. Both are amazing. Is the wife he's buried with Japanese? And he had one in England too?
- lainga 3y agoYes, he never returned to England. The Shogunate declared "William Adams" dead and "Miura Anjin" born, by which legal fiction he could remarry.
- dfxm12 3y agoWas there really a legitimate legal issue needed to be accounted for at the time, across these borders? Additionally, ostensibly to Adams, it would have been something he would have to answer to his creator for moreso than the crown or Shogun, if he was a true believer anyway.
- illwrks 3y agoIf I was to guess, probably yes but on the Japanese side.
- Sakos 3y agoPolygamy (as in being married to more than one person) isn't and wasn't legal in Japan. I don't see how it would in any way be feasible or acceptable to take a new wife in Japan of all places, where honor and family are such important aspects of their culture, while already married.
- bluepizza 3y agoI understand OP's question to be more practical than honour and family - literally as "Would the Japanese recognise a marriage performed in England?". Civil registration started in England only in 1837. Modern koseki system in Japan started in 1872, but different systems of civil registration existed way before that, including one created under the shogunate (though many years after Adams's passing). And indeed, they couldn't possibly careless about his married status regarding him marrying a Japanese woman. His declaration of death was so that he would be free to serve the shogunate freely, without the obligation of return to his family in England. Neither bureaucracy nor family honour.
- rsynnott 3y ago> Additionally, ostensibly to Adams, it would have been something he would have to answer to his creator for moreso than the crown or Shogun, if he was a true believer anyway. I mean, bear in mind that about 30 years before Adams was born, Henry VIII had broken with Rome so that he could get a divorce. Religious views on the sanctity of marriage in England were, ah, evolving rapidly at this point.
- mariuolo 3y ago> Henry VIII had broken with Rome so that he could get a divorce As far as I know, Henry VIII never divorced any of his wives, they all ended because of annulment or death.
- rsynnott 3y agoI mean, Henry certainly _claimed_ that it was an annulment, but it was self-granted, on a basis seemingly made up for the occasion, so realistically considering it to be an annulment was a _bit_ of a stretch. (Not that this was exactly unprecedented; the whole thing kind of came to a head because the Pope wouldn't grant a spurious annulment to cover a divorce to Henry, but various Popes had certainly granted dodgy annulments to various monarchs _before_.)
- solidsnack9000 3y agoIf he was known or reasonably believed to the Japanese to be married, yes, there was a legal issue.
- seanparsons 3y agoConversely I live in Gillingham, where there's several references to him and his history.
- AnarchismIsCool 3y agoHypothetically, would he have been on Mizu's list?
- kaycebasques 3y agoI'm also wondering if the story is inspired by Adams. For anyone not familiar with the "Mizu's list" reference, we're talking about the Netflix animated series Blue Eye Samurai. It's got more graphic violence than I usually enjoy but is a really good story.
- the_af 3y agoIt's gory but the fight sequences are really well done, almost ballet-like. One of the best Netflix shows of late, I really recommend it.
- midnight2 3y ago[flagged]
- midnight2 3y ago[flagged]
- hoseja 3y agoYeah, the racism is really played up quite a lot in that show. I'd be fine with the basic premise (it's completely OK to depict the Japanese as wary of whites and finding some aspects of their foreign culture off-putting, and the main character being especially brought up to hate them) but damn, they really go out of their way to just repeatedly state, literally: "White people are monstrous and disgusting, they will tell you this themselves, it is completely OK to despise them and all prejudice against them is justified." I was waiting for a reversal or nuance but none came, with only maybe a hint of it maybe happening in the later seasons with more white characters besides the villain.
- JoeDaDude 3y agoFor folk interested in learning more about what historians and similar think of the novel, a compilation of essays on the subject titled "Learning from SHOGUN: Japanese History and Western Fantasy" has been made available courtesy of the compilation's editor, Henry Smith.: https://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/learning/ https://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/learning/
- ProjectArcturis 3y agoI've always wondered about the accuracy of the book, in part because the junior samurai kill themselves a LOT. They're forced to commit seppuku for being late to their work in the morning. There's a scene where a samurai jumps off a cliff to his death just get his boss's attention (I guess yelling would have been rude). Also ninjas are depicted as super-powerful badasses. Which fits the legend, certainly, but isn't particularly realistic. This collection doesn't address those criticisms -- it's more of a literary analysis than a set of fact checks. But I'd still like to know.
- riku_iki 3y ago> This collection doesn't address those criticisms -- it's more of a literary analysis than a set of fact checks. many things likely can't be fact checked, e.g. what kind of warriors/spies ninjas really were.
- the_af 3y agoTrue, it's hard to tell fact from fiction, especially because much of what is known about samurai, ninja, the whole "bushido" nonsense, comes from the later Edo period, in many cases by writers who were romanticizing the olden days. I think most mainstream historians believe ninjas (as depicted in pop culture: assassins clad in black, with almost supernatural infiltration abilities, armed with shuriken, "opposed" to the samurai, etc) are completely fictional. There were spies and some jizamurai engaged in guerrilla tactics and wrote some books about it, and that's about it.
- 3y ago
- mjlee 3y agoJames Clavell wrote Shogun which is (very, very) loosely based on this. A fun read in any case.
- programmarchy 3y agoAlso recently released as a series on Hulu. Pretty faithful to the book from what I've seen so far.
- kaesar14 3y agoI’ve felt like it’s deviated quite a bit, but it’s well made nonetheless
- cm2012 3y agoThe new show has been made more accurate to the time period, they had historical experts come in. Plus the guy who plays Toranaga is an amateur historian of the time period and helped a lot.
- mangamadaiyan 3y agoSanada Hiroyuki? That's just brilliant! I knew he was fairly well-accomplished (singer, martial artist, theatre, and film), but had no idea that he was an amateur historian too.
- Karrot_Kream 3y agoYeah and it shows. The original book was pretty fast and loose with Japanese history but the show seems to have translated the Warring States period customs a lot better.
- kaesar14 3y agoThat's all well and good but I'd have preferred they keep some of the story points from the book like the emphasis on Blackthorn learning Japanese, and the theming overall of the book being how Blackthorn perceives the Japanese vs what it is now where it's more of how the Japanese perceive Blackthorn. Still a good show.
- n1b0m 3y agoSamurai William by Giles Milton is a great read about William Adams
- flohofwoe 3y agoHe even got his own video game: https://koei.fandom.com/wiki/William_Adams#Nioh https://koei.fandom.com/wiki/William_Adams#Nioh Don't expect a historically correct storyline though ;)
- balls187 3y agoIt was a pretty fun game, but has that Team Ninja level of difficulty that I just don't find fun--despite finding FromSoft difficulty really enjoyable. I had the same issue with Wo Long.
- lc9er 3y agoI agree with you on Team Ninja vs FromSoft. I tried Nioh 2 after hearing praise and comparisons to FromSoft games. But I found the controls comparatively complex compared to Souls/Sekiro and it made the game really unplayable for me.
- static_void_ 3y agolol i should have scrolled down. i love this game :)
- bane 3y agoThere's several interesting stories like Adam's. In the early 1600s a number of Dutchmen ended up in Joseon Dynasty Korea, which was still recovering from a series of devastating invasions from Japan which ended in 1598 (which are also talked about in the show Shogun). Desperate for military advancement, these foreigners, while entering an officially closed kingdom, where integrated into society as military advisors. The geopolitical realities that are in the show very much affected the region, and the introduction of Christianity, first by the Catholics, and then by other denominations has had profound impacts in East Asia through today. - in 1627 the Dutchman Jan Jansz Weltevree and some of this crewmates ended up marooned in Korea where they were asked to produce artillery for the Joseon dynasty. Weltevree took a Korean name, got married, has some children and even passed the Korean civil service exam becoming a proper Korean official. [1] - in 1653 his countryman Hendrik Hamel shipwrecked in Korea with almost 40 other crewmates and eventually met Weltevree who helped translate for them. Like his compatriots, they were tasked with being military advisors. Hamel eventually escaped Korea and made it back to Amsterdam by way of Nagasaki in 1668 where he published his journals, marking the first Western contact with Korea that was reported back to Europe. [2][3] - Predating Adams by just a few years, in 1579, an African arrived in Japan with a Jesuit mission. He became a retainer to Oda Nabunaga, one of the three unifiers of Japan. He had a brief but interesting career as a Samurai and was given the name Yasuke, then when Nabunaga fell went back to the Jesuits. - The Catholic missionary work in Korea started by the Jesuits in 1593, and like Japan became a powerful political and economic force. The Joseon dynasty had enough of it after a while and attempted a series of major purges, killing thousands of converted Catholics until the 19th century. The Church has continued to be a source of revolutionary support in South Korea up until the modern 21st century. But most Korean Christians are not-Catholic today as later missionary groups from other denominations were less politically threatening and seen as potential balances of power against the Catholic influence in Korean. Very notably, Pyongyang was the seat of Presbyterian Christianity before the civil war, and it's well understood that the founders of North Korea, the Kim family, were once a notable Presbyterian family with a few ministers in the line. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Jansz_Weltevree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Jansz_Weltevree 2 - https://archive.org/details/journaelvandeongeluckigevoyagievan https://archive.org/details/journaelvandeongeluckigevoyagiev... 3 - https://archive.org/details/coreawithoutwith00grif https://archive.org/details/coreawithoutwith00grif
- static_void_ 3y agoWilliam Adams is the protagonist of the excellent souls-like NiOh. That's all the history I need on the man thank you very much.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]