ABSTRACT
In march 1600, after two years at sea, a Dutch vessel was shipwrecked off the Usuki coast in the southern Japanese island of Kyūshū. Among the few survivors was an English navigator from Gillingham in Kent called William Adams. Summoned to Osaka Castle to appear before the shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Adams talked of his native land, spreading out a map before him and pointing out an island kingdom to the far west off the coast of Europe. Taking the name of Miura Anjin, he stayed in Japan as Tokugawa’s adviser, and later in the pay of the English when the East India Company established a factory on the island of Hirado off the Kyūshū coast in 1613. This encounter was to mark the beginning of Anglo-Japanese relations.
