Author: Richard Tames
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : British
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Giles Milton
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374706239
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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An eye-opening account of the first encounter between England and Japan, by the acclaimed author of Nathaniel's Nutmeg In 1611, the merchants of London's East India Company received a mysterious letter from Japan, written several years previously by a marooned English mariner named William Adams. Foreigners had been denied access to Japan for centuries, yet Adams had been living in this unknown land for years. He had risen to the highest levels in the ruling shogun's court, taken a Japanese name, and was now offering his services as adviser and interpreter. Seven adventurers were sent to Japan with orders to find and befriend Adams, in the belief that he held the key to exploiting the opulent riches of this forbidden land. Their arrival was to prove a momentous event in the history of Japan and the shogun suddenly found himself facing a stark choice: to expel the foreigners and continue with his policy of isolation, or to open his country to the world. For more than a decade the English, helped by Adams, were to attempt trade with the shogun, but confounded by a culture so different from their own, and hounded by scheming Jesuit monks and fearsome Dutch assassins, they found themselves in a desperate battle for their lives. Samurai William is the fascinating story of a clash of two cultures, and of the enormous impact one Westerner had on the opening of the East.

Author: Hiromi T. Rogers
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781898823223
Category : British
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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The year is 1600. It is April and Japan's iconic cherry trees are in full flower. A battered ship drifts on the tide into Usuki Bay in southern Japan. On board, barely able to stand, are twenty-three Dutchmen and one Englishman, the remnants of a fleet of five ships and 500 men that had set out from Rotterdam in 1598. The Englishman was William Adams, later to be known as Anjin Miura by the Japanese, whose subsequent transformation from wretched prisoner to one of the Shogun's closest advisers is the centrepiece of this book. As a native of Japan, and a scholar of seventeenth-century Japanese history, the author delves deep into the cultural context facing Adams in what is one of the great examples of assimilation into the highest reaches of a foreign culture. Her access to Japanese sources, including contemporary accounts - some not previously seen by Western scholars researching the subject - offers us a fuller understanding of the life lived by William Adams as a high-ranking samurai and his grandstand view of the collision of cultures that led to Japan's self-imposed isolation, lasting over two centuries. This is a highly readable account of Adams' voyage to and twenty years in Japan and that is supported by detailed observations of Japanese culture and society at this time. New light is shed on Adams' relations with the Dutch and his countrymen, including the disastrous relationship with Captain John Saris, the key role likely to have been played by the munitions, including cannon, removed from Adams' ship De Liefde in the great battle of Sekigahara (September 1600), the shipbuilding skills that enabled Japan to advance its international maritime ambitions, as well as the scientific and technical support Adams was able to provide in the refining process of Japan's gold and silver.

Author: William De Lange
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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This is the harrowing account of one of the most ill-fated expeditions in maritime history. Of five ships that sailed from Rotterdam at the turn of the 16th century, only one reached the largely unknown islands of Japan. The pilot of that ship was the inspiration for the hero of James Clavell's Shogun.

Author: Richard Blaker
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462904092
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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This fascinating novel reconstructs the story of Will Adams, a native of Gillingham, in Kent, England, and his voyage to Japan in the seventeenth century. Adams' knowledge of seafaring vessels at the time causes him to be taken into the favor of the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu and,in time,to become recognized as the founder of the Japanese navy. Adams was one of the most picturesque and daring of Britain's maritime traders, and this depiction of him as the first Englishman to settle in what was then a hostile country is written not only with distinction but also with an imaginative grasp that takes it right out of the class of the ordinary historical novel. It is an epic tale of strange adventures, and it creates an atmosphere of rare and haunting quality. In its understanding of the Japanese mind it is hardly less than remarkable. Will Adams died in Japan in the spring of 1620 and is buried at Yokosuka. Every year a ceremony is still held to commemorate the anniversary of his death. There is also a memorial to him at Ito,in Shizuoka Prefecture, as well as one at his birthplace in England.

Author: William Adams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : British
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Author: William Corr
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136638113
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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This book charts the life and times of Captain William Adams who lived in the period of 1564 to 1620. Adam himself wrote little; his letters and logs, while vivid and valuable, would convey too little about the eventful years between 1600 and 1620 on their own. Other sources, such as thevarious writings of other Europeans in Japan, complete the tale. Including mentions of significant historical events, for example in 1588 William Adams commands a supply ship, the ‘Richard Dygylde’, at the time of Philip II of Spain's attempted invasion of England, the Enterprise of England (the Spanish Armada) and in 1600 The first Dutch ship (Liefde) arrives in Japan. William Adams is taken before Tokugawa Leyasu and questioned;he explains that Holland and England are at war with Spain and Portugal. Leyasu declines the Portuguese suggestion that he execute the Liefde's crew.

Author: Michelle L. Evans
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803246846
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
With the Soviet Union’s launch of the first Sputnik satellite in 1957, the Cold War soared to new heights as Americans feared losing the race into space. The X-15 Rocket Plane tells the enthralling yet little-known story of the hypersonic X-15, the winged rocket ship that met this challenge and opened the way into human-controlled spaceflight. Drawing on interviews with those who were there, Michelle Evans captures the drama and excitement of, yes, rocket science: how to handle the heat generated at speeds up to Mach 7, how to make a rocket propulsion system that could throttle, and how to safely reenter the atmosphere from space and make a precision landing. This book puts a human face on the feats of science and engineering that went into the X-15 program, many of them critical to the development of the Space Shuttle. And, finally, it introduces us to the largely unsung pilots of the X-15. By the time of the Apollo 11 moon landing, thirty-one American astronauts had flown into space—eight of them astronaut-pilots of the X-15. The X-15 Rocket Plane restores these pioneers, and the others who made it happen, to their rightful place in the history of spaceflight.

Author: Mark Adams
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101535407
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING TRAVEL MEMOIR What happens when an unadventurous adventure writer tries to re-create the original expedition to Machu Picchu? In 1911, Hiram Bingham III climbed into the Andes Mountains of Peru and “discovered” Machu Picchu. While history has recast Bingham as a villain who stole both priceless artifacts and credit for finding the great archeological site, Mark Adams set out to retrace the explorer’s perilous path in search of the truth—except he’d written about adventure far more than he’d actually lived it. In fact, he’d never even slept in a tent. Turn Right at Machu Picchu is Adams’ fascinating and funny account of his journey through some of the world’s most majestic, historic, and remote landscapes guided only by a hard-as-nails Australian survivalist and one nagging question: Just what was Machu Picchu?

Author: John Michael Magness
Publisher: Adams Hall Pub
ISBN: 9780944708507
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
A fresh approach to the motivational business book, this uses the popular metaphor of flying an aircraft to inspire the reader to climb to higher levels in the business world. The book invites the reader to look at the world through a pilot's eyes -- to think, plan, and act with the daring and the discipline, with the confidence and the precision of a highly-trained pilot. The business leader is compared with a pilot; the business team or work group with the aircraft; and the customers with the passengers. The ten secrets of successful pilots and how the reader can adopt them to become a pilot-leader at work are explained in detail.