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Author: Mike Poulton
Publisher: Nick Hern Books
ISBN: 9781848423114
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
An epic and compelling tale of friendship, honour, love and sacrifice. William Adams, known in Japanese as Anjin, was an English maritime pilot who is believed to be the first Englishman to ever reach Japan. Washed ashore on a strange and exotic land, Anjin soon finds himself as the trusted adviser to the powerful Shogun Tokugawa, drawn to the heart of a dangerous clash of cultures and struggle for power, whilst war threatens to erupt all around. Torn between two worlds and two lives, Anjin must decide who he really is, and where he really belongs.
Author: Mike Poulton
Publisher: Nick Hern Books
ISBN: 9781848423114
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
An epic and compelling tale of friendship, honour, love and sacrifice. William Adams, known in Japanese as Anjin, was an English maritime pilot who is believed to be the first Englishman to ever reach Japan. Washed ashore on a strange and exotic land, Anjin soon finds himself as the trusted adviser to the powerful Shogun Tokugawa, drawn to the heart of a dangerous clash of cultures and struggle for power, whilst war threatens to erupt all around. Torn between two worlds and two lives, Anjin must decide who he really is, and where he really belongs.
Author: Giles Milton
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374706239
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
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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Book Description
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: James Clavell
Publisher: Turtleback Books
ISBN: 9780613013284
Category : Adventure stories
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
After John Blackthorne shipwrecks in Japan, he makes himself useful to a feudal lord in a power struggle with another and becomes a samurai.
Author: Richard Blaker
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462904092
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 514
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Book Description
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 De Lange
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
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: Thomas Lockley
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1488098751
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 518
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Book Description
This biography of the first foreign-born samurai and his journey from Africa to Japan is “a readable, compassionate account of an extraordinary life” (The Washington Post). When Yasuke arrived in Japan in the late 1500s, he had already traveled much of the known world. Kidnapped as a child, he had ended up a servant and bodyguard to the head of the Jesuits in Asia, with whom he traversed India and China learning multiple languages as he went. His arrival in Kyoto, however, literally caused a riot. Most Japanese people had never seen an African man before, and many of them saw him as the embodiment of the black-skinned Buddha. Among those who were drawn to his presence was Lord Nobunaga, head of the most powerful clan in Japan, who made Yasuke a samurai in his court. Soon, he was learning the traditions of Japan’s martial arts and ascending the upper echelons of Japanese society. In the four hundred years since, Yasuke has been known in Japan largely as a legendary, perhaps mythical figure. Now African Samurai presents the never-before-told biography of this unique figure of the sixteenth century, one whose travels between countries and cultures offers a new perspective on race in world history and a vivid portrait of life in medieval Japan. “Fast-paced, action-packed writing. . . . A new and important biography and an incredibly moving study of medieval Japan and solid perspective on its unification. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal (starred review) “Eminently readable. . . . a worthwhile and entertaining work.” —Publishers Weekly “A unique story of a unique man, and yet someone with whom we can all identify.” —Jack Weatherford, New York Times–bestselling author of Genghis Khan
Author: A L Sadler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136924698
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399
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Book Description
Tokugawa Ieyasu founded a dynasty of rulers, organized a system of government and set in train the re-orientation of the religion of Japan so that he would take the premier place in it. Calm, capable and entirely fearless, Ieyasu deliberately brought the opposition to a head and crushed in a decisive battle, after which he made himself Shogun, despite not being from the Minamoto clan. He organized the Japanese legal and educational systems and encouraged trade with Europe (playing off the Protestant powers of Holland and England against Catholic Spain and Portugal). This book remains one of the few volumes on Tokugawa Ieyasu which draws on more material from Japanese sources than quotations from the European documents from his era and is therefore much more accurate and thorough in its examination of the life and legacy of one of the greatest Shoguns.
Author: Eiji Yoshikawa
Publisher: Vertical, Inc.
ISBN: 1568364504
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 944
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Book Description
In the tempestuous closing decades of the sixteenth century, the Empire of Japan writhes in chaos as the shogunate crumbles and rival warlords battle for supremacy. Warrior monks in their armed citadels block the road to the capital; castles are destroyed, villages plundered, fields put to the torch. Amid this devastation, three men dream of uniting the nation. At one extreme is the charismatic but brutal Nobunaga, whose ruthless ambition crushes all before him. At the opposite pole is the cold, deliberate Ieyasu, wise in counsel, brave in battle, mature beyond his years. But the keystone of this triumvirate is the most memorable of all, Hideyoshi, who rises from the menial post of sandal bearer to become Taiko--absolute ruler of Japan in the Emperor's name. When Nobunaga emerges from obscurity by destroying an army ten times the size of his own, he allies himself with Ieyasu, whose province is weak, but whose canniness and loyalty make him invaluable. Yet it is the scrawny, monkey-faced Hideyoshi--brash, impulsive, and utterly fearless--who becomes the unlikely savior of this ravaged land. Born the son of a farmer, he takes on the world with nothing but his bare hands and his wits, turning doubters into loyal servants, rivals into faithful friends, and enemies into allies. In all this he uses a piercing insight into human nature that unlocks castle gates, opens men's minds, and captures women's hearts. For Hideyoshi's passions are not limited to war and intrigue-his faithful wife, Nene, holds his love dear, even when she must share it; the chaste Oyu, sister of Hideyoshi's chief strategist, falls prey to his desires; and the seductive Chacha, whom he rescues from the fiery destruction of her father's castle, tempts his weakness. As recounted by Eiji Yoshikawa, author of the international best-seller Musashi, Taiko tells many stories: of the fury of Nobunaga and the fatal arrogance of the black-toothed Yoshimoto; of the pathetic downfall of the House of Takeda; how the scorned Mitsuhide betrayed his master; how once impregnable ramparts fell as their defenders died gloriously. Most of all, though, Taiko is the story of how one man transformed a nation through the force of his will and the depth of his humanity. Filled with scenes of pageantry and violence, acts of treachery and self-sacrifice, tenderness and savagery, Taiko combines the panoramic spectacle of a Kurosawa epic with a vivid evocation of feudal Japan.
Author:
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 146291649X
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
"A wonderful introduction the Japanese tradition of jisei, this volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pithy, often hilarious, descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems." --Tricycle: The Buddhist Review Although the consciousness of death is, in most cultures, very much a part of life, this is perhaps nowhere more true than in Japan, where the approach of death has given rise to a centuries-old tradition of writing jisei, or the "death poem." Such a poem is often written in the very last moments of the poet's life. Hundreds of Japanese death poems, many with a commentary describing the circumstances of the poet's death, have been translated into English here, the vast majority of them for the first time. Yoel Hoffmann explores the attitudes and customs surrounding death in historical and present-day Japan and gives examples of how these have been reflected in the nation's literature in general. The development of writing jisei is then examined--from the longing poems of the early nobility and the more "masculine" verses of the samurai to the satirical death poems of later centuries. Zen Buddhist ideas about death are also described as a preface to the collection of Chinese death poems by Zen monks that are also included. Finally, the last section contains three hundred twenty haiku, some of which have never been assembled before, in English translation and romanized in Japanese.
