Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan (13 page)

Read Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan Online

Authors: Giles Milton

Ieyasu was not king of Japan, as Adams thought, but he did wield enormous power. His extraordinary rise had been achieved through a mixture of ruthlessness and guile. Born into a family of provincial warriors, he had formed a small but highly efficient army, which pushed back the boundaries of his feudal territories
until he became a force to be reckoned with. His enhanced status was achieved at an opportune moment. Japan’s most truculent warlords had slowly been crushed by the brilliant general Toyatomi Hideyoshi, who had risen to become chief minister to the impotent emperor. Hideyoshi harbored dreams of founding a dynasty, but when he died in 1598 his son, Hideyori, was just five years old. Central power fell to a regency of five elders who were sworn to hold the peace until the young successor came of age. One of these elders was Ieyasu, who was supposed to be equal in status to the other four. But Ieyasu was very different from his fellow elders. Fearless, sharp-witted, and worldly, he inspired awe in all who met him. Portraits depict him as a veritable mountain of a man, his vast bulk wrapped in delicately patterned silks. He could be a dandy when occasion demanded, and men marveled at his splendid costumes. “He wore a blue satin robe embroidered with many silver stars and half-moons,” wrote one visitor to the court, “and he carried a sword girded at his waist.” He had a venerable countenance, yet his enormous gut provoked much mirth when he was out of earshot. “No one cuts such an odd figure as the Lord Tokugawa,” wrote one of his contemporaries. “He has such a fat belly that he can’t tie his own girdle.” In later life, Ieyasu was sadly forced to agree. “The fact is,” he said, “ … [I] have a fat belly [and] can’t mount and dismount my horse with armour on.” He was a passionate devotee of falconry and enjoyed military exercises. Indeed, some said that warfare, archery, and armor were his only interests.
Photo used with kind permission from Okura Shukokan Museum, Tokyo
.
Ieyasu was wily and worldly, inspiring awe in all who met him. In later life, he grew so fat that he found it impossible to mount his horse.
A brilliant strategist in battle, he would mastermind his troops’ maneuvers from the saddle of his horse. Although his peers found him cold and humorless, there was passion beneath the dull exterior. As the battle grew fierce, he would hammer the pommel of his saddle until the blood gushed from his hand. He did this so often that “in the end, the middle joints of his fingers got calloused and stiff, and in his old age he found it difficult to bend them.”
Ieyasu was fascinated by the world beyond Japan. An official chronicle of his reign stresses his desire to meet people from other realms: “according to his judgment, there could be no other way to govern the country than by a constant and deep faith in the sages and scholars.” The same chronicle records that, “whatever the subject, he was interested.” Just over a year before the
Liefde
’s arrival, he had summoned the Franciscan monk Jeronimo de Jesus to an audience and asked him to persuade the Spanish in the Philippines to come to his land. “I have a keen desire for them to visit … ,” he said, “to refresh themselves and to take what they wish.” However, friendship was not his prime motive. He wanted their master shipwrights to help him build vessels that would carry his countrymen in safety as far as Mexico and the East Indies. The
Spanish refused, telling themselves that to build ships for the Japanese “would be equivalent to giving them the very weapons they needed to destroy the Philippines.”
To be granted an audience with Ieyasu was the greatest honor for Adams. Only the richest and most powerful officials were received; all lesser mortals had to speak with his advisers. The pomp and pageantry of his courtly retinue was designed to strike fear into all who visited. Servants were treated like animals: “[they] entered and left on their hands and knees in the greatest reverence and silence.” The court secretaries, of whom there were many, were bedecked in the most extraordinary costumes. “All of them,” wrote one, “ … wore long pantaloons which trailed two spans behind them on the floor, so that it was quite impossible to see their feet.”
On the rare occasion when lords were granted an audience, they were expected to bring a large quantity of presents. One
daimyo
brought gifts worth 20,000 ducats; then, “at over a hundred paces from where his Highness was seated … [he] prostrated himself, bowing his head so low that it looked as if he wanted to kiss the ground.” Despite this elaborate show of deference, the lord did not even get to speak with Ieyasu: “He turned and withdrew with his large retinue.”
Adams had no knowledge of courtly etiquette, yet he was received with great warmth by Ieyasu. “He viewed me well,” wrote Adams, “and seemed to be wonderfull favourable.” Ieyasu was delighted to find himself in the company of a stranger from an unknown land and was particularly interested to meet a foreigner who was said to be a sworn enemy of the Portuguese and Spanish. He was also impressed by Adams’s aloof and laconic manner, and felt sure that this shipwrecked mariner held many secrets. But the lack of a common language hindered any conversation. “He made many signes unto me,” wrote Adams, “some of which I understood, and some I did not.” In his frustration, Ieyasu called for
“one that could speake Portuguese”—either a Jesuit monk or a Japanese novice—and began quizzing Adams on his homeland and his voyage.
“The king demanded of me what land I was,” wrote Adams, “and what moved us to come to his land, being so farre off.” Adams informed him that his country was on the other side of the globe and explained that “our land had long sought out the East Indies, and desired friendship with all kings and potentates in way of marchandize.” He added that England and the Low Countries produced many commodities that would prove indispensable to the Japanese, while Japan appeared to produce many things that would be useful back in Europe.
Ieyasu, a shrewd observer of men, was quick to grasp that the antagonism between Adams and the Portuguese was real and deeply felt. This surprised him, for the Jesuits had always stressed that Europe was united in both faith and rule. When he realized that this was not the case, he probed Adams on the matter, asking “whether our countrey had warres.” Adams paused for a moment before deciding that the truth would do him no harm. “I answered him, yea, with the Spaniards and Portuguese, being in peace with all other nations.” Ieyasu was intrigued and asked about the cause of these wars. Adams obliged and “gave him to understand of all thinges, which he was glad to hear of it as it seemed unto me.” Ieyasu was particularly interested to learn about the yawning religious rift between the Jesuits and the crew of the
Liefde
, and “asked me divers other questions of things of religion.” His questions were so detailed that Adams left off recording them all, for “the perticulers here to write would be too tedeous.”
Ieyasu was equally fascinated when Adams described the route that had brought the
Liefde
to Japan. The Portuguese were accustomed to sail by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and Ieyasu was surprised to learn that Adams and company had come the other way around the globe. “Having a chart of the whole world,” wrote Adams, “I shewed him.” When he pointed at the fragmented
Straits of Magellan and said that he had piloted the
Liefde
through this channel, Ieyasu was unsure whether Adams was to be trusted. “He wondred,” wrote Adams, “and thought me to lie.”
Adams’s audience continued until midnight, at which point Ieyasu was weary. His final question was to ask what trading goods the
Liefde
was carrying. Adams informed him of her cargo and asked if he and his men could be granted the same trading privileges that had long been granted to the Portuguese. “To which he made me an answer, but what it was I did not understand.” Adams was none the wiser as Ieyasu swept out of the chamber.
It seemed to him that his audience could scarcely have gone better, for the venerable warlord had appeared to be spellbound by his English guest and no less delighted with his answers. But Adams had misread the inscrutable face of Ieyasu, and his hopes of clemency soon proved vain. Ieyasu was still deeply suspicious of the arrival of the
Liefde
and remained unconvinced by Adams’s answers. Without further ado, he “commanded me to be carried to prison.”
This was the worst possible news, for conditions in Japanese prisons were appalling. Inmates were commonly held in enclosed cells with neither windows nor light. Prisoners were stripped naked—although some wore a
fundoshi
, or breechcloth—and were forbidden to wash. Remand prisoners were treated with much the same contempt. There was a bucket for the men to perform their bodily functions, but many were so weak with dysentery that they were unable to move, and lay in their own filth.
Adams left no account of his time in prison, for all his possessions were taken from him and he had no writing materials. Others who survived their ordeal committed their harrowing stories to paper. “The stench was unbearable,” wrote a Franciscan friar who had the misfortune to be incarcerated. “What with the great heat and fire which came from the multitude of living prisoners, a dead body would corrupt within seven hours and became so swollen and hideous that the very sight of it caused horror.”
Adams’s plight was made worse by the fact that he was powerless to counter the Jesuits, who were busy scheming against him and his men, urging Ieyasu to have them condemned to death. “In which long time of imprissonment,” wrote Adams later, “the Jesuits and the Portuguese gave many evidences ageinst me and the rest, … [saying] that we were theeves and robbers of all nations.” They told Ieyasu that if Adams and his men “were suffered to live, it should be ageinst the profitt of His Highness and of his countrey.”
Adams’s confinement was a terrifying experience; he spent each day awaiting the call from the executioner. “I looked every day to die,” he wrote, “to be crost [crucified] as [is] the custome of justice in Japan.” But Ieyasu resisted the Jesuits’ pleading, for he had been enthralled by his meeting with Adams and was inclined to keep the shipwrecked mariners alive. He told the monks that Adams and his men had not done “his lande any harme nor dammage, [and] therefore [it was] ageinst reason and justice to put us to death.”
As a further snub to the Jesuits, he asked for another meeting with Adams, and this time he asked many more questions “of the qualities and conditions of our countreys, of warres and peace, of beasts and cattell of all sortes, of the heavens.” He was satisfied with what he learned and released Adams from prison, lodging him in a secure house in Osaka.
Ieyasu had made two important decisions in the weeks since he first met Adams. He would keep the
Liefde
’s crew alive but he would also forbid these foreigners from leaving Japan. Ieyasu still dreamed of developing Japan’s shipbuilding and improving the skills of her pilots, and it was clear that these intrepid adventurers could be of great use. He was also keen to develop technology in the country’s silver mines, and the crew of the
Liefde
seemed to possess the very skills that were needed.
Adams was held under house arrest for a further six weeks before being once again called into Ieyasu’s presence. This time,
there was good news. “He asked me if I was desirous to go abord the shipp and see my countreymen. I answered, ‘very gladly,’ the which he bad me doe.” In this way, wrote a relieved Adams, “I was freed from imprissonment.”
Adams had heard no news of his shipmates in all the time he had been in detention, but he soon learned that they were alive and much recovered from the trials of the voyage. During his period of incarceration, they had sailed the
Liefde
to Osaka port—on Ieyasu’s orders—and it was there that Adams was reunited with the men. “I found the capten and the rest recovered of their sicknes,” wrote a joyful Adams. As he stepped aboard the vessel, there were “weeping eyes on both sides … for it was given them to understand that I was executed long since.” The Jesuits had told the crew that Ieyasu had ordered Adams’s death and that the rest of them would soon be killed as well.
Although the men were reunited, they were none the wiser as to their eventual fate. Helpless and destitute, they did not even have enough money to buy victuals. In desperation, they appealed to Ieyasu for help. His response was swift and generous. He ordered that all of the
Liefde
’s stolen goods should be returned immediately and gave the men 50,000
reals
in compensation—enough to restock their hold with fresh victuals. After another month spent aboard the
Liefde,
the men received a new message from Ieyasu. “The emperor commaunded that our shipp should be carried to the eastermost part of the lande”—to Edo—where Ieyasu had his permanent residence.

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