William Adams

William Adams (September 24, 1564–May 16, 1620), also known in Japanese as Anjin-sama (???, "Mr Pilot") and Miura Anjin (????, "the pilot of Miura"), was an English navigator who went to Japan, and is believed to be the first Briton ever to reach Japan.

Bibliography

• England's Earliest Intercourse with Japan, by C. VV. Hillary (1905)
• Letters written by the English Residents in Japan, ed. by N. Murakami (1900, containing Adams's Letters reprinted from Memorials of the Empire of Japan, ed. by T. Rundall, Hakluyt Society, 1850)
• Diary of Richard Cocks, with preface by N. Murakami (1899, reprinted from the Hakluyt Society ed. 1883)
• R. Hildreth's Japan (1855)
• J. Harris's Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca (1764), i. 856
• Voyage of John Saris, edited by Sir Ernest M. Satow (Hakluyt Society, 1900)
• Asiatic Society of Japan Transactions, xxvi. (sec. 1898) pp. I and 194, where four more hitherto unpublished letters of Adams are given;
• Collection of State Papers; East Indies, China and Japan. The MS. of his logs written during his voyages to Siam and China is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
• Samurai William: The Adventurer Who Unlocked Japan; Giles Milton (UK 2002: ISBN 0-340-79468-2)
• William Adams and Early English Enterprise in Japan, by Anthony Farrington and Derek Massarella http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/WoPEc/data/Papers/cepstiisp394.html
• Adams the Pilot: The Life and Times of Captain William Adams: 1564-1620, by William Corr, Curzon Press,1995 ISBN 1873410441

In James Clavell's Shogun, the fictional heroics of John Blackthorne are loosely based on Adams's exploits.

Related Topics:
James Clavell - Shogun

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