A Samurai: The Samurai From Jolly Old England



William Adams also known as Miura Anjin to the Japanese.

Was a key adviser to Ieyasu during his time as Shogun.

A Shogun is a Samurai leader of Japan usually given royal consent to rule by the emperor. Therefore, William Adams a British Naval engineer being adviser to the Shogun and becoming an honorary Samurai is substantial history.

William Adams arrived in the year 1600 and by 1605 was at the side of the Shogun.

The Shogun found William Adams to be so indispensable that he banned him from returning to England. Until much later life by which time William Adams was settled with a new wife and family.  

William Adams helped Japan build its first western style boat and worked as the main interpreter with the west. And had vast estates and farm lands lavished upon him. 

William Adams was a protestant, so the Jesuits the Portuguese and other missionaries often would have seen him as a rival. They even offered to go against the Shoguns orders and help William Adams return to jolly old England.

It was not until 2019 that they found William Adams grave on an island off the coast of Nagasaki. In 2020 the quest to prove the authenticity of the grave was completed. Although his DNA cannot be exactly proved scholars have shown that the the body found is from the time and genetically northern European.

This British Samurai is a notable character and significant in the shared history of Japan and Britain.


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