Samurai William

Samurai William
Author: Giles Milton
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2003-01-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0374706239

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.

Anjin

Anjin
Author: Hiromi T. Rogers
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: British
ISBN: 9781898823223

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.

Samurai William

Samurai William
Author: Giles Milton
Publisher: John Murray
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2011-10-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1444731777

In 1611 an astonishing letter arrived at the East India Trading Company in London after a tortuous seven-year journey. Englishman William Adams was one of only twenty-four survivors of a fleet of ships bound for Asia, and he had washed up in the forbidden land of Japan. The traders were even more amazed to learn that, rather than be horrified by this strange country, Adams had fallen in love with the barbaric splendour of Japan - and decided to settle. He had forged a close friendship with the ruthless Shogun, taken a Japanese wife and sired a new, mixed-race family. Adams' letter fired up the London merchants to plan a new expedition to the Far East, with designs to trade with the Japanese and use Adams' contacts there to forge new commercial links. Samurai William brilliantly illuminates a world whose horizons were rapidly expanding eastwards.

Hagakure

Hagakure
Author: Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2012-05-15
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0834827875

A foremost scholar of samurai texts approaches this martial arts classic as a meditation on the Zen concept of “death of the ego”—offering a fresh translation unlike any other. Discover what it takes to be a samurai with the 18th-century martial arts treatise that delves into minds of legendary Japanese warriors. Living and dying with bravery and honor is at the heart of Hagakure, a series of texts written by an eighteenth-century samurai, Yamamoto Tsunetomo. It is a window into the samurai mind, illuminating the concept of bushido—the Way of the Warrior—which dictated how samurai were expected to behave, conduct themselves, live, and die. While Hagakure was for many years a secret text known only to the warrior vassals of the Nabeshima clan to which the author belonged, it later came to be recognized as a classic exposition of samurai thought. The original Hagakure consists of over 1,300 short texts that Tsunetomo dictated to a younger samurai over a seven-year period. William Scott Wilson has selected and translated here three hundred of the most representative of those texts to create an accessible distillation of this guide for samurai. No other translator has so thoroughly and eruditely rendered this text into English. For this edition, Wilson has added a new introduction that casts Hagakure in a different light than ever before. Tsunetomo refers to bushido as “the Way of death,” a description that has held a morbid fascination for readers over the years. But in Tsunetomo’s time, bushido was a nuanced concept that related heavily to the Zen concept of muga, the “death” of the ego. Wilson’s revised introduction gives the historical and philosophical background for that more metaphorical reading of Hagakure, and through this lens, the classic takes on a fresh and nuanced appeal.

The Pocket Samurai

The Pocket Samurai
Author:
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2015-07-21
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0834830493

The samurai of Japan, who were the country’s military elite from medieval times to the end of the nineteenth century, were synonymous with valor, honor, and martial arts prowess. Their strict adherence to the code of bushido ("the way of the warrior"), chivalry, and honor in fighting to the death continues to capture the imagination of people today, inspiring authors, filmmakers, and artists. The Pocket Samurai contains the essential writings of the era by the most esteemed samurai and philosophers of the age, including the iconic Miyamoto Musashi, author of The Book of Five Rings; Yamamoto Tsunetomo, author of Hagakure, the best-known explication of the samurai code; Takuan Soho, a Zen priest and adviser to samurai; Yamaoka Tesshu, a master swordsman whose colorful life was devoted to martial arts and Zen; along with many others.

A Christian Samurai

A Christian Samurai
Author: William J. Farge
Publisher: CUA Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2016-04-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813228514

Through a close critical analysis of Baba Bunko's often humorous, but always biting, satirical essays a new picture of the hidden world of Christianity in eighteenth-century Japan emerges - a picture that contradicts the generally-held belief among Western historians that the Catholic mission in Japan ended in failure. A Christian Samurai will surprise many readers when they discover that Christian moral teachings not only survived the long period of persecution but influenced Japanese society throughout the Tokugawa period.

Needle-Watcher

Needle-Watcher
Author: Richard Blaker
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1462904092

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.

Ronin

Ronin
Author: William Dale Jennings
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2012-01-10
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1462903207

"A thunderbolt, full of lightning and excitement, one you won't put down until its last extraordinary page." --The Japan Times The violence of twelfth-century Japan explodes in this half-legendary, half-true story of a violent man who becomes a folk hero. A heartless savage, the Ronin, or "wandering samurai," slashes his way up from the gutter to wealth, honor and status. In spite of his crime sand bloodthirsty cruelty, he bears the strange mark of destiny that the wise see and respect, even as he destroys them. The tale which is told with humor and irony, ranges from the pleasantly colloquial to the brutally satiric, yet never relents in the Ronin's ruthless search for the truth. The storyteller hides nothing and speaks bluntly, yet this jewel-like tale shimmers with tantalizing riddles that will haunt the reader just as they haunted the Ronin. Sure to shock, confound and ultimately inspire readers, The Ronin is loosely based on an ancient legend told to the author by the Zen Master Nyogen Senzaki.

Ideals of the Samurai

Ideals of the Samurai
Author: Gregory Lee
Publisher: Black Belt Communications
Total Pages: 150
Release: 1982
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780897500814

An anthology of 12 samurai manuscripts showing the meaning and guiding principles of samurai life.