Thank you very much indeed everyone for coming. Along with Nicholas Maclean I’m co chair of Japan400 and we’ve got as far as we have today with the great help and encouragement of many people. We of course only begin the year now, so we look forward to sharing all kinds of events, ideas – disputes perhaps – with many people in the room and many people outside the room that you journalists will report to as time goes by.
My job as a professional historian is to give you something of what you might call the proper background. I hope you will all go to see the play Anjin at the Sadler’s Wells, opening on 31st and running for a week. Of course, wonderful play that it is, it’s a fictionalised story. When you came into the room, you saw the portrait of William Adams which blatantly does not look as he could possibly have looked. We don’t know what William Adams looked like. He had two children with a Japanese woman and so possibly his mixed-race son might have looked a bit more like that. Like the Anjin play, that painting it’s a wonderful example of imagination and history coming together.
As a historian trying to get students interested in the topic, I’m fully aware that anything too dry will not engage them so I will try, in the small number of time minutes I have, to tell you a little bit about what actually happened, while also keeping alive the imagination – though not succumbing to the temptation to fictionalise. You also have an historical overview in your files (also available on the website with added data). Those of you who’ve come from a British background and who did secondary school history lessons will know about Queen Elizabeth, regarded as the Queen of the Great Age of British navigation. She came to the end of her reign to a very general sadness. Good Queen Bess took Britain to its highest level. Well perhaps. But she was of course followed by another ruler, James, and to the people at the time, the arrival of King James I (who was already King James VI of Scotland) was a matter of enormous excitement. He was relatively young. He was quite unusually, even uniquely one might say for a British monarch, extremely academic. He actually wrote philosophical books which were read by people not because he was the King but because his opinions were cogent. He also came with a young wife, who was a Princess of Denmark, and three young children. His oldest son, Henry, would, it was fully expected, in due course become King Henry IX of England. As you know, that was not to happen. The boy tragically died in his nineteenth year in the year 1612. Last year was the 400th anniversary of his untimely death, celebrated (if that’s the right word) in an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.
Our story today all begins with two figures, King James I and VI (that’s one figure), and the Japanese Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Technically speaking, Ieyasu, the first Shogun, had retired and has taken the title of Ohgosho or ‘great palace’. Properly, it was ieyasu’s son Hidetada, who was ruling, but he was completely under his father’s thumb and did not have power. So it was in fact Ieyasu who dealt with the newly-arrived English and received the letter and present from King James
The ship that brought the English took some time travelling to Japan. Three ships had left London together in April 1611. You wouldn’t send one ship as it was too risky – what might happen to it? – so three went and, having becoming separated, they reconvened off Java where the English already had a trading station at the town of Bantam. The Dutch had one there too. At Bantam the three captains had a discussion what should happen next. It was decided that just one vessel, the Clove, would go to Japan. This was a risk, but Java to Japan was pretty plain sailing. The Clove left for Japan on 12 January 1613, so Saturday 12 January 2013 is the literal 400th anniversary and the beginning of our story. It arrived in Japan that summer, on 11 June. It has the letter and gifts from King James and these were addressed to the Emperor of Japan as they (not understanding the distinction between shogun and emperor) called the Shogun. The called him ‘Emperor Ogosho’.
The Clove was a ship of the East India Company. This was standard British procedure at the time, as various monopoly companies were allowed the right to trade with certain parts of the world in exchange for maintaining, at their own expense, an apparatus of diplomacy for the British state. In the case of Turkey, for example, the Turkey Company went to Istanbul and maintained a full diplomatic apparatus there already in the time of Elizabeth I. In the case of Japan, a fully nominated ambassador was not sent, still, the Crown Company put in a lot of effort. The Company, established in 1600, had already been in existence for a decade, and the founder-governor was Thomas Smythe (pronounced Smith, not Smythe), who has been knighted in 1604. A picture shows him with his delightful wife Sarah. After Sir Thomas Smith’s death she would become one of the richest widows in Britain and as a result of that marry an earl, becoming the Countess of Leicester.
When you sit down, look at a map and think about travel to Japan. There are certain things about it that, however interested you are in geography, you might not have thought about much. How do you get there? – an obvious question, but the point is, you go round the coast of Africa and India, taking perhaps a year, and then come to Southeast Asia which is a complete block. You can’t go any further, or rather, there are only two ways through into the ChinaSeas. You could come down to though what would later become Singapore, but it was much too dangerous as these were straits, and Spanish, Portuguese or Dutch could bombard any English ship going through. The only other option was the little spot on Java at Bantam. Hence although it was a terribly unhealthy place for Europeans, the English and the Dutch both had trading stations there.
Once in Japan, the English exchanged gave the King’s letter and gifts (a telescope for the retired Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and a precious cup and cover for his reigning son). Note that the telescope was invented in 1608, so for one to have been sent to Japan in 1611 (to have arrive there in 1613) is absolutely astonishing. The Dutch got wind of it and within months of the English telescope being despatched, they rapidly sent one off themselves – actually, three – to the Ottoman Sultan in Turkey. He got his first although it left Europe later, so sadly we can’t quite say that Ieyasu’s was the first in Asia. But it was the first to be sent to Asia. We know the object arrived as the Japanese historical records specify a telescope arriving from a country called England, and relate how you could see far into the distance with it. Ieyasu reciprocated with five pairs of splendid screen paintings, while Hidetada send to King James two suits of armour, which are extant.
The English were then given permission to set up a trading station in the town of Hirado. Why not in Edo (modern day Tokyo)? In fact, it was not a bad idea, because going to Edo would involve sailing many days further through seas that were too shallow for large European ships. So they built their trading station in the south west of Japan, again, beside the already-existing Dutch compound. Today it’s a rather small place but at the time it was the best location for trade. When the Clove returned to England bearing the reciprocal gifts, a man named Richard Cocks was left in charge of the English interests. As in the case of Adams, a later imaginary portrait of him exists mocked-up to look like a 17th century Japanese screen. Cocks is shown with a shaven headed priest, though it is unlikely that he would have consorted with a Roman Catholic father. Cocks is depicted with a dancing girl or a boy, of the type whom we know from his diary he very much enjoyed.
There is of course much more to this story and it is the subject of my forthcoming book which may I hope be available on an airport bookstand not far from you.
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