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Historical Samurai William: The Englishmen who Opened Japan by Giles Milton $14 / Penguin Books / 2003 You may have seen Shogun the film-or you may have read the book-but do you know anything about William Adams, the man who inspired James Clavell's 1975 novel by the same name? In 1598, Adams set out on a trade mission to the Spice Islands. From the beginning, the trip was beset with bad luck; of the five ships that originally set out from Holland, only one survived to land in Japan in 1600. Marooned in Japan, Adams soon found himself facing problems from Portuguese merchants who were already trading with the Japanese and wanted to protect their monopoly from both the English and Dutch. Meanwhile, the Jesuits, who were working hard to convert the Japanese to Catholicism, had convinced Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan's most powerful warlord, that all of Christiandom was united under the Pope. But when Adams and his Protestant shipmates gave lie to that assertion, the Jesuits convinced Ieyasu that Adams and his crew were pirates. Although they were soon imprisoned and nearly crucified, Adams eventually convinced Ieyasu of his innocence by impressing him with his nautical, mathematical, and shipbuilding skills. (It also helped that the Portuguese were rapidly wearing out their welcome with their arrogant, drunken misbehavior and their contempt for the Japanese "heathens" who would not convert to Christianity.) To make things even more complicated, Japan at this time was in a state of near chaos. Leyasu was constantly faced with opposition from rivals, many of whom were less disposed both to the English navigator and to foreigners in general. Thanks to Adams' efforts in the service of the Shogun, such as building an 80 and a 120-ton European-style vessel for the Japanese Navy, he was eventually honored with the title of Samurai (Lord), and given a country estate, complete with retainers. In 1610, when another group of Englishmen from the British East India Company sailed to Japan, they found that Adams had "gone native." He bathed regularly, ate with chopsticks, spoke Japanese fluently, and even shared the Japanese contempt for these foul-smelling, "uncivilized" barbarians. Still, he made efforts to help the East India Company set up trade with Japan. However, within three years after his death in 1620, Japan became a closed society, forbidding entry to all foreigners until 1854 (as Tokugawa Iemitsu, Ieyasu's grandson, felt Christian missionaries were a subversive influence). In the hands of a lesser writer, the intricacies of Japanese politics could have quickly become confusing. Thankfully, Milton has a novelist's feel for action and a historian's eye for detail, and keeps everything readable and easy to follow. He also has an obvious love for the culture of feudal Japan and his enthusiasm is infectious. In less time than it would take to view the miniseries Shogun, readers of this book will learn the real story behind the fiction. —Kevin Filan

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