Shōgun is one of the most talked-about TV shows right now, which makes sense because if there’s one thing the internet loves, it’s samurai. While the show is a historical drama and based on a fictional novel, the character of John Blackthorne is based on a real person: English navigator William Adams, the first Englishman to visit Japan.




Settling in Japan with his second mate Jan Joosten, Adams became a Western samurai and key advisor to the shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu (Lord Yoshii Toranaga in the show), overseeing the construction of the first Western-style ships in Japan, advising on the establishment of Dutch trading factories and helping to establish the English Trading Company.


Adams grew up in Kent, where he learned shipbuilding, navigation and astronomy, eventually joining the Royal Navy. After serving in the Navy against the Spanish Armada in 1588, he became a pilot for the Barbary Company before shipping out as a pilot major with a fleet led by a group of merchants that would eventually become the Dutch East India Company. As the group’s later name would suggest, this expedition was heading for Indonesia, or the East Indies, through the Strait of Magellan.



After 19 months at sea, terrible weather including a typhoon and an ailing crew forced them to dock at the island of Kyushu in southern Japan in 1600, making Adams’ ship the first English vessel to reach Japan.


Making landfall on April 19th, they were met by Japanese locals and Portuguese missionaries who claimed the Liefde was a pirate ship and arguing that the crew should be executed for piracy. The ship and crew were seized, and while imprisoned, Adams met with Ieyasu, who was at the time daimyō of Edo and who would later become shōgun. For several years, Adams, Joosten and their fellow crew members were forbidden from leaving the country.



Ieyasu was impressed by Adams’ extensive knowledge of ships and navigation, eventually ordering him and his fellow crew to help build Japan’s first Western-style ship. The rest, as they say, is history — or at least semi-fictionalized dramatic television produced for our entertainment. Despite eventually being given permission to leave Japan, Adams stayed in the country, dying in Edo in 1620 at the age of 55.


Oops, sorry, spoilers!