Stumbling Across A Shogun’s Stimulator

Just a few weeks ago I was extremely surprised to learn there is a monument to WIilliam Adams located just a few minutes from my workplace as I thought after nearly 40 years of life in Japan I thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about the Briton who was made a samurai and inspired a shogun.

The monument to Adams, the first English person to go to Japan in the late 1t6th century, is tucked away between a couple of buildings in Nihonbashi, the central Tokyo district from which all distances in Japan are mentioned.

Adams is known to the Japanese as Miura Anjin and the location of the monument marks the location of his home in Edo, the forerunner of Tokyo, which was a district called Anjincho until just before World War II in his honor, and now still remembered by Anjin-dori, the name of the road where the marker is found.

The memorial is less than two minutes by foot from Nihonbashi.

The location of Will Adams’ home in the late 16th and early 17th century

Adams famously served as the inspiration for John Blackthorne, the protaganist of Shogun, the 1975 novel by Aussie-born James Clavell thar led to popular and award-winning TV series in 1980 and 2024. Adams provided stimulation for Tokugawa Ieyasu, who would create a Shogunate that would end centuries of war and lead Japan for 250 years. Part of his reward was to be bestowed with the prime plot of land in the country’s most important city (at a time when foreigners faced hostility, often fatal, in Japan).

Nihonbashi, the traditional heart of Japan

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