Will Adams Festival  

Will Adams, whose Japanese name was Miura Anjin was born in Gillingham in 1564. At the age of 12, he became an apprentice in a London shipyard and, after joining the navy, served under Sir Francis Drake during the Armada.

After the war, Adams left the navy, married, and went to Holland. From here, in 1598, he set off on the flagship ‘Hope’, a trading ship bound for East India, as the Chief Navigator. He changed ships en route, boarding the ‘De Liefde’, wih a crew of over 100. When the ship landed in Kyushu, Japan, in 1600, Adams was one of only six men able to walk out of the total of 24 survivors.

Portuguese Jesuits, who had favour with the local Shogun, were suspicious of the Protestant seamen, and tried to persuade him to execute them as pirates. Adams impressed the Shogun, however, who learned from him that Christianity could not boast an undivided church under one leader as he had been led to belive, and was quick to see the use he could make of Adams’s shipbuilding skills.

Adams build several ships for the Shogun, for which he was rewarded with a large estate near modern-day Yokosuka. He became the only European to be honoured with the title of ‘Samurai’. In the last years of his life, he persuaded the East India Company to send a trading mission to Japan, but the envoys did not adapt to the Japanese culture in the way Adams had done; the trading station failed, and closed after his death. Adams had wanted to return home to his wife, but he had become too valuable and the Shogun refused, so he married a Japanese lady who bore him two children. He divided his will between his two families, and died in 1620. His grave in Yokosuka was designated as a historical relic in 1923 by the Japanese government and an annual memorial service is held locally on 16 May, the anniversary of his death.

Adams was the inspiration for James Clavell’s novel ‘Shogun’ and Gillingham, nowadays twinned with the cities of Yokosuka and Ito, holds regular festivals of Japanese culture to celebrate his extraordinary life.

For more information, read my friend Giles Milton’s book ‘Samurai William’:

http://www.fsgbooks.com/fsg/samuraiwilliam.htm

The Taiko Drummers as pictured above (and below, from 2006), helped Roger open the Live Earth concert at Wembley earlier in 2007!

2006 festival (September)

Two ladies on stilts. The other pictures below: The Taiko Drummers.