In 1600, the year at the turn of the century, in the distant eastern country of Japan, there was a history-changing war, the Battle of Sekigahara.
The two sides of the war were the leaders of the five elders of the Toyotomi regime: Tokugawa Ieyasu and Ishida Sansei, one of the five priests. The total number of warring forces on both sides is close to 200,000, and such figures are very large in the tens of thousands of battles of the Sengoku period in Japan.
At the beginning of the war, The 30,000 direct troops of the Tokugawa family led by Tokugawa Ieyasu's son Tokugawa Hidetada arrived late for various reasons, which led to a significant gap between the strength of the two sides: Ishida Sansei was 80,000 on one side, and 70,000 on Tokugawa Ieyasu's side.
However, the war ended dramatically within a few hours, and Tokugawa Ieyasu won, and the direct reason for the victory was not only the three gods of Sekigahara: the god of the house, Mori Keimoto, the god of food Yoshikawa, and the god of war, Hayakawa Hideaki, there was another reason that could not be ignored: the Tokugawa family's weapons, especially the artillery, were relatively advanced, killing and wounding many soldiers on the Ishida side.
Who provided this cannon? The answer is today's protagonist, the Englishman William Adams, who has a more familiar name: Miura Press, the first foreign samurai in Japanese history.
01 Era Background: The Age of Great Navigation for the British
When Miura was born on the needle, the sea overlord was still the world's first "sun never sets empire" Spain, as for his native Britain? The strength is not enough, so he has to "obscene development" and is busy being a legal robber.
At that time, the British government approved a system called "privateership", in which the state authorized civilian ships that could be armed to attack enemy merchant ships. This is actually a state-sponsored act of banditry.
Drake is a classic example. Not only was he the first British to complete a circumnavigation of the globe, but more importantly, he snatched huge treasures from the Spaniards, including five large chests of gold, twenty tons of silver, and a large number of coins and jewelry.
Queen Elizabeth I was involved in his sharing of the spoils, and she also ordered a grand banquet to celebrate Drake's return, saying that the sea would no longer be the domain of Spain and Portugal, but would be shared by all.
With this claim, more Britons, rightly, joined armed commerce and banditry, especially the poor.
Miura pressing the needle is one who goes with the tide.
02 Early career: The time before Miura came to Japan by needle
Miura came from a poor background, had little name in his early years, and had no formal education, and historians found that his letters were manywhat misspelled.
But he put a lot of effort into the technology related to navigation. For example, he studied with a highly skilled shipbuilder and learned how to build small fast sailing ships, how to load ribs, and how to lay boat boards.
He also learned to sail ships, and to be a good navigator at that time, he had to be "proficient in hydrology, astronomy, astrology, and timing, all of which were based on algebra and geometry", which shows that Miura's needle was at least not bad in this area.
At the end of his apprenticeship, Miura was indirectly involved in a major naval battle between The British and Spain. In 1588, when the British fleet engaged the Spanish Armada, Miura pressed the needle on a supply ship to deliver food and ammunition to the British fleet.
Spanish Armada
After the naval battle, Miura still lived an ordinary life according to the needle.
In 1598, an opportunity came when someone organized a fleet in Rotterdam to travel to the legendary Spice Islands, requiring a good navigator to guide the fleet across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans safely, and Miura signed up on the needle.
At that time, the ocean voyage could be said to be nine deaths, a ship had more than a hundred members when it set off, and twenty survivors when it sailed to its destination were already good, these were all public data, why did Miura have to participate in the needle? The reason is that without him, the profits of the voyage are too rich, not to mention that at this time, Miura has already married and had a daughter according to the needle, even if it is for the family, he also has to take risks.
In 1598, Miura pressed a needle to Rotterdam and embarked on a two-and-a-half-year ocean voyage.
03 After arriving in Japan, Miura pressed the needle, why did he become a samurai?
More than two years of ocean voyages, hard work, needless to say, anyway, when the author read this part of the information, on the one hand, lamented that the sailors at that time were really not easy, on the other hand, lamented the difference in the diet of the sailors at that time, after reading the heart directly called "disgusting"!
In short, on April 12, 1600, Miura arrived in Japan with a large number of people.
Led by Miura Needle, this group of foreigners who looked very different from the Japanese and were dressed in rags, after arriving in Japan, Miura Press needle somehow attracted the attention of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was still busy dealing with Ishida Sansei at the time, and Miura Needle, with his character and skill, won the respect of Ieyasu, and eventually joined the samurai class, and married and had children in Japan.
So, what exactly did Miura do with the needle? To win this treatment?
The first: Miura presses the weapon of the ship where the needle is located.
At that time, it was impossible to travel lightly on ocean voyages, and miura's ship was called the "Fraternity", which had a lot of weapons and even powerful artillery.
Later, it turned out that these artillery pieces played a role in Tokugawa Ieyasu's victory at the Battle of Sekigahara. According to the records of Spanish missionaries at that time, the Tokugawa army continued to attack the Ishida army with these artillery, which weakened the offensive and arrogance of the Ishida army to a certain extent.
The second: Helping Tokugawa Ieyasu build more technologically advanced ships.
At that time, Japan's shipbuilding technology was very low, and the shipbuilding could only be suitable for coastal navigation, in order to further improve Japanese shipbuilding technology, Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered Miura to build a ship capable of ocean-going sailing according to the needle, preferably to the Philippines.
Miura pressed the needle to hear this command, and was a little flustered. He knew a little about shipbuilding, but he was a navigator in his own business, but after all, it was Tokugawa Ieyasu's orders, and he had to go up the road, and based on what he had learned before, and with the help of the carpenter of the Fraternity, he built a new ship imitating the Fraternity.
A few months later, the ship was inspected by Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was very satisfied with this, and ordered Miura to build a larger ship by needle, and later this ship was even able to complete the voyage across the Pacific Ocean, and it can be said that Miura pressed the needle to improve Japan's shipbuilding technology for decades.
Third: Become a diplomatic staff officer to Tokugawa Ieyasu.
From the 1640s onwards, Japan's foreign trade was largely dominated by the Portuguese. For reasons of missionary and trade monopoly, many of the European messages they conveyed to the supreme ruler of Japan were wrong, such as the Portuguese deliberately concealing the contradictions between European Catholic countries and Protestant countries in order to profit from them.
Miura's arrival was an accident and attracted the attention of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who learned of the divisions within European countries from his conversations with Miura. The Catholic missionaries learned that they were panicked and first framed Miura's group as pirates and should be executed.
Tokugawa Ieyasu did not think so, but instead let Miura and his party participate in the Sekigahara Battle, and Miura's rich knowledge of navigation and the rich experience brought by traveling the world aroused Great interest in Tokugawa Ieyasu, and he opened a new door for Tokugawa Ieyasu to understand the world.
Since then, Tokugawa Ieyasu has made Miura a translator and diplomatic adviser, and in order to completely dispel the idea of returning to China, Tokugawa Ieyasu also gave him the Edo Mansion and the 250-stone territory of Miura-gun, and in his hometown miura pressed the needle, but in a foreign country, he went straight up, which can not but be said to be a miracle.
Miura, who was a translator and diplomatic think tank, promoted changes in Tokugawa Ieyasu's policy toward European countries.
At that time, Tokugawa Ieyasu's main enemy was the Toyotomi clan, which had not yet been completely destroyed. Because Toyotomi Hiderai and the daimyo who supported the Toyotomi clan were mainly in the west, they had close relations with the Catholic Jesuits, and even in the Osaka Winter Front and the Osaka Summer Front after the Sekigahara War, many Landless Catholic soldiers directly joined the Toyotomi side.
Thus, in Tokugawa Ieyasu's view, the Jesuits were not credible, the Portuguese were not credible, and they had to seek new European countries to replace them in their foreign trade.
At Miura's advice, Tokugawa Ieyasu established trade relations with the Protestant nations of Great Britain and the Netherlands. For example, in 1605, Tokugawa Ieyasu sent a man to a Dutch trading house in Southeast Asia to convey Miura's letter to the two countries, to the effect that Tokugawa Ieyasu wanted the two countries to come to Japan to trade.
In the early days of the British and Dutch trade with Tokugawa Ieyasu, the two sides not only had a trade in traditional goods such as spices, but also an arms business, and the British and Dutch brought a large amount of arms to the Tokugawa Ieyasu side, which played a certain role in Tokugawa Ieyasu's final victory.
04 Miura's needle ending
After Tokugawa Ieyasu's death, his son Tokugawa Hidetada continued to appoint Miura as his staff officer.
Tokugawa Hidetada also hated Catholicism, and because Miura explained his opposition to Catholicism over and over again, he was left unscathed by Hidetada's Christian ban.
But by this time, he had little left.
In 1620, Miura pressed the needle died, after his death, his 250-stone domain was inherited by his son, and then in the tokugawa Three Generation Shogun's lock order, Miura's descendants of the needle were no longer heard, and disappeared into the dust of history.
However, the traces of miura's needle have not completely disappeared, and the Edo mansion where he once lived is now called the needle town, and there is even a temple called "Jodo-ji Temple" with a Miura needle offering tower.
Miura Needle Memorial Statue
These traces tell the story of a man once named William Adams, in a legend in a foreign country, a great age of discovery between East and West.
Resources
1. Giles Milton: "William the Samurai," Guangdong Tourism Publishing House, September 2020;
2. Shen Ren'an. Tokugawa Ieyasu's Discussion on Foreign Policy[J]. Collected Papers on Japanese Studies, 1998.