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Nandini Das, Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at Oxford tells the story of William Adams, the first Englishman in Japan – also known as Anjin, the Pilot. And discovers how the life of one man can offer us new insights into England’s contact with the wider world, and with one island empire on the other side of the world in particular.

In July 2017, archaeologists excavating in Hirado, Japan, uncovered a porcelain urn containing human remains. They had been unearthed once before, in 1931, but now, with advanced technology, the researchers hoped to unlock a centuries-old secret. And they did. Radiocarbon dating revealed the remains likely belonged to someone from the 1600s, at a time when the powerful Tokugawa family ruled Japan from the city of Edo, present-day Tokyo. But DNA analysis offered up a surprise: the individual had genetic markers common in Western and Northern Europe, yet bore traces of a long-term Edo-era diet. This was a foreigner, fully assimilated into 17th-century Japan.

The story of the Tudor Englishman shipwrecked in Japan, may ring a bell. The character of the gruff, swashbuckling hero John Blackthorne in James Clavell's 1975 novel 'Shogun' was based on Adams. And his adventures were adapted onto the small screen in 1980, and a popular mini-series which aired earlier this year.

It is not just a great story, it’s a little window into a moment in the past, when the destinies of two island nations, on either side of the world, intersected for the very first time, but not the last.

Contributors:
Timon Screech from the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto
Richard Irving, writer and academic
The Reader: Samuel James

Presenter: Nandini Das
Producer: Mohini Patel