Pars Japonica: The First Dutch Expedition to Reach the Shores of Japan . . . Brought by the English Pilot Will Adams, Hero of Shogun

by William de Lange

This is the harrowing account of arguably the most ill-fated expedition in the long maritime history of the Low Countries. At the end of the 16th century five heavily armed ships sailed from the port of Rotterdam under the command of men who had never set foot on a seagoing ship. Their plan was to sail through the treacherous Strait of Magellan and raid the western coast of Latin America as had the Englishmen Drake and Cavendish. Storms, disease, and general inexperience were to upset those ambitious plans in unexpected ways. 

The terrible hardships suffered in the course of the subsequent two years became an almost biblical trial of the officers and crew--a trial the outcome of which seemed to scorn the ships' talismanic Faith, Hope, Love, Fidelity, and The Gospel. Instead, treachery, betrayal, mutiny, and mayhem were the grim rewards of this fateful journey. Out of the five hundred men who sailed, only a hundred survived and only a handful of those were ever to return home.

One ship did pass the test, but not in the way its owners had foreseen. It was through the offices of an English pilot that the ship called Love reached the as yet largely unknown islands of Japan and that the outcome of an otherwise so disastrous expedition was miraculously reversed. The pilot's name was William Adams, the near mythical yet real-life figure who became the hero of James Clavell's best-selling novel Shogun .

William de Lange studied Japanese language and culture at the University of Leiden and at Waseda Univerity in Japan. He is active as a translator and interpreter in a variety of capacities in the Netherlands, Germany, and Japan, and is author of the three-volume history Famous Japanese Swordsmen and The Real Musashi.

Genres: Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published July 10, 2006

About the author

William de lange is the author of books, ebooks and apps on Japan's traditional culture, from history, samurai culture, to arts & crafts, and language dictionaries.

Bio: William de lange was born in 1964 in Naarden, the Netherlands to Dutch and English parents. In the late 1980s, he aborted his English studies to embark on a journey that eventually led him to Japan, where he supported himself by making traditional Japanese scrolls and writing articles for the Japan Times Weekly. Following his graduation from Leiden University in 1994, he lived in Japan for the remaining decade, studying the art of Japanese fencing under Akita Moriji sensei, eighth dan master of the Shinkage-ryu. Since then he has written a large number of books on Japanese history and culture, including a highly acclaimed biography of Miyamoto Musashi. He is currently working on a history of the Yagyu clan.

William de Lange lives and works in the Netherlands and loves to travel, enjoying good food and wine with the love of his life.

Reviews

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very interesting in my efforts to try to piece together the English Dutch and Portuguese exploits in the 16th to 19th century. Certainly this book exposing a lot of detail of the Dutch expedition and their arrival in Japan. The epilogue sits well against the novel Silence by Shusaku Endo. The novel Silence questions imposition of one culture’s ideologies on to another’s.
Maritime history trade and exploration are topics that I find particularly fascinating. I live in Australia and certainly see very well we could have been populated by any of these colonial powers.

[Kim Zinkowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

B+. The book is a pleasure to hold and to read. Early nautical exploration and trade.