This PDF version is an English translation of a press release issued on February 15, 2021.

Discovery of Historical Documents Related to William Adams
The International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken), in collaboration withthe National Archives of the Netherlands in The Hague (Nationaal Archief) and the Faculty of
Humanities of Leiden University, has recently discovered four copies of letters from Jacques
Specx, the first head of the Dutch factory in Hirado, to William Adams, an Englishman who
acted as an advisor to Tokugawa Ieyasu.
We found the letters in a packet (inventory number 1.04.02:1054) in the National Archives'
collection of Dutch East India Company (VOC) documents. There are several packets listed
under this inventory number and they contain copies of letters and documents produced byvarious trading offices of the Dutch East India Company between 1607 and 1612. The lettersand documents were sent to the Dutch headquarters as a reference for the executives of theDutch East India Company, the Heren Zeventien.
1) About the packet containing the copies of the letters to Adams (1.04.02:1054)
The Dutch East India Company, established in 1602, dispatched a fleet to Asia every year andestablished factories (trading posts) in various parts of Asia. In Japan, a Dutch factory wasestablished in Hirado (now Hirado City, Nagasaki Prefecture) in 1609.
At the time of the establishment of the Dutch East India Company, there was no permanenthead office in Asia. When the fleet dispatched to Asia returned to the Netherlands, theybrought back internal documents collected from each factory as reference for the Heren
Zeventien.
The packet with the copies of the letters to Adams is one of several packets containing
documents produced at factories in Asia between 1607 and 1612, brought back by the Dutch
East India Company's fleet returning from Asia. The documents have been arranged inpackets according to factory, namely Patani, Siam, Japan, and Johor. There are about 1,500
pages of documents in all. There is no standardized pagination, but some documents havetheir own pagination.
The documents originating from the Dutch factory in Japan are kept in one packet, and consistof 23 numbered folios (46 pages) in total. These folios comprise 10 copies of letters sent byJacques Specx, the first head of the Dutch factory in Hirado, and 2 copies of letters sent by
Hendrik Brouwer, the second head of the Dutch factory in Hirado.

1Page 1 of Letter (1)List of the letters in the packet with documents related to the Dutch factory in Hirado by date.
At some point the letters were numbered in pencil by an archivist, who unfortunately madesome mistakes in the ordering of the pages. The mistakes have been corrected in the page
numbers given below.
(1) Jacques Specx at Nagasaki to the Heren Zeventien at Amsterdam, 3 November 1610 (ff.
1-5)(2) Jacques Specx at Hirado to Lambert Jacopszoon Heijn at Siam, November 1610 (ff. 6-9)(3) Jacques Specx at Hirado to Lambert Jacopszoon Heijn at Siam, 8 November 1610 (f. 9)(4) Jacques Specx at Hirado to William Adams at Suruga, 5 April 1612 (ff. 12-13)(5) Jacques Specx at Hirado to William Adams at Suruga, 8 June 1612 (ff. 10 and 15; the dateof the letter is erroneously given as 8 June 1611)(6) Jacques Specx at Hirado to Matthias at Osaka, 8 June 1612 (ff. 14 and 11)(7) Jacques Specx at Hirado to William Adams at Suruga, 20 June 1612 (f. 16)(8) Hendrik Brouwer on board the Rode Leeuw met Pijlen to Hendrik Janssen at Patani, 13July 1612 (ff. 22-23)(9) Jacques Specx at Hirado to William Adams at Suruga, 25 August 1612 (f. 17)(10) Jacques Specx at Hirado to Hendrik Janssen at Patani, 2 November 1612 (ff. 18-19)(11) Jacques Specx at Hirado to Cornelis van Neijenrode and Maarten Houtman at Ayutthaya,
3 November 1612 (ff. 20-21)(12) Hendrik Brouwer in Japan to Hendrik Janssen at Patani, 4 November 1612 (f. 23)22) Contents of the Adams-related documents
Of the above twelve letters, four, namely (4), (5), (7), and (9), are letters by Jacques Specx
addressed to William Adams.
The contents of each of these four letters to Adams are as follows.
(4) Jacques Specx at Hirado to William Adams at Suruga, 5 April 1612 (ff. 12-13)

This letter is a response to three letters that Specx received from Adams. Although these threeletters are not extant, Specx's letter indicates when and from where Adams sent the letters.
The place and date of each letter are as follows.
(A) Osaka, 28 November 1611
(B) Kyoto, 11 December 1611 ("8th of the 11th month in the Japanese calendar" in Specx'sletter)(C) Suruga, 27 December 1611 ("24th of the 11th month in the Japanese calendar" in Specx'sletter)
One characteristic of Specx's letter is that he summarizes the contents of Adams's letter andthen responds to it or expresses his opinion. Therefore, through Specx's letter, we canunderstand the contents of the original letter from Adams.
First, in Adams's letter (A) dated 28 November 1611, he reported in detail about the sales
transactions he conducted in Osaka for the Dutch East India Company. He also conveyed
information about the audience of the Spanish ambassador from Luzon with Ieyasu and about
the health of Prince Maurits.
Adams's letter (B) of 11 December 1611 contained a detailed report on his transactions for theDutch East India Company in Sakai and Kyoto.

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Finally, Adams's letter (C) of 27 December 1611 gave a detailed report on the events after
Adams's arrival in Sunpu (Suruga). There Adams had an audience with Ieyasu and presented
the gifts to Ieyasu on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. Adams also reported to Specx
that the Spaniards denied the signing of the Twelve Years' Truce (1609) between the Dutch
Republic and Spain and reprimanded Adams as a liar in front of Ieyasu. He also denied in
front of Ieyasu rumours that Specx had left Japan without permission, an act for which Specx
shows sincere gratitude in his reply.
The content of Specx's reply to Adams's letters is mainly related to commodity trading, but wecan see also a request to investigate how to obtain the high quality hai-fuki silver from Sado.
The export of this commodity was prohibited. That is why Specx asked Adams to keep thismatter secret.
(5) Jacques Specx at Hirado to William Adams at Suruga, 8 June 1612 (ff. 10 and 15)

This letter is dated 8 June 1611. However, examining the contents of the letter and comparing
it with the contents of another letter that Specx sent to his assistant Matthias on 8 June 1612,
we found that the year of the date should be 1612 and not 1611.
Specx's letter is a response to a letter received from Adams dated 29 April 1612 (the date isgiven in the Japanese calender in the original, being the 29th of the 3rd month). A notable
point in this letter is the description that Adams delivered steel and iron sand worth theenormous amount of 109,000 maes (a Japanese unit of measure of silver, monme) or about
218 million JPY in modern currency for the king (the term "king" was mostly used to denote
Hidetada, the second Tokugawa Shogun). This indicates that Adams was an intermediary forlarge transactions between the Dutch East India Company and the Tokugawa Shogunate. Theletter also reveals that Adams passed on information to the Dutch about Spanish tradepractices, and the prohibition and the movements of Catholic priests. From this letter it also
becomes clear that Adams took care of a sword presented to Specx by Ieyasu after Specx had4

an audience with Ieyasu in Sunpu in 1611.
Apart from responding to Adams's letter, Specx asked Adams to pay 6,000 maes of silver onbehalf of the Dutch East India Company to Matsura Takanobu, lord of the Hirado domain, on
his arrival in Sunpu. The letter instructs that this amount should be deducted from the Dutch
East India Company's sales proceeds for goods deposited by Adams.
(7) Jacques Specx at Hirado to William Adams at Suruga, 20 June 1612 (f. 16)

This letter contains a detailed explanation of the request for payment of 6,000 maes of silver
to Matsura Takanobu, lord of the Hirado domain, which was mentioned in the previous letter(5). Specx asks Adams to show as much friendship and respect as possible to the Lord ofHirado and his vassals.
On the reverse side of this letter, we can see a bill of exchange for 6,000 maes and another for
1,000 maes, 2,000 maes, 3,000 maes, and 4,000 maes addressed to Adams (see photo aboveright).

5(9) Jacques Specx at Hirado to William Adams at Suruga, 25 August 1612 (f. 17)

This letter was written to inform Adams of the arrival of a Dutch ship in Hirado (the RodeLeeuw met Pijlen). After a description of the cargo of the ship, Specx mentioned the shipbrought a letter addressed to Ieyasu and Hidetada from Prince Maurits and from the governor
general of the Dutch East India Company (Pieter Both). He also informed Adams that theDutch were going to have an audience with Ieyasu in Sunpu and asked for his cooperation on
the occasion of the audience. He also stressed that if the Spanish and Portuguese envoys
arrived in Sunpu before the Dutch, Adams should deny their claims that there was no truce
between the Spanish and the Dutch.
Specx mentioned that letters from Adams's wife (Mary Hyn) and his friends arrived with theship, and that they would be given to Adams when they met in Sunpu. Specx also mentioned
the return to Japan of Adriaen Cornelissen, one of the former crew members of the Liefde. Heasked Adams to convey the good news of his arrival to his Japanese wife and daughter.
3) Background of the discovery
Since 2015, the International Research Center for Japanese Studies has been collaboratingwith the National Archives in The Hague and the Faculty of Humanities of Leiden University
to conduct research on sources related to the Dutch factory in Hirado held by the National
Archives. In order to promote joint research among the three institutions, the three institutions
signed an Agreement for Academic Cooperation on 9 December 2016.
Based on this Agreement, the International Research Center for Japanese Studies and theFaculty of Humanities of Leiden University have received digital data of sources relating tothe Dutch factory in Hirado from the National Archives and are collaborating on theirtranscription, Japanese translation, and research.
The fact that some letters were addressed to Adams was discovered during the process of6

translation. These letters do not specify the sender or addressee. The only information given is
the place and date of writing. In addition, they were written as drafts, making them difficult todecipher. Furthermore, a mistake was made in the year in letter (5). Mistakes were also madeby an archivist in the numbering of a couple of pages, which would lead to confusion about
the contents if that numbering were followed. The transcriptions and the translations will be
published in the correct order.
However, based on the location and date of the entries, the contents of the letters, and thecontents of letter (6) dated 8 June 1612, addressed to Matthias, we could determine that theseletters were addressed to Adams and that the sender was Specx. Specx had sent his assistant
Matthias to Osaka in order to assist Adams in his efforts to sell the factory's goods. His letterto Matthias relates in detail Specx's correspondence with Adams. The fact that the contents of
the letter to Matthias corresponded with the contents of the letters to Adams was a clue that
led to the discovery of a connection between the four letters mentioned above and the fact thatthey were addressed to Adams.
As a result of the aforementioned joint research, the transcriptions of the letters will be
published by Leiden University Press, and the National Archives will incorporate thetranscriptions in their database. The International Research Center for Japanese Studies isplanning to publish Japanese translations. The subject of the research is about 2,000 pages ofincoming and outgoing letters, resolutions, and court journey diaries created between 1609
and 1633. Currently, about 1,500 pages have been transcribed and about 500 pages have beentranslated into Japanese.
We are planning to publish the first volume of the Japanese translation in the fiscal year 2021.
This first volume will include Japanese translations of Specx's Letter Book (1614-1616,inventory number 1.04.21:276). The second volume is planned to be published during thefiscal year 2022 and will include Japanese translations of the early Dutch factory's incoming
and outgoing letters, court journey diaries and resolutions from 1609 to 1616. This second
volume will also include the Japanese translation of the newly discovered letters addressed toAdams.
4) Significance of the discovery
Many sources relating to Adams have survived. Eleven of Adams's letters have been handed
down. In addition, four journals of Adams's voyages to the Ryukyu islands (2 journals),
Cochin China and Tonkin (each 1 journal), his contract with the British East India Company
and his will, as well as seven letters received by Adams are extant. Based on these sources, aswell as other sources such as Specx's diary of his court journey to Sunpu and Edo in 1611, andthe diary of the chief of the English factory in Hirado, we can reconstruct Adams's course oflife quite accurately. However, until now, there were no sources available that provide clues toAdams's activities between 1611 and 1612. With the present discovery, we can fill in the gaps
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for this period.
That we could identify the sender and recipient of four of the letters in the Japan section of thepackets described above as respectively Specx and Adams, is of great significance for theutilisation of the relevant historical materials. Thanks to the fact that Specx wrote a summaryof the contents of Adams's previous letters, we can understand the contents of his letters thathave not been preserved.
Because of the information in the newly discovered letters, we can reconstruct Adams'sactivities in 1611-1612 as follows. After participating in Specx's audience with Ieyasu in
Sunpu and Hidetada in Edo in 1611, Adams accompanied Specx and his party to Hirado.
There Adams stayed a while before returning to Sunpu via Osaka and Kyoto.
Through research of the content of the letters, it has become clear that Adams was engaged incommercial transactions on behalf of the Dutch East India Company in Japan during thisperiod. Furthermore, it was also revealed that Adams acted as an intermediary in a large-scaletrade in iron between the Tokugawa shogunate and the Dutch. Adams made full use of aninternational network of acquaintances, including local Japanese merchants and Portuguese,when he represented the Dutch East India Company in Osaka and Kyoto.
Adams corresponded closely with Specx, giving him detailed information about theprohibition of Christianity, the movements of the Spaniards, the Portuguese, and the priests.
On the other hand, he provided Ieyasu with information about world affairs, was able tocontradict the information presented by the Spaniards, and even argued with the Spaniards infront of Ieyasu.
This research was supported by JSPS KAKENHI 19K01010 "Fundamental Research on theStructure of Japan-Dutch Relations in the Early Modern Period" and the Isaac Alfred Ailion
Foundation.

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