The Japan Society Review 71
Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review

Issue 71 Volume 12 Number 5 (October 2017)

In this issue, The Japan Society Review focuses on four nonfiction publications which explore from different perspectives
a series of key events and persons in Japanese history, politics
and art. Japan Society Chairman Sir David Warren reviews
Ghosts of the Tsunami written by British journalist Richard Lloyd
Parry. As the Asia Editor of The Times, Lloyd Parry covered thenews of the triple disaster which occurred in the north-east ofJapan on March 11, 2011. In order ‘to try and get beyond theprofessional detachment of the reporter and understand theenormity of what had happened’, he also continued visiting
the area after these tragic events disappeared from the front
page. Ghosts of the Tsunami is the result of these visits. With
remarkable observational skill and great sensitivity, Parry
records the personal testimonies of some of the survivors and,in particular, some of the parents of the 74 children who diedat Okawa Primary School in Kamaya.
The second book reviewed in this issue is Two Pilgrims
Meet: In search of Reconciliation between China and Japan.
The two authors Minoru Kasai and Basil Scott, one Japaneseand the other British, embark on a spiritual journey toShanghai, where they spent their childhood during theyears of the Japanese occupation and the Asia Pacific War.

According to reviewer Reverend Ikuko Williams, the bookoffers an opportunity to reflect on ‘the complex facets ofreconciliation between countries with a history of enmity
in the past’ and provides genuine encouragement to build‘trust-based relationships between neighbouring countries
on a person-to-person level’.
This October issue of the Review also includes twobiographical publications which deal with historical figures
who had an important role in shaping Japan’s relationshipand image in the West. ANJIN-The Life & Times of Samurai
William Adams, 1564-1620, written by Hiromi T. Rogers
and reviewed by Nicolas Maclean, presents a detailed andcomplex account of the first Englishman ever to travel toJapan. The second biography, Hokusai Beyond The Great
Wave edited by Timothy Clark, consists of a combination ofcolour illustrations and scholarly essays that explore the late
career of the celebrated Japanese painter, whose work was
the focal point of the recent exhibition at the British Museum.
As ever, the Japan Society is extremely grateful to all of
its reviewers for giving their time and expertise.
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández

Contents
1)

Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry2)

Two Pilgrims Meet: In search of Reconciliation between
China and Japan by Minoru Kasai and Basil Scott

3)

ANJIN-The Life & Times of Samurai William Adams,
1564-1620 by Hiromi T. Rogers

4)

Hokusai Beyond The Great Wave edited by Timothy Clark

EditorAlejandra Armendáriz-Hernández
Reviewers
Sir Hugh Cortazzi, Nicolas Maclean, Sir David Warren and Revd Ikuko
Williams.
(Chōshi in Sōshū province, from the series A Thousand Pictures of the

Sea (Chie no umi), Colour woodblock print, about 1833, Chiba City
Museum of Art - Image courtesy of The British Museum)

Ghosts of the Tsunami
by Richard Lloyd ParryJonathan Cape (2017)
ISBN-13: 978-1911214175
Review by Sir David Warren
At 2.46 pm on Friday, 11 March, 2011, a massive
earthquake occurred off north-east Japan, about 70
kilometres east of the city of Sendai in the Tohoku
region. It was the biggest earthquake ever known
to have struck Japan, and the fourth most powerfulin recorded history. The earth was knocked six and ahalf inches off its axis. Over 18,000 people died in thetsunami that followed an hour later, which at its peaksaw waves 120 feet high. Half a million people became
homeless. The resulting meltdown at the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear reactor was the world’s worst nuclear
accident since Chernobyl. It was the most costly
natural disaster ever, causing more than $210 billion
worth of damage.
Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor of The Times, was
one of a number of western journalists who hurried
to the disaster zone that weekend, and who spent
weeks thereafter in the Tohoku region, reportingfrom the towns destroyed by the tsunami and theabandoned exclusion zone around the nuclear plant.
But unlike many who in due course moved on to otherassignments, he returned many times to the area, totry and get beyond the professional detachment of
the reporter and understand the enormity of what had
happened. In particular, he returned to a small coastal
community, 70 kilometres north-east of Sendai, called
Kamaya, which had suffered, even by the standards ofthis massive disaster, an exceptional tragedy. Ghosts of
the Tsunami is an account of this tragedy, told throughthe personal testimony of the survivors; and also a
meditation on its wider meaning.
Lloyd Parry’s book focuses on what happened
that afternoon at Okawa Primary School in Kamaya.
We are introduced to some of the parents of thechildren at the school: Shito Sayomi, mother of elevenyear-old Chisato, scared of earthquakes and a bit sulky
as she leaves for school that morning; Konno Hitomi,
who worked in a doctor’s surgery the other side of themountain from Kamaya, mother of Daisuke, captain of
the sixth-year class and a sensitive boy who didn’t want
to go to school that morning either; Sato Kazutaka, thefather of Yuki, Daisuke’s best friend, with whom heliked to fish in the nearby Kitakami River; and manyothers. With observational skill and great sensitivity,
2

Lloyd Parry draws a portrait of a small rural community
about to be obliterated by a catastrophe.
The tsunami engulfed the village shortly after
half past three – three quarters of an hour after theearthquake struck. It came not from the sea to the eastof Kamaya, but from the river on whose southern bankthe village stood. The school had 108 children: of the 78
who were there at the moment of the tsunami, 74 died,
together with ten of the eleven teachers. Shito Chisato,
Konno Daisuke (and his two teenage sisters), Sato Yuki
– all died that afternoon, together with others whoseparents and family members we encounter in Ghosts of
the Tsunami. 197 of the 393 people who lived in Kamaya
also perished: every house in the village was destroyed.
The tragedy of Okawa Primary School is at theheart of Lloyd Parry’s book. The story he tells is not justof a brutal act of nature, but of a community seeking
explanations, and pressing for those in authority to
be held to account. Although one child died during
an evacuation in a town further north along the coast,
every other school in the region got their children
to safety. Why was Okawa the terrible exception?
As the parents enquired about what had happened
that afternoon, the realisation grew that the school’s
emergency response had been marked by indecisionand uncertainty; and that it had been compounded
by a vaguely-worded evacuation plan from which theteachers were unwilling to deviate. This culminatedin the fatal decision to take the children not up thehill behind the school to safer ground, but to thedesignated gathering point on a nearby traffic island,straight into the path of the swelling tsunami. And to
the negligence of the teachers – most of whom hadthemselves lost their lives – was added the intransigent
refusal of the education authorities to acknowledge
responsibility, or even to find the words with which toassuage the anger and grief of the bereaved parents.
Lloyd Parry tells this profoundly distressing story
with unsparing compassion – not just for those who losttheir children, but also those who, however culpable,
were themselves traumatised by what happened
that day. He follows the parents’ campaign for justice,
culminating in the Sendai District Court’s judgementin their favour in October 2016. This found no fault inthe school’s initial response to the earthquake, but
accepted that the teachers’ actions, when it was clearthat a tsunami was imminent, were inadequate. The
parents were awarded substantial damages (appeals
against the verdict by the defendants and against thelevel of damages by the plaintiffs are outstanding). But
his book is more than a record of a uniquely terrible
Issue 71, Volume 12, Number 5 (October 2017)

event. It is a study of grief; an exploration of how wefind the imagination to understand such events; and a
portrait of modern Japan.
To talk of “grief” in such circumstances is almost
banal. Lloyd Parry takes us into the lives of the families
affected, and records their reactions to bereavement– numbness, denial, obsessive searching, and anger.
These passages are unbearably moving. But grief also
divides communities. ‘Did you lose your children or
did your children survive?’ is an immediate question.
‘Even among the bereaved there were gradations ofgrief, a spectrum of blackness indiscernible to thoseon the outside’ , Lloyd Parry writes: a parent who lost
all her children but recovered their bodies soon after
the waters receded is in a dreadful way better than aparent still searching for her daughter five years later.
One mother who deals with her loss by taking part inreconstruction work finds herself at first friends with,then almost hating, another who sublimates her griefin the campaign to hold the local Department of
Education to account. For many, ‘the power of theirgrief, which gave it form, channelling it like the banks
of a river, was rage’.
Outside observers of Japan tend to admire,sometimes uncritically, Japanese “stoicism” and“resilience”. Lloyd Parry has little patience with thissentimental attachment to the principle of gaman(endurance): he sees this as an excuse for ‘timidity,
complacency and indecision... the cult of quietism thathas choked this country for so long’. One bereaved
mother is told by her father-in-law, a traditional,
uncommunicative man, after a first visit to the devastatedschool site, that it is impossible that her son could havesurvived: ‘It is hopeless. You need to give up’. ‘He may
have felt very sad, but he contained his feelings’ , shereflected later. ‘Nonetheless, if he found me in a stateof sadness, he should have refrained from saying words
that would hurt me. But he did not refrain’.
There is practical assistance for the families, butlittle access to counselling or help with post-traumaticstress disorder. Those who do speak out about the
failures at the school are ostracised. Lloyd Parrydraws a strong lesson from the tragedy – that what
Japan needs today is not ‘serenity and self-restraint’ ,but people like the parents who fought for justice –‘angry, scathing, determined people, unafraid to stepout of the ranks and fight, even if all that the contest
amounted to was the losing struggle with death’ . (Hisbook does not deal with the parallel disaster at the
Fukushima nuclear reactor, south of Sendai, which
has generated popular hostility to nuclear power, with
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

which Japanese politicians are still having difficulty
coming to terms.)
Lloyd Parry’s book is a distinguished work ofreportage, in the tradition, as some critics have pointed
out, of John Hersey’s classic Hiroshima. But without
ever tipping over into pretension, it is also a highlywrought and carefully-organised work. It contains
a poetic description of the tsunami: ‘Something ismoving across the landscape as if it is alive, a brownsnouted animal hungrily bounding over the earth... It
seems to steam and smoke as it moves; its body looks
less like water or mud than a kind of solid vapour’ .
There is an extraordinary eye-witness accountof a local government official, Konno Teruo, actuallycaught up in the tsunami. The building in which he
was working was swept away by the wave, and he
was propelled into the open air. He grabbed a piece oftimber as he was sucked into a whirlpool, from which
he was miraculously released; he seized a wooden wall
panel which gave firmer support, only to find himself
being carried back out along the river to the open sea
as the tsunami began to recede; then, with the next
pulse of the tsunami, he was pulled back inland, overan embankment, losing consciousness and eventually
coming to, jammed against a roof intact on its wooden
frame, to which he transferred himself and which inturn drifted in the freezing cold towards a house on
higher ground, where he eventually came to rest,
wedged against the front door. A retired teacher, Mrs
Suzuki, whom he knew, took him in and rescued himfrom hypothermia. He remembered only her ‘golden
hand’, as she rubbed life back into him: ‘It was also thehand of a Buddha. It was curved, soft, warm… I couldn’t
open my eyes. But I saw the soft, round Buddha withgolden hands’.
The book becomes more mysterious and moving
as it explores the way in which the grim reality of thedisaster merges into a spiritual re-imagining of it
as a way, for some, of reaching understanding andacceptance. There were few men, Lloyd Parry writes,
whom he respected more than the Reverend Kaneta,
chief priest at a Zen temple in the town of Kurihara,
who exorcized the spirits of people who had drownedin the tsunami. Kaneta travelled around the coastal
region with other priests, setting up a mobile centre
called “Café de Monku” (a triple pun: monku meanscomplaint as well as sounding like monk, and Kaneta
is a jazz fan too – the bebop jazz master Thelonious
Monk, with his dissonant, loose harmonies, becomes
the soundtrack to these centres of therapy and3counselling, where the bereaved can come for a cupof tea and a friendly chat).
The survivors talk, ‘haltingly, apologetically, thenwith increasing fluency’ , about their experiences,
their suffering, their fears for the future, and also theirencounters with the supernatural – sightings of the lost,
hauntings at work and in public places, supernaturalpossession by the spirits of loved ones – even animals– who have died. ‘The dead had no time to prepare
themselves. The people left behind had no time tosay goodbye’ , says Kaneta. ‘The dead are attached to
the living, and those who have lost them are attachedto the dead. It’s inevitable that there are ghosts’. The
Japanese cult of ancestor worship and the prevalenceof ghosts in the rich culture of Tohoku folklore form apowerful basis for this phenomenon.
But the task of exorcising ghosts takes a heavy toll.
At the end of the book, Kaneta tells Lloyd Parry of his
final exorcism – a nurse from Sendai called Takahashi
Rumiko, a woman in suicidal despair, from whom
he exorcises over several weeks twenty-five spirits.
The effort is traumatising for the priest – particularly
when Takahashi is possessed by the spirits of deadchildren. His wife helps him by taking Takahashi’s
hand as the spirit of a dead girl struggles through thecold water towards the light. The priest is weepingwith pity for the dead soul: his wife feels only ‘a hugeenergy dissipating’, as in childbirth – a ‘sense of power
discharging at the end of pain, as the newborn child
finally enters the world’.
This book records appalling horrors. But infacing them squarely and describing the ways
people cope with grief – through anger, a search forjustice, attempting to rebuild a community, as well as
attachment to the world of the spirit – Lloyd Parry helps
us begin to imagine and understand the unimaginable
and incomprehensible. The author interposes himself
discreetly and sensitively throughout. The book begins
with his seeing the face of his son for the first time,on the ultrasound at a Tokyo clinic, on the morningof 11 March – a parental moment that intensifies thedreadfulness of the events he goes on to describe. It
closes with the image of the child apparently released
from suffering as the priest expels the spirit from thewoman in torment. It is not a resolution, but there
is at least the possibility of release. How else, as hewrites, ‘to balance affirmation of life with acceptanceof its inevitable end’? ‘We don’t work simply by saying
to people, “Accept”, says Kaneta. ‘We stay with them,and walk with them until they find the answer on theirown’. This is a brave, powerful and honest book. It
deserves to become a classic.§Two Pilgrims Meet: In search of
Reconciliation between China
and Japan

best way forward for the greater common good. It
helps us to realise that the nature of the reconciliation
process is never a straightforward or short one, andthat it takes a great deal of engaging in humble andhonest reflection on the past and the present as well
as holding onto a hopeful vision for what the authors
call the ‘blessed reality’ given by God, whilst aspiring toregard humanity as a ‘healing family’.
The authors, one Japanese and the other British,
met at an Indian university, as each was engaged on
his own, very personal philosophical quest. During
the course of their meeting in Varanasi, India, they
discover that their childhood years had been spent in
the same city of Shanghai during the War, though they
never met there, as, ironically, they were the childrenon ‘opposite’ sides. While Basil was confined for several
years in a Japanese internment camp, Minoru wasliving, only a few miles away on the other side of theriver, as part of the large Japanese presence in the city.
It is heart-warming to learn how the two men founda kindred spirit in India while remaining aware of thisdramatic backdrop. 40 years later, they had a chanceby Minoru Kasai and Basil Scott
New Generation Publishing (2016)
ISBN-13: 978-1787190573
Review by Revd Ikuko Williams

Two Pilgrims Meet: In search of Reconciliation between
China and Japan is a fascinating book, and I would
heartily recommend it to anyone, but especially tothose interested in reflecting on the complex facetsof reconciliation between countries with a history ofenmity in the past. The two authors Minoru Kasai andBasil Scott who became friends out of rather unusual
circumstances, share their personal stories andreflections on this very important topic and readers areinvited to join in their journeys of pilgrimage in searchof truth and reconciliation; many words of wisdom
appear through their ‘conversation’. The nature of
the book illustrates how we all visit and revisit ourpast repeatedly, to make sense of it and to find the4Issue 71, Volume 12, Number 5 (October 2017)

to meet again, at which point they embarked on a
spiritual joint journey of pilgrimage for reconciliation.
In 2006, the two men made a joint return visit to
Shanghai, where they travelled together to both sidesof the river within the city, putting themselves where
each other had been all those decades earlier. The
physical act of going to the other’s side symbolised
their mental and spiritual movement to place
themselves in the other’s shoes and to see thingsfrom the other’s perspective. As they note with great
poignancy, ‘Reconciliation is not only meeting in the
middle of a bridge, but going together to both sides
to see the other’s point of view’.
Their story tells us eloquently how reconciliation
requires a willingness to go to see ‘the other’s point ofview’, and how it calls for spiritual humility and openness.
Basil recalls his thoughts as he visited Japan prior to revisiting Shanghai in 2006: ‘God was trying to enlarge
my thinking... (and) ... my heart to love people I had notthought of embracing. ... the action I needed to take wasto make a space for the other, to listen to a people I did
not know and to take an interest in their concerns’ (p.95).
Their conversation also points to the importanceof awakening to the ‘blessed reality’ given by the loveof God which frees us from bitterness and hatred. They
speak of their deep gratitude for the gift of unexpected
given-ness which is found in reconciliation. And their
spiritual perspective on reconciliation is then applied totheir discussion about a better future for the relationshipbetween Japan and China, the country of theirchildhood homes. What comes out beautifully throughtheir shared journey is the hope which they had cometo know through their experiences, reflections and theirquiet faith in the transforming love of God.
I happen to be a Japanese national who has been
living in Britain for the last 29 years, and the issue ofreconciliation, in particular with the former Far East
POWs, has been a serious concern of mine. Hence, mynatural interest in this publication. I am also a graduateof International Christian University in Tokyo, where I
knew of Professor Minoru Kasai, though not personally.
I am very grateful to have a chance to get to know his
amazing life journey, so humbly told in this book.
This book was an inspirational and interesting
read for me personally, and I would like to thank theauthors for bringing their insightful ‘conversation’to publication. I do hope that this will be publishedin Japanese translation for a wider audience, as theauthors’ advocacy of reconciliation is surely needed
more than ever. This book offers us all genuine
encouragement to commit seriously to the buildingof trust-based relationships between neighbouring
countries on a person-to-person level, and shows
how this is needed just as much as government-level
initiatives.§

ANJIN-The Life & Times ofSamurai William Adams,
1564-1620

fluency in Dutch saves William Gourden and Michael
Payne. The next night with extraordinary courage andchutzpah, he goes back and rescues the last captive,
Hugh Williams.
It is unlikely that more than a handful of scholars
will have known this story, reported only partially in
Richard Cocks’s Diary (1615-22), and it is an exampleof the many fascinating nuggets of information about
the English pilot of the Dutch ship ‘De Liefde’, who
made landfall in Usuki Bay in April 1600 and went on
to achieve fame and fortune as Adviser to Tokugawa
Ieyasu with an estate as a hatamoto or senior Samurai.
The fans of the book, film and television series Shogun
enjoyed the excitement of Anjin’s story, focussed only
on his first seven months in Japan, though the 2013
play Anjin took the story further. However, in ANJINThe Life & Times of Samurai William Adams, 15641620 Hiromi T. Rogers reveals a far more detailed
and complex picture of Adams as a man and of the
turbulent times he lived in. As well as the crucial
interface between Adams and the Japanese, the bookby Hiromi T. Rogers
Renaissance Books (2017)
ISBN-13: 978-1898823223
Review by Nicolas Maclean(Honorary Chairman of the Miura
Anjinkai and Joint Chairman of Japan400)
In late August 1619 William Adams, now aged 55,
returns to Hirado after a successful trading voyage to
Indochina and finds that the British and Dutch are atwar. News reaches him that English and Welsh sailors
are being beaten and shackled as prisoners on board
the Dutch ship ‘The Angell’, anchored in the middle of
Hirado Bay. Richard Cocks, Head of the English Trading
House, feels powerless to attempt a rescue, butthough frail, with hollow eyes and cheeks, and hair andbeard turned grey after a severe tropical disease, thatnight Adams boards ‘The Angell’ and with bluff and his
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5

provides many insights into both cooperation andcompetition, and even conflict between the British,
Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch.
This book is for the general public in Britain andJapan, as well as for experts. It is highly readable andcan be strongly recommended. There are, however,a few caveats. The author’s special angle on Adams
is that she is a Japanese PhD married to a former
British diplomat, and is therefore very sensitive tocross-cultural issues. She also states in the Foreword
that she has been able to gain access to the privatearchives of Daimyo and other important families, aswell as studying official sources in both countries.
However, the author states from the outset that she isattempting to combine fact and fiction, mainly alerting
the reader to ‘informed imagining’ when she switches
the narrative to the present tense.
Nevertheless, it is sometimes frustrating not
to find all sources clearly referenced, though many
are, and inconsistencies in the spelling of names invarious parts of the book are unhelpful. So are theinadequacies of the index, which often leaves out
altogether people who are referred to in the maintext. This militates against ease of cross-referencing
for those who are attempting to research more deeply
into this fascinating period of history. A few examples
should suffice: Gisbert de Coning appears in the index
once, compared to three times in the text, similarly
for Toyotomi Hideyori, Melchior van Santvoort twicein the index rather than 19 times in the text, andJan Joosten van Lodensteyn, after whom the Yaesu
entrance to Tokyo Station is named, only three times in
the index rather than 27 times in the text. Moreover, it
can be confusing that the order of Japanese given andsurnames can vary between Western and Japaneseorder, even in the same paragraph.
In addition, the author sometimes omits significant
points, such as on page 80 where she leaves out thefact that the great warlord Oda Nobunaga, (whomshe unusually refers to as Lord Oda), encouraged
the spread of Christianity as a counterbalance to theexcessive power of groups of militant, armed Buddhists.
Sometimes she makes unsubstantiated statements,
such as on page 147 when she fails to provide a source
for the important quote after Adams has met Dutch
emissaries: ‘he promised to do so, as “a friend of theNetherlands and to regard it as his fatherland.”’ Elsewhere
she writes about the conflict between Spanish andPortuguese Jesuits, without also examining rivalries
between Dominicans and Franciscans, or mentioning
the Iberian Union between 1580 and 1640 and the6

impact a united Spanish and Portuguese crown might
have had on policies and people.
One of the interesting illustrations in the bookis of the statue of Erasmus, which is thought to havestood on the poop deck of ‘De Liefde’- rather than
fixed to the stern, as the author claims. She writes that
this important art historical object is to be found in the
Ryuko-In temple in Tochigi Prefecture, but it has also
been displayed among the late medieval Buddhist
carvings of the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park,Tokyo. She goes a bit adrift on Erasmus himself, whom
she describes as ‘the Dutch scholar who establishedsome principles of Protestantism, a hundred years
before Adams was born’. In fact, though born 98 years
before Adams, Erasmus naturally only came into his
prime as a thinker quite a while later.
The author claims on page 71 that there is no
official record of samurai using cannons or muskets until
the late seventeenth century, although muskets playeda decisive role at the Battle of Nagashino in 1575 andshe herself describes the use of cannon at Sekigahara.
Perhaps she means “use” in a personal sense rather thanuse by generals in deploying their forces. Her fascinating
and detailed account of the complicated Sekigahara
campaign would have been enhanced by a map,though the book does provide several useful maps inits early pages. On page 87 she visualizes Adams having
considered presenting a telescope to congratulate
Ieyasu on his appointment as Shogun in 1603, whereas
the telescope was not invented until 1608.
Surprisingly on page 190 the author does
not mention the role played by King James’s Chief
Minister, Lord Salisbury, in organizing the voyage of
the East India Company’s ‘The Clove’ , though in 1613
Adams was to provide the crucial input to ensure thesuccess of this first official British Mission to Japan.
The author rightly highlights the very bad relationshipbetween Adams and the Mission leader John Saris, butsince Saris is a relatively unusual surname, the reader
is left wondering if the Mary Hyn Mabel, whom Adams
marries on page 6, ‘daughter of Master Saris, a wealthy
London merchant’, is in some way related to John
Saris. Later in the book, there is mention of interest in
the North-West Passage but not also of the North-East
Passage. Once Saris and Adams are engaged on theirjourney around Japan to conduct the British Mission’s
official business, there is no mention of stones being
thrown at them in Osaka, a striking incident in Saris’s
logbook, or Adams going inside the great Buddha at
Kamakura. Writing about Shogun Hidetada’s official
gifts for King James, she states on page 209: ‘It is
Issue 71, Volume 12, Number 5 (October 2017)

widely believed that one of those suits of armour canstill be seen on display in the Tower of London today’.
In fact, that suit of armour, originally worn by the loser
at Nagashino, is in the Tower with its provenanceclearly labelled. The second is in the Royal Armoury’s
collection in Leeds.
Finally, the next edition of the book would beenhanced by more precision on dates. For instance, on
page 266 the author writes about the ending of Japan’s
sakoku or closure period, ‘until in fact 1868 when it wasanother Englishman, Sir Harry Parkes, who helped theAmerican admiral Matthew Perry to open Japan up
again to a very different world’. There is no mention of
the key date 1853 when Perry arrived in Japan with his
flotilla and delivered his ultimatum to the Tokugawa
authorities to end the sakoku policy. Parkes, of course,
deserves credit for later modernization, but the young
diplomat Ernest Satow played an earlier and moreinnovative role, closer to the culturally sensitive modelset by Adams.
On the other hand, these blemishes in the bookdo not diminish its readability, nor its important
contribution to achieving a deeper understandingof the crucial period, which preceded just over two
centuries of sakoku. Persecution of Christians had
already begun in Japan during Adams’s time there,
and the book shows how the intense rivalry between
the different Westerners was a factor in leading the
Shogun to decide on the closure of Japan to all but
the small Dutch and Chinese communities of traders,
restricted to closely watched areas of Nagasaki. The
colonization of the islands, renamed the Philippines
in 1952, was naturally also a factor influencing official
Japanese thinking -not mentioned in the book.
The author concludes her book with an interesting
Epilogue and Afterword, though it is a pity that she does
not mention attempts in the United Kingdom to redress
the imbalance of knowledge about Adams in Britain

compared with Japan. For instance, the first sister city
links between Britain and Japan date from 1982 andconsist appropriately of links between Yokosuka and Itowhich both hold annual Anjinsai festivals to celebrate
their Adams connections and his birthplace, Gillingham
in Kent, where former Mayor Susan Haydock alsoorganizes an annual festival in his honour.
The Japan Society banquet in the magnificent
Painted Hall of the former Royal Naval College,
Greenwich, arranged by Captain Robert Guy LVO, RN
on the 400th anniversary year of Adams’s arrival in
Japan, is another example of commemoration , andmore recently numerous events were organized by
Japan400, linking direct descendants of King James I
and VI and his Chief Minister Lord Salisbury with thedirect descendant of the Matsura Daimyo in Hirado withwhom Adams cooperated and of Tokugawa Ieyasu andTokugawa Hidetada. Adams might not have relished theattention also paid by Japan400 to British memorials to
the East India Company’s Sir Thomas Smythe, John Saris
and Richard Cocks, but he would undoubtedly haveenjoyed the samurai tea ceremonies led by Matsura
Akira and his society of loyal helpers in the Banqueting
House, Whitehall, under the benevolent gaze of KingJames from the Rubens ceiling, and in the church of
St. Mary Magdalene in Gillingham where Adams waschristened. Key backers of Japan400 such as Robin
Maynard have since formed the William Adams Clubin Tokyo to promote UK-Japanese relations and thememory of Adams, and work is already under way inboth countries to commemorate the 400th anniversaryof Adams’s death on 16th May 1620. Miura Anjin would
welcome the coincidence of this important Olympic
year for Japan following Britain’s Olympics, with only
Brazil’s in between.
All in all, having set the record straight, ANJIN isnevertheless a most entertainingly written book and arattling good yarn, not to be missed.§

Hokusai Beyond The Great
Wave

Anyone who managed to visit the Hokusai
exhibition at the British Museum this summer musthave been impressed by Hokusai’s genius as a painterand print artist. They will find in this volume with its
wealth of colour illustrations and the scholarly essaysthat accompany them a valuable reminder of what
they saw as well as insights into Hokusai’s life andwork. For those who failed to get tickets or missed
the exhibition this volume, while no substitute for theexhibition itself, will give them a taste of what theyedited by Timothy Clark
Thames and Hudson and The
British Museum (2017)
ISBN-13: 978-0500094068
Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi
It is very rare for a book on a single artist to make thebestseller list as this did. Indeed it was the top bestseller
in one list that I saw and the book had to be reprinted.
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7missed. A copy should be in the library of anyone withan interest in Japanese art.
The volume does not pretend to be a catalogue ofall Hokusai’s works. As he produced around 3000 colour
prints, many hundreds of paintings, and numerous
sketches in his long life, to list and reproduce them all
would require many volumes, but the selection fromhis late career presented in this volume is an excellent
introduction to Hokusai’s art and the bibliography
points to other works on Hokusai that the student canconsult.
Tim Clark, the editor and British Museum curator
in his essay ‘Late Hokusai backwards’ begins: “Hokusai
believed that the older he got the better his art
became”. Thirty-two paintings produced when hewas 88 have survived and twelve have been preserved
from his ninetieth and final year. As the name which
he adopted in later life Gakyō rōjin (‘picture-mad oldman’ if literally translated) implies he could not stop
drawing and painting. Sadly he did not manage tolive to 100 when he hoped to have achieved ‘a divine
state’ in his art.

Self-portrait, aged eighty-three
Drawing in a letter, ink on paper, 1842
National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, RMV3513-1496

Clark reminds us that Hokusai in middle age
had performed several tremendous feats of outdoor
performance art such as painting gigantic head-andshoulder images of Daruma. Hokusai had a great
sense of the ridiculous and his published collections ofhumorous sketches (Hokusai manga) are a high pointin the long tradition of satirical drawing first manifest in
the medieval Chōjū jinbutsu giga depiction of animals
behaving like human beings.
Hokusai was extraordinarily productive during hislong life. He wrote stories and poems and illustrated
many books. While conscious of his own genius andworth (the famous novelist Kyokutei Bakin noted that
Hokusai’s fees were ‘unusually high’) knew that inproducing woodblock prints he had to work closelywith the various craftsmen involved in the production
process.
Hokusai was an innovator. From his early twenties
he adopted elements of European perspective adding
depth to his depictions of the sea and mountains. He
had great imagination and an exceptional eye for the
beauties of the natural world. Perhaps above all it was
his instinct for colour and composition, which madehim such an exceptionally great artist. He seemed toknow instinctively how to compose a picture to makemaximum impact on the viewer.
These were probably the principal reasons why
once Japanese prints began to reach Europe Hokusai
became the focus of interest of French painters andto have such an important influence on the French
impressionists. Indeed Hokusai in the nineteenth
century perhaps because woodblock prints were soeasily transportable and plentiful came to be seenin the West as Japan’s greatest painter. In traditional
Japanese art circles in the late nineteenth he was notaccorded the same recognition although he did many
hanging scroll paintings of landscapes and beauties
in the Japanese classical tradition. His fame abroad
was based on woodblock prints, which in snobbish
Japanese eyes were seen as rather vulgar.
His genius and his fame as one of the greatest
artists in the world are now duly recognized in Japanas in the rest of the world.§

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