ARCHIVED Japan400 Commemorative Event

Date
Sunday 17 March 2024

Time
3.00pm
(reception afterwards from 4.00pm)

Venue
St. Chad's Church
Seighford
Stafford, ST18 9PQ

Booking Details
Free - Booking essential
This event is organised by Japan400 who kindly offer a limited number of places to members of The Japan Society and their guests only

Spaces are limited, so please book early for this unique occasion.  

Richard Cocks, Head of the East India Company’s English Trading House in Japan, (1613-1623), has a unique role in Japan-British history and led an extremely adventurous and well-recorded life. He died on his way home on 27 March 1624 and was buried in the Indian Ocean.

Japan400 invites a small group members of The Japan Society to attend a special service for Richard on the anniversary of his death*, in Seighford, Staffordshire, where his family originated. The service will be followed by tea and refreshments.

*As 27 March is a Wednesday, it will be more convenient for the Japan400 commemoration of his death to be held on Sunday 17 March.

Arranged by the Rev. Doug Heming, the service will take place at 3.00pm at St Chad’s Church, Seighford, where Richard was christened. During the service, the Bishop of Lichfield, the Right Reverend Dr Michael Ipgrave, whose diocese includes Seighford, will give the address about Japan-British relations and the life of Richard Cocks. The Bishop plans to include a reading in 17th century Japanese.

By serendipity the Bishop of Lichfield is Britain’s only Japanese speaking bishop, having served for over a year in Japan early in his career. He is also a Member of Japan400’s Advisory Council.

At 4.00pm, the Patron of St Chad’s, James Eld, of Cooksland Hall, Seighford, and his wife Robin, have kindly invited everyone attending the Japan400 service to tea and refreshments at Cooksland Hall, adjoining 14^th century Seighford Hall. The Eld family has lived at Seighford since the 14^th century and had later links with the East India Company.

Ms Rie Yoshitake of Sake Samurai will generously be providing sake at this reception.

There are regular trains to Stafford from Euston station, London. For instance, on 17 March there is a direct train, leaving Euston at 12.32pm and arriving in Stafford at 1.49pm. Taxis can be arranged by the Eld family to bring guests on the short journey from Stafford (3.5 miles). There are frequent trains back to London, for instance, five between 5.00 and 6.00pm.

Please email any enquiries to Nicolas Maclean, the Joint Chairman of Japan400, at nmatmwm@hotmail.com.

Image: Full screen showing Richard Cocks

Message from the Deputy Prime Minister

'I am delighted to send my best wishes to everyone who has joined this commemoration with Japan400 today.
'I have fond memories of my time in Japan as part of the JET programme, which Nicolas, your Chairman, played such a central role in founding.'
'I am proud to be returning as Deputy Prime Minister this coming week, where I hope to deepen further the historic relationship between our two countries that pioneers like Richard Cocks set in motion.' 

The Rt Hon Oliver Dowden CBE MP
Deputy Prime Minister & Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster

Message from Matsura Akira

'On the occasion of the 400^th anniversary of Richard Cocks’s demise, I should like to express my utmost respect to the man who initiated British trade links with Japan.  In those early days, just to cross the oceans and reach unknown territories in the Far East must have been like going to the Mars or the Moon today.  It must have taken a tremendous amount of courage and daring.  Opening a trading post out in the boondocks like Hirado must have been like doing business with the Martians.  I understand there was some criticism of his way of running the Trading House but I believe he did his best.  He dealt with the people of Hirado including my ancestors courteously, an attitude that should be remembered anywhere anytime.  May his soul rest in peace with molecules of his body somewhere deep in the Indian Ocean.'

Matsura Akira
41^st Head of the Matsura Clan, former rulers of Hirado (the 26^th, 27^th and 28^th Matsura Daimyo welcomed the British in Hirado in the 17^th century)

Sermon by the Bishop of Lichfield

日の出る所よりいる所までの国国に我が名は大いならん又いづこにても香と清き捧げ物を我が名に捧げんそは我が名国国の中に大いなるべければなりと万軍の主いい給ふ。

For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name and a pure offering, for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts – the message of the prophet Malachi to the people of Israel.

The message of King James I and VI to the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu: Thus forever and ever, we will, we avow, communicate with Japan without any sense of distinction or separation. The Shogun’s message to the King: Though separated by ten thousand leagues of clouds and waves, our territories are, as it were, close to one another. That exchange of diplomatic greetings in 1613 set the very beginning of the links between this country and Japan on a promising, equitable and affectionate footing. Unlike in so many of our later imperial and colonial relationships, there was expressed here a commitment to respect and affinity which it is right for us to celebrate today, in this corner of Staffordshire where we honour the memory of one who was among the earliest English people to settle in Japan. The combination of geographical distance and spiritual affinity is striking.

We know that the course of the relationship has not run smoothly over the last four hundred years. The faltering start, and eventual failure, of the English factory at Hirado seems to have been due to a combination of circumstances, rather than any particular malice; how far Richard Cocks’ own shortcomings contributed to the demise of the project is debated among historians, but today is not the occasion to enter into judgement on him. Despite the hope held for several decades that the factory might be re-opened, the period known as 鎖国時代, when Japan’s rulers locked the country away from almost all contact with the rest of the world, meant that never happened. When Anglo-Japanese relations resumed in the nineteenth century, the global picture was very different: Britain had built a dynamic and expanding trading empire, and Japan was determined to catch up on lost time to compete with the West. Over the past century and a half there has been constant interaction between our nations – most of it fruitful and friendly, some of it painful and bitter.

What a quick and superficial whizz like this through history overlooks, though, is the many, many stories of individual lives that all play a part in the big picture. Many of us here today will be linked to one or another thread in this complex tapestry. For me, the connections began before my birth, in 1942, when my father was captured at the Fall of Singapore. He spent the next three years as a Japanese PoW working on the railway. That was not a good experience. But forty years later, when I served as a young priest in the Japanese Anglican Church for a couple of years, he came to stay with us, and was deeply moved by the warm hospitality he received from our Japanese friends. Of course, not everything was plain sailing, and more or less comic misunderstandings did happen. I remember an occasion when, having expressed a polite interest in traditional Japanese gardening, dad was invited to inspect entries in a prestigious regional bonsai competition, to award prizes and to give a short lecture on English attitudes to bonsai. I marvelled that he could sound so plausible about a subject he knew so very little about. I also remember one convivial meal when, his tongue loosened by sake, dad decided he would rehearse what he could remember of the Japanese expressions his wartime guards had used in addressing their prisoners. We moved rapidly to next business.

I think that Richard Cocks went through some of the same kind of experiences as my dad: not bonsai competitions or prison memories, of course, but his diaries do show him negotiating the endlessly varied opportunities for mutual incomprehension that arise when people meet across language and culture divides. And that is no new thing in human history – the book of Genesis tells just the same story, of men travelling to the East, where their language became confused so that the great tower that they were aiming to build together became a sign of what divided them: Babel became babble.

So what we are celebrating this afternoon is a very human story, or set of stories. And because we are doing so in a church, we need to ask: what does all this have to do with faith? Certainly Richard Cocks was a Christian – he was baptised in this church on 20th January 1565, and we have no reason to doubt that throughout his life he lived as an Anglican Christian – or, in the language of his time, he would have said, an English Protestant. In fact, there is some evidence in his diaries that the faith was an important matter to him personally: on March 9th 1616, for example, he notes: I lent my book of St. Augustyn Citty of God to Mr. Wickham. But faith was not a part of the English mission to Japan, and in this they differed from their Portuguese rivals – indeed, it was because of the fearless missionising of the Jesuits and others aligned with the Portuguese that the Japanese government became profoundly suspicious of all signs of Christianity, so much so that Cocks had to take down the English flag from the Hirado factory, as its Cross of St George offended the authorities. Whatever their achievements may be, the first English people to live in Japan – Richard Cocks, William Adams, John Saris and the others – do not feature in the glorious annals of missionary and martyr history.

Yet our readings this afternoon speak of other dimensions of human life which Richard Cocks did show in his life. The Bible celebrates the human desire to travel, to explore, to encounter and exchange with others – and it highlights the dangers that can attend that exploration. Psalm 107 speaks of those who go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters, and it describes graphically their experiences in a tumultuous storm: They are carried up to heaven, and down again to the deep: their soul melteth away because of the trouble. Cocks surely must have experienced times like that on the South China Seas; and of course it was out at sea that he died, and to the depths of the sea that his body was committed. I am sure that in his torments on the ocean, whether in the storm or with his last breath, he would have cried unto the Lord in his trouble.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus talks about the single-minded pursuit of treasure as a parable of the kingdom of heaven. The commitment that a merchant shows in acquiring the buried gold, or the pearl of great price, is a sign of the zeal with which the Lord wants his people to seek the heavenly treasures which God has prepared for us. I have read through Richard Cocks’ diary, and sadly could find no reference to trading in pearls, despite there being a long established history of pearl diving in Japan by his time; nevertheless, looking at the story of his life, he must have been motivated by a deep and restless desire to seek for that which is beyond – in that sense, he stands for us all as a representative pilgrim through time and place, like all of us travelling onwards to the mysterious end.

Richard Cock’s journeys took him from Staffordshire to Japan, but they did not bring him back here as he was called away. Despite the deep-seated quest for new experiences in his soul – or perhaps because of that – he does not seem to have been particularly decisive or skilled in the way he managed his trading venture; the ‘Preface’ to my edition remarks charitably that: Traces of confusion in his money accounts are to be found in his diary. But it goes on to say that we cannot accompany him through these pages without feeling good will towards him. He was easy-going and he liked people, whatever their background; and most of those he met seem to have liked him. He had a gift for friendship, and he remembered those he cared for – Forget not my pigeons and fishes, he wrote once in a letter when away from home. So we should indeed thank God for Richard Cocks, his weaknesses and his strengths, his faith and his uncertainty, his amiable disposition which endeared this Staffordshire man to people in Japan four centuries ago. And in our own time we should thank God that we are members of one human race, that we share in one human journey towards the heavenly city, and that as we journey we are called to care for one another as our loving God cares for each one of us. From the rising of the sun my name is great, says the LORD. Whether in England or in Japan, we belong to him and to one another, for as the Shogun said, Though separated by ten thousand leagues of clouds and waves, our territories are, as it were, close to one another.

Sermon by the Bishop of Lichfield, Britain’s only Japanese-speaking Bishop, in St Chad’s Church, Seighford, Staffordshire, on Sunday 17^thMarch, the church where Richard Cocks was christened in January 1565.

Notes on the Cocks Anniversary

In January 1846 during the debate on the repeal of the Corn Laws the statesman Richard Cobden idealistically declared “I see in the Free Trade principle that which shall act on the moral world as the principle of gravitation in the universe-drawing men together, thrusting aside the antagonism of race, and creed, and language, and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace.”

The previous three hundred years had often promoted trade on a very different basis, certainly until the 19^th century mercantilism was the ruling doctrine and international trade was sometimes backed by force of arms and a prelude to colonialism. In many cases the terms of trade were very unequal.

That makes it all the more notable that Britain’s first engagement with Japan was quite different, and not a page of history of dubious morality. After the arrival of William Adams from Gillingham in Kent in April 1600 as pilot of the first Dutch ship to reach Japan, it was not until June 1613 that the first British mission arrived in Japan. It was sent by order of King James l of England and Vl of Scotland and organized by his Chief Minister, Lord Salisbury, and Sir Thomas Smythe, Head of the East India Company, (founded in 1600).

Commanded by John Saris on board The Clove, The East India Company’s Eighth Voyage, reached Japan carrying a silver telescope for Japan’s ruler and other lavish gifts appropriate for establishing diplomatic and trade relations. King James’s letter to the ruler included the words “Thus forever and ever, we will, we avow, communicate with Japan without any sense of distinction or separation”. It also offered reciprocal and equal treatment for all Japanese visiting or trading with Britain, in line with the freedom to trade and live in Japan requested for British citizens. The ruler, Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu granted a Shuinjo or trading licence, stamped with a Vermilion Seal.  His reply to King James included the words “Though separated by ten thousand leagues of clouds and waves, our territories are, as it were, close to each other.” And in December Saris and The Clove set sail for Britain, leaving behind just seven Englishmen to implement the new trade agreement.

We are gathered here today to remember the leader of that group of seven: Richard Cocks, born in 1564, the same year as William Shakespeare and William Adams, and christened in St Chad’s on 20^th January 1565, as recorded on the stone plaque erected by Japan400 in 2013, four hundred years after his arrival in Japan. He grew up at Stallbrook Hall, not far from St Chad’s, much of whose timber-framed building Richard would still recognize. He was the son of a yeoman farmer and had six siblings. While his elder brother ran the farm, Richard went to London to seek his fortune. Apprenticed as a cloth merchant, one of England’s major exports at the time, he became a Member of the Clothworkers Company in the City. Thence in 1603 to Bayonne in Southern France near the Spanish border, an active trading centre, but in 1605 he was recruited by a senior aide to Lord Salisbury, as an “intelligencer” or spy, charged with reporting on movements of English exiles heading for Spain and Catholic priests heading for England. In that year of the Gunpowder Plot, action against the Catholic threat was a top priority of the British Government. Cocks’s reports were often praised by his spymasters in Britain and some even shown to Lord Salisbury and the King. Cocks was also in direct touch with Britain’s Ambassadors in France and Spain.

Having been passed over for the post of Consul in Biscay, his secret service controller, Thomas Wilson, (knighted in 1618), persuaded Lord Salisbury that Richard Cocks would be the ideal head of the hoped-for British trading operation in Japan. After all, he had both experience as a cloth merchant and in quasi-diplomatic roles. Sir Thomas Smythe agreed to Cocks’s appointment to the multifaceted role of Chief Factor in Japan, where he was to live and work without any home leave from 11^th June 1613 to Christmas Eve 1623, when the British closed their trading post and INVERTED COMMAS “temporarily” left Japan, only to be allowed back to trade 231 years later, after Commodore Perry’s arrival with a US flotilla.

Sadly, and in part wrongly, Cocks was blamed by the East India Company for poor management, poor accounting, and the lack of profitability of the trade with Japan. Some of this was due to bad decisions by his superiors in the East India Company, such as the choice of the location of their headquarters far from the main commercial markets and too close to their rivals the Dutch and also to the choice of the products to be sold, (too many woollens and crude ceramic gallipots and oil-colour portraits so badly packed that they did not withstand the sea voyage). Moreover, conditions in Japan during his ten years were increasingly difficult, with growing suspicion of foreigners and political instability internally. At the start Cocks had to contend with competition from the powerful Portuguese and Spaniards, whose influence he countered by telling the leaders of Japan including the Shogun about England’s “Double Deliverance” from Spain, first from the Spanish Armada and 17 years later from the Gunpowder Plot. He may have overplayed his hand, as in 1616 the new Shogun persecuted all Roman Catholics, expelling the Portuguese and Spaniards, and also withdrew the freedom of the British and Dutch to trade and live in any part of Japan. Thereafter, their movements were restricted to their trading headquarters on the small island of Hirado in South-Western Japan and to nearby Nagasaki. Prospects for profitability declined further.

However, Richard Cocks was not only one of Britain’s notable pioneers in East Asia, but an honest man, who sent many letters home, now invaluable to historians, and also kept an extensive journal, now part of the East India Office Archive at the British Library. Among the many colourful entries, here are two from this very day, 17^th March, first in 1617, then 1618.

On that day in 1617, Cocks showed his kindly nature: “Mr Nealson being ill at ease went to the bath at Ichew, and John Cook with him. God send them their healths!”

In 1618 the entry for that day is: “I gave dancing bears and a bar of [silver] plate to the bearers of the sedan chairs. This night about sun setting the junk of Fingo Shiquan put to sea, wherein Captain Adams went as pilot. Tachemon our cook borrowed money to redeem his son, which will be deducted later from his wages.”

This last entry is a reminder that Cocks deserves great credit for initiating Britain’s trade with China, though his Chinese go-between, Li Tan, seems to have often failed to deliver on promises and down payments.

Anthony Farrington, who in 1991 published the history of the English in Japan during the first period of partnership, included the following comments about Richard Cocks: “Because of his diary Cocks is a vivid figure who crosses 360 years as an immensely likeable man.” He then criticises his achievements in Japan, before closing with the words “…but an essentially sympathetic picture remains of him tending his garden at the English (trading) house, caring for his goldfish, entertaining his Japanese neighbours with invitations to dinner or to share an o-furo or carrying presents to them at New Year.”

Moreover, his gardening was not just for relaxation. Cocks introduced the first potatoes into Japan. Professor Timon Screech describes Cocks as “the most educated Englishman to spend time in Japan until the 1850s.” His diary is full of perceptive statements, and he had a great love of books. Cocks made a good impression on the ruler and leaders of Japan, at national and local level. Of him it could be said “he walked with Kings, nor lost the common touch”.

After his visit to Edo, when he spent time at the Shogun’s palace, he wrote a full description to Sir Thomas Wilson, on which Wilson commented “It seems that neither our cosmographers nor other wryters have given us true relation of the greatness of the princes of these parts, for of the island of Japan he tells these strange things ….”. In an audience with King James Sir Thomas relayed all the details of a letter from Cocks, but “His Majesty could not be induced to believe that the things written were true but desyred to speake with the writer when he comes home.”

That was not to be, as having avoided so many hazards of accident or disease prevalent at the time, Cocks succumbed to illness on his way home in the southern Indian Ocean while on board the Anne Royal. He died on 27^th March 1624 and was buried at sea, honoured by an artillery salute.

Thanks to the Disney Channel, Richard Cocks may soon be resurrected, as a very successful and vivid new version of the series “Shogun” has just been launched, based on the early British adventures in Japan!

By Nicolas Maclean CMG, assisted by Professor Timon Screech, Joint Chairmen of Japan400

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