ARCHIVED First Contact: The Earliest Scots in Japan (1613-1623)

Date
Monday 19 February 2024

Time
6.45pm

Venue
The Swedenborg Society
20-21 Bloomsbury Way (Hall entrance on Barter St)
London WC1A 2TH
[Map]

Booking Details
Free- Booking essential

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The first recorded person from the British Isles to land in Japan was the Englishman William Adams on the Dutch ship Liefde in 1600. The best-known Scots arrived in the late 1850s two hundred and fifty years after Adams. These were Admiral Sir James Stirling from Coatbridge who ‘persuaded’ the Japanese to sign the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation in 1854 and the Earl of Elgin, who negotiated a much more comprehensive Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1858. Then in 1859 Thomas Glover, the so-called ‘Scottish Samurai’ landed in Nagasaki in 1859.

In this lecture, Professor Ian Gow will discuss first contacts by Scots with Tokugawa Japan during the English East India Company period in Hirado (1613-23). He will also discuss the “first contact” at the very highest levels between another Scot, King James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England, and the Shogunate during this time.

Professor Ian Gow is chairman of The Japan Society of Scotland and Honorary Professor of Japanese at the University of Edinburgh. He graduated in Politics & Modern History at Edinburgh University and completed his doctorate at the Centre for Japanese Studies University of Sheffield. He was Scotland’s first Professor of Japanese and founding director of the Scottish Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of Stirling. He is a former Chairman of the School of East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield. He was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon in 2021 for his contribution to Japan-Scotland relations and Japanese Studies.

Images - Left:The Early Scots in Hirado - Firando / Right: The Scottish Path from Nagasaki to Hirado 

If you have any questions, please call The Japan Society office on 020 3075 1996 or email events@japansociety.org.uk.

Booking Info