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The real history behind SHOGUN with Thomas Lockley · The Smart Cookies podcast

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  Thomas Lockley is associate professor at Nihon University College of Law Tokyo where he teaches
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  courses about the international and multicultural history of Japan and East Asia. He has published
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  several dozen research papers and articles, including the first in the world regarding
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  the life of the famous Yasuke, about whom he also wrote a book called African Samurai.
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  His latest book, which we'll talk about later on, is called A Gentleman from Japan, the
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  Untold Story of an Incredible Journey from Asia to Queen Elizabeth's Court. Professor
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  Lockley, welcome to Smart Cookies.
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  Thank you very much, Saza. It's a pleasure to be on with you.
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  Thanks to the reboot of the TV show Shogun, which is based on the famous historical novel
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  written by James Clavel, the West is enamored with feudal Japan and samurai once again.
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  Although, to be honest, I don't know if we ever fell out of this infatuation, which for
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  me started with Ninja Turtles when I was seven years old. I'm not going to lie there.
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  Back to the real story. The story of Shogun's protagonist in the book at least, John Blackthorne,
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  is based on the exploits of William Adams, the English sailor who reached Japan in, I
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  believe, 1600s and actually became a samurai. We're going to talk about the TV show in a
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  minute, but I wanted us to first explore the historical context of this world a little
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  bit. It's a really ungrateful ask to ask something so broad and complex of any historian,
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  I know. Fully realize that, but I do it to my guests all the time, unfortunately. But
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  could we take a few steps back and talk about the so-called Sengoku period, so the famous
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  warring states era where we had all of these famous feudal lords and samurai slugging
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  it out in an insane last man standing battle royale that lasted continuously for almost
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  two centuries. Why did that happen? What did it actually look like? Throwing a lot at you
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  here, I know. And most of all, how come people didn't chill out for a second there? And maybe
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  if we can stop with the arrival of the first Europeans to Japan, the Portuguese in the
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  middle of all this. Okay. So although it's called the Sengoku Jidai, the age of the country
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  war, which leads up to Blackthorn's arrival in Japan in 1600, the absolute truth is Japan
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  had never really been a very peaceful place, very similar to Europe and many other parts
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  of the world. It's simple modern historians date that kind of particular warring period
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  from the 1460s. And that is what we're talking about here. And in the 1460s, the old order
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  broke down and the old lords, the old shogunate house basically lost control. And of course,
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  in a country the size of Japan, especially at the time like this, with communications
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  being very poor, etc, etc, the region started pulling apart, individual lords started controlling
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  their own customs, their own money, their own laws within their own domains, which became
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  what the Europeans when they came in a few decades later called kingdoms, they refer
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  to these what we call lords or daimyo as kings of their territory. In a European context
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  from the time, that's not that silly, because some of these domains were as big as the countries
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  like Portugal, where these men came from. So for them, they were talking about the kingdoms
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  of Europe. For example, what do we now call Germany was patchwork of very small states
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  or Italy, very small states, which were kind of connected via custom and linguistic relationships,
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  but not really speaking the same language, we can say the same thing exactly about Japan.
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  Even today, people from the very north find it difficult to understand the south and vice
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  versa. Although we all know in Japan can also speak standard Tokyo language. So into this
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  warring states where we've had the country, the empire, the whole world, as far as those
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  people are concerned, split apart, we have Jesuit missionaries coming from the first
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  time. Now, for their point of view, they come into a country which has, which is good for
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  them, because it's split up into parts, and they can start putting wedges through these
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  different domains with, with good intentions from their part, they think they're saving
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  souls, they think they're there to save the people which they draw the wedges into. And
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  they get a lot of success. There are estimates that perhaps by 1600, far more than 100,000
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  people have converted to Catholicism and are in some way, shape or form adhered with the
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  Catholic Church and the Jesuits and a couple of other missionaries who had just come in
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  the previous decade. The Jesuits had this magic called guns and gunpowder and another
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  magic called trade. And they could control certain aspects of trade with China, which
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  had been cut off with Japan because of the warring states. China was so confused or so
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  angry, angry about the fact that the Japanese world was at civil war. They just said, we're
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  not going to have anything more to do with you. We can't trade with you anymore. That
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  was it. There's a wedge cut through in the 1615 forties. But it had been carrying on
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  for decades before that. What happens at that point is the Jesuits are coming in and they
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  have this lifeline to Macau in southern China and they start to bring in Chinese goods,
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  which is what the world craves at the time, craves today. The products of the Chinese
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  manufacturers, the products of the Chinese farms, et cetera. And therefore the Jesuits
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  have this magic weapon and they start to use this to build influence among the lords. One
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  of these lords, a few decades later, is the character Torunaga in Clavel's Shogun novel
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  and now in the Disney series. And Torunaga, or Tokugawa as his real name is, is very,
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  very keyed in to using the Jesuits, but also keeping them at arm's distance as well. However,
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  some of his own vassals, the lesser lords are far more dependent upon this trade because
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  they don't have anything else with which to put their wedge into the wars, to raise money
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  for guns, to raise money to pay soldiers, et cetera, et cetera. So when we get to 1600,
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  there's only really two very powerful warlords left. Everybody else is lined up behind those
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  two warlords. In fact, I say 1600, 1598, because the other one died in 1598, leaving only one
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  left, Torunaga or Tokugawa, and the previous people who would be on Hideyoshi's side. Blackthorne
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  comes in in the novel, but also the real character William Adams comes in at the point where
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  it's just about to end in the battle to end all battles, the last battle for this whole
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  historical, warring world. Good timing, exquisite timing, way to go. Especially if you've weighed
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  it, Clavelle writes it because the real William Adams didn't really have much to do with anything
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  to do with that battle at all. Okay, we're going to talk about that in a second. But
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  I wanted us to go a little bit back just for a minute. Would you say that this warring
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  states period, you said Japan was never a really peaceful country, but was there some
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  peace before this period? Was there like a more stable shogunate or how did things work?
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  Because apparently you also said that China cut off trade because they were like, you
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  guys are out of control over there. We can't do business with you. So what exactly happened
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  there with the breakdown of the old order and this more chaotic period that followed?
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  Before this period, there was always several decades of peace or central control. Central
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  control is the most important thing for a state to have. When central control breaks
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  down, the periphery starts to be pirates or starts to be bandits or in the words of the
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  legal, the controllers of the law, the central center, they are pirates. So China, all these
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  Japanese people invading their coast, not invading with armies, but just raiding as
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  pirates, which is why trade broke down. Normally, a central government controls pirates or controls
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  their maritime forces and says you will not invade our neighbors. However, there was no
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  central power to do that and therefore the periphery lords wanting money, wanting guns,
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  wanting other slaves essentially started raiding foreign countries as far away as Siam, modern
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  day Thailand. There are even raids in what we now call Malaysia and Indonesia as well.
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  The biggest lure was the money from southern China. Raiding the coast of southern China,
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  you get thousands of slaves, you get the products of Chinese manufacturers, etc. That was the
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  place. So basically, that's where trade breaks down. China says we're not even going to have
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  anybody coming from Japan anymore. We don't know whether you're pirates or whether you're
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  legitimate.
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  If we are forced to draw a parallel with Europe, I know that's also pretty ungrateful, but
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  was it similar at all to the Hundred Years' War between England and France? That probably
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  happened a century earlier than that. Is that a useful parallel or not at all in this case?
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  Without going into too much detail, England and France were very much into the dependent
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  at that time with kings of both ruling both at different times, etc. So yes, it is. There
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  were far more, something like 250 states in total within Japan from small, tiny slithers
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  of land controlled by pirates basically, or to larger places. You can also say that the
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  Hundred Years' War or even later on within the German world or within the Viking world,
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  the Scandinavian world at the north, you've got everybody going in and out and not being
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  able to control each other. That's a good analogy, yes.
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  I see. Wow. Interesting. Okay. I'm going to ask you something really basic right now.
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  What are some of the common misconceptions we have about the samurai in the West? Probably
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  the samurai is, the term samurai is also changing because it's like a thousand year period.
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  But if we focus on that period, we were just discussing the warring states. What are some
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  cliches that just refuse to die? Well, the cliche of honorable warriors refuses
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  to die. Of course, every warrior or most warriors have some form of honor, but there was no
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  particular code called Bushido at the time. That comes later. That comes during the peace
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  that was established by Tokugawa Toranaga, which lasted 268 years, really.
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  Right. The so-called Edo period, right? That's correct. So everything we know about
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  the samurai, we think we know about the samurai coming from an outsider's perspective is
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  formed within that time. Prior to that, you have warriors who needed to win and they did
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  everything they could to win. There were more guns in Japan at the end of the 16th century
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  than the rest of the world put together, allegedly. Oh my God. I did not know that.
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  You've got people desperate. I mean, they're protecting their families. They're protecting
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  the people that depend on them, the peasants, the merchants who are behind them. These are
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  warriors, they're hard men, and they have a responsibility for that. Defending their
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  own people means attacking other people. Otherwise, those people attack you. And that is the kind
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  of world we're talking about right now. Wow. Desperate measures. Yeah. I have two
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  questions. At least in pop culture, the samurai are usually portrayed as these deeply loyal,
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  like you said, almost meditative warriors, also kind of ruthless, but incredibly poetic
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  and zen. I'm thinking, of course, of Ken Watanabe's character in The Last Samurai, observing cherry
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  blossoms and reciting poetry as he's being shanked to death in the stomach by Tom Cruise.
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  That's again, nearly 300 years later. He and his ancestors for 250, 300 years had lived
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  through a time of peace, where essentially the armor he's wearing was probably worn by
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  ancestors 200 years ago. He's only put that on because there's a sudden new war. There
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  hadn't been any war for 200 years. It's the longest period of peace in human history,
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  essentially. There is no other country that was at peace for two centuries. That's crazy.
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  It doesn't happen. When you're thinking about the samurai at the end in the 19th century
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  and the beginning of the Edo period, you're talking about two very different types of
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  people. Europeans, if you look at European records from the 16th century, they're going
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  around shooting, killing, executing everybody in the name of God. In the 19th century, they're
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  not doing that. Or they're only doing it to other people that aren't Christians. We've
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  got a huge amount of time here. We always have to remember that what we think of as
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  samurai or honorable knights changes very much wherever you are in the world.
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  Why did we have the warrior code, the Bushido established during the time of peace if people
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  weren't fighting, at least not as much anymore?
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  Because they had to justify the reason why they were still called warriors. They became
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  a class, which actually were the administrators of the civil service, the priestly class,
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  and fulfilled all of what we would now think of as aristocratic roles, but also civil service
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  roles, as I said. They had to justify the fact that their ancestors were all brutal
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  bandit warriors. They came up with a story to justify this.
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  This again is something that everybody else has done. This is nothing that is uniquely
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  Japanese. This is something that all people in history do. We glorify empires now, or
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  we don't glorify them to justify our own modern world, which doesn't have empires in the same
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  way, et cetera. We all make stories about the past, and the Japanese are no different
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  from anybody else.
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  You mentioned the desperate conditions at the height of this warring states period.
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  What was life like for ordinary people? Did they have to take up arms? What was the life
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  of an average peasant like? I always ask this of all my historian guests, because we always
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  talk about kings, lords, warriors, et cetera, but we don't discuss the life of an average
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  Japanese person in this context during the Sengoku Jidai.
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  If you read my books, you'll find out about those people quite a lot. I very much concentrate
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  on those people's lives if I can do. Number one, peasants, fisher folk, the people who
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  were tied to the land, if you like, they had a very difficult time. They were either conscripted
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  into armies if the money became available through trade or through mining, silver mining
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  in particular, they became basic soldiers. The cannon fodder we would call them today.
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  If they were unlucky enough not to be on the fighting sides, they were taken prisoner and
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  sold as slaves. By another army of another lord?
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  Yeah, whoever could find them, another temple, another lord, whoever was doing the attacking
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  and doing the winning took their dues through slaves. We have no idea what percentage of
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  the population that was, but we do know from artwork that it was a huge amount of people
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  that were taken as slaves. Now that's not slavery in the sense that we're thinking about
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  today. Those people would then be taken to different communities, set to work, probably
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  marry, have children who then were normal parts of that new community. This is not necessarily
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  the kind of hereditary slavery that we're talking about. The details are slim on the
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  ground, but those people would then become valued members of different communities. It
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  is more about manpower or woman power, baby making power if you like, if we really want
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  to put it so that the population could be increased to make more soldiers, to make more
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  workers in a modern parlance, et cetera, et cetera. People were valuable commodity. In
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  a country where you're having lots of death through war and death through starvation because
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  the war's going on, you can't grow your crops or somebody else is taking your crops. Also
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  through a place where diseases arrive because people are moving around all the time. As
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  we know from COVID, the more you move, the more diseases spread. If you've got armies
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  going up and down the country, they're spreading diseases. People need to be replaced somehow.
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  And therefore you take somebody else's people and add them to your people. And that was
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  a lot of normal people at that time. Okay. So you actually answered my next question
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  because I was about to ask if this is such a widespread phenomenon, capturing people
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  and taking them into slavery, who is producing all the food? But you said their famines were
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  widespread as well. So not exactly a bulletproof system at the time then.
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  What we now think of as a Japanese diet would not have been a Japanese diet at the time.
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  Okay. Interesting. People would have eaten whatever they could. And up until the end
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  of that period of war, you have an extensive evidence for hunter gatherer populations supplementing
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  farm populations. So even though Japan had been farming for more than a thousand years
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  by that point, had been in mainly rice farms, but wheat as well in the South in particular,
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  but also farming in the hills for vegetables, et cetera. During the war, people returned
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  hunter gathering a lot more because you just go and grab from the forest. You don't have
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  to invest time in making farming, making rice, which somebody else is going to take. You
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  go into a forest, you take what you can, you feed your family. So, and the end of hunter
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  gathering in Japan essentially finishes with that period. After that, the farmers left
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  that piece to farm. And that's a very romantic way of putting it. They then became the basis
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  of the economy because the economy was based upon rice. So people were paid in rice. Therefore,
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  the farmers are actually producing the money, which keeps the economy going and expands
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  the economy. So it was everybody in everybody's interests by the end of that period to make
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  sure that the farmers stayed on their farms and did as much farming as possible. And at
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  that point you end the hunter gatherer economy within Japanese history. It simply has hardly
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  existed since then, except perhaps in very, very rural areas in times of extreme hardship.
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  I watched this movie called Silence recently by Martin Scorsese about these two missionaries,
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  supposedly a true story, Portuguese missionaries coming to Japan where they're suppressing
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  Christianity. And when I was watching the movie, all the peasants in the movie, the
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  Japanese peasants are portrayed, are like really skinny and kind of dirty and poor.
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  And it kind of bothered me. I was like, I thought, you know, this is Japan, the land
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  of plenty. I thought Europe kind of poor and dirty at the time, Japan, everybody's washed
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  and belly's full, plenty of rice, whatever they want. But now you're telling me that
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  was actually quite accurate and accurate portrayal.
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  Oh, I would say so, especially in the area where that is, that's from the West, very,
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  very West is based upon the Shimabara Peninsula in Nagasaki Prefecture and slightly further
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  north. Anyway, Nagasaki Prefecture and the prefectures around, they are known even today
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  for their poverty, that's a relative term, they're known for more challenging places
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  to work from the farm, work the land, etc. Which is why the people around that, the lords
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  especially were only too keen to have outside input coming in through the Jesuits. Those
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  guns or the payment from the Jesuits, the support from the Jesuits, for example, meant
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  that those men who could never have competed with the more powerful lords from the more
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  productive areas were able to compete. And therefore that was the Jesuits wedge that
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  I was talking about earlier. They were able to come in with the, to the hardest areas
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  of the country, countries where people were really in need and provide those people with
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  guns or other implements as well. Often in exchange for slaves, the Jesuits and the Portuguese
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  merchants that came with them then started exporting slaves, Japanese slaves, payment
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  for a lot of the goods that they were coming in with. So you have my good friend Lucio
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  de Souza is the expert in this. If you want to interview him, I'm happy to get you in
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  contact with him. Thank you. Lucio de Souza, he has gone through all of the archives in
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  Portuguese, Latin, Italian, Spanish, looking for evidence of these people. Up to a thousand
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  or more a year were being exported by the 1580s, 1590s, mainly to China, but also then
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  to Macau, Manila, further east, even to Europe. The first Japanese in Europe were slaves in
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  the late 16th century. Not very Christian of the Jesuits, if I may add. They were saving
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  those people's souls. If they were left as heathen, pre-heathens, they weren't going
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  to heaven. So it was justified by the fact that they were being saved for the Lord.
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  But is it even allowed to make a Christian turn them into a slave if they have converted?
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  It was forbidden. So they had to be, hadn't converted yet. And they were converted after
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  being enslaved. But then their status wouldn't revert back to being a free person. Oh, how
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  convenient. Interesting. Okay, wow. A lot of tricks in the gray area. Both in my previous
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  book and also in the book that's coming up, A Gentleman. Yes. And you will be enslaved
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  at the centre to those books. So yeah, a contribution of the enslaved to this world is never, ever
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  recorded. It's simply their sweat and their blood that is recorded. They have some contribution
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  in other intellectual fields or other, even military fields is never recorded. They are
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  simply left out of history. So this is an attempt to try and, I can't say rebalance
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  because that will never be done, but at least to give a voice there somewhere.
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  We were talking about the Jesuits, the Portuguese. I just want to go a little bit back again,
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  the height of the civil war, the Sengoku period, to complicate matters even further, the Portuguese
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  land in the middle of all this in southern Japan, I believe in 1543, bringing guns, like
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  you said, and establishing trade routes, bringing religion, proselytizing, etc. This must have
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  been a pretty crazy, fascinating collision of the two universes. Was the arrival of these
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  kind of odd looking foreigners a shock to the Japanese or not at all? I'm curious about
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  what they wrote about them and also vice versa. How did the Portuguese describe Japan and
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  the Japanese? Well, they came in originally on Chinese ships. The Portuguese came on Chinese
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  ships and they were assumed to be some type of person related to the Chinese world. The
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  Chinese generally refer to the people from the south as the southern barbarians or namba
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  in Japanese. I don't know what that would be in Chinese, something like nyam nyam. Anyway,
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  my Chinese isn't so good. Anyhow, so these Portuguese or other Europeans who came from
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  the south, they sailed in from the south, became referred to as southern barbarians.
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  But the Japanese were referred to as the eastern barbarians by the Chinese. Everybody who was
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  not within the civilized Sinicized world was referred to as some form of barbarians. Is
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  it like in the ancient Greek world, everybody that was not part of the little city-states
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  was called a barbarian? You got it. It's exactly the same. It's fairly similar in most history.
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  At the beginning, there were varying different ideas about what these new people were bringing.
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  At the beginning, they were believed to be bringing a new form of Buddhism, another sect
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  of Buddhism, which was coming in. And therefore, the Buddhist clergy were quite interested
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  to find out more about what this new sect might be. Again, that doesn't sound slightly
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  weird, but actually that kind of new sect from other places, especially from China,
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  but also from the Korean peninsula, have been coming in for centuries. And therefore, there's
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  no reason to suspect a new form coming in after that. And therefore, that seems fairly
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  reasonable to my eyes. The problem was they didn't wash.
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  That sounds like a problem.
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  They ate with their hands and they lived with animals. And these were the issues that Japanese
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  had with Europeans. On the other side, of course, they had excellent gadgets. They had
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  these guns, which was so fascinating that Japanese were making them within a year of
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  them first arriving. They were manufacturing them themselves. They had this wonderful knowledge
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  of geography and global knowledge, which was complementing. Although within the Far Eastern
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  world, there was knowledge that Europe and Africa and other places existed and possibly
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  that there was something on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. These Europeans had
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  globes. They could put it on a round. They had other fascinating implements, which they
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  brought with them from India, which they brought with them from China. And they had the keys
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  to this travel, this trade. And therefore, that was a fascinating thing for the Japanese
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  to deal with.
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  On the other side, the negatives the Portuguese saw were the fact that, well, obviously, they
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  weren't Christian or they weren't Catholic. They also saw that women had a very high status
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  compared with Europe. And women were horror of horrors, literate often, especially the
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  higher class of women. And they also saw a society which they once admired, but once
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  found repugnant in some ways. Homosexuality or bisexuality was the norm. And this is often
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  from coming from Europe at this time, this is often something which other parts of the
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  world didn't have those complicated relationships with sexuality in the same way. Other complications,
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  don't get me wrong. It's not that there's free love everywhere.
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  It's not exactly Woodstock, is it?
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  No, and we're not in a nightclub in Berlin or anything like that. But at the same time,
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  these things were puzzling. But then from the positive, from the Portuguese point of
• 28:05
  view or later from the Spanish and the English and the Dutch and other Europeans points of
• 28:11
  view, then you have a society which is very well regimented within the domains and later
• 28:18
  on within the unified country. Laws are abate, generally. People follow the law. There's
• 28:28
  a lot of money going around because the silver mines have been discovered to pay for all
• 28:32
  this war effort. And all this silver has turned Japan into the second biggest producer of
• 28:37
  silver in the world after the Habsburg Empire, which had Southern Africa, Southern America
• 28:43
  and Mexico silver mines to fund it. Japan was the second after the Habsburgs. So one
• 28:49
  third of the world's silver was mined in Japan at this time, meaning there's all this money
• 28:54
  going around. And of course, that's a wonderful thing for the Europeans. They access this
• 28:58
  by trade. Also, they were very impressed with educational systems, which by comparative
• 29:12
  standards meant that quite a lot of people are literate, to some extent. Literacy is
• 29:16
  a relative thing. And just generally, they enjoy themselves. They found them quite a
• 29:25
  welcoming place. The Japanese at the time were very curious about outsiders and while
• 29:31
  not exactly necessarily being friendly, friendly, friendly as today. It's not a bad place to
• 29:40
  look different, as long as there isn't a war going on. When the wars go on, then that's
• 29:45
  a different thing. But in general, both sides have positives and negatives.
• 29:50
  So despite the fact that the Portuguese came in the middle of a civil war or warring states
• 29:55
  period, they still thought this country is pretty ordered, people obey the laws, people
• 30:00
  are quite literate. So does that mean that in Europe at the time it was even worse, relatively
• 30:05
  speaking?
• 30:06
  Probably. I mean, at the same time, you just had the Iberian Peninsula unified under the
• 30:15
  Habsburgs. So Portugal has become part of Spain, technically. But it's only just before
• 30:22
  this that the other nations of Western Europe have become Spain as well. There's constant
• 30:30
  war going on in Europe. You're in the middle of the Reformation and the wars of religion
• 30:33
  that continue from that and continue for centuries after that in many ways. Some people say that
• 30:41
  Europe's warring states period didn't end until 1945. I mean, it's been said. Europe
• 30:49
  was essentially some form or other constantly at war with itself for until we have the modern
• 30:55
  world with the European Union and the peace which stems from unity and a common purpose.
• 31:01
  I'll leave it at that. I'm not going to go into that right now.
• 31:06
  Let's go into that. Not just kidding. But I just wanted to say that since I come from
• 31:09
  a very spicy corner of Europe, just in the 20th century, we had the First Balkan War,
• 31:21
  the First World War, the Second Balkan War, the Second World War, the breakup of Yugoslavia.
• 31:26
  And that was just one century. So yeah, it does make a little bit of sense.
• 31:32
  The irony is in the Balkans and in that part of Europe, you had peace for several hundred
• 31:36
  years before because of the Ottoman peace.
• 31:38
  Right. The Ottoman law and peace and stability was taken out that came back into a warring
• 31:45
  states period. So that is a different question.
• 31:49
  Interesting. Another kind of parallel there. Okay. I know we're going to skip through vast
• 31:56
  chapters of important history here, but by the time the English lad William Adams arrives
• 32:01
  to Japan, kind of half dead, the civil war, like you said in the beginning, is drawing
• 32:06
  to a close. But by the way, why did Adams go to Japan in the first place? Didn't he
• 32:11
  know that overseas trade was already in the hands of the Jesuits who were Catholic and
• 32:16
  thus mortal enemies of the Protestant or Anglican English and Dutch?
• 32:21
  Well, he was on a Dutch mission. He was just hired by the Dutch. So there wasn't the English
• 32:27
  that arrived in 1600. It was a Dutch mission. It wasn't the East India Company. It was an
• 32:33
  independent mission of five independently funded by local merchants in the Netherlands.
• 32:44
  They wanted part of the Jesuit trade. They knew full well that all the silver was coming
• 32:48
  from there. They knew full well that there was a market. And on the maps and globes at
• 32:54
  the time, Japan is often portrayed as bigger than India. And therefore, if you've got a
• 32:58
  country that size, then you just think about the market. Just think about how many people
• 33:04
  might buy the English and the Dutch really only had one thing to sell. And that was wool.
• 33:09
  In English, especially the Dutch wool. The economy was based upon wool in England at
• 33:17
  the time. And they only really had that or something manufactured from it, various types
• 33:23
  of cloth to sell. They thought the Japanese would be the ideal people. It's cold country.
• 33:29
  It's in the north, great big country, lots of money going around. They thought that'd
• 33:33
  be perfect. Fortunately, the Japanese don't use wool or didn't use wool at the time. So
• 33:37
  when they got there, their wool was useless, which is why the English didn't last very
• 33:42
  long in Japan at the time. Or one of the main reasons. There are other reasons too.
• 33:45
  You mentioned right at the beginning, there have been dreams of Japan, images of this
• 33:50
  civilized culture. You're talking about the samurai in particular, but I'm talking about
• 33:54
  the world in general. Since Marco Polo and even before, even since the Romans. My new
• 34:00
  book is all about this, by the way, there's a whole load of big sections on this. Why
• 34:04
  would the English want to get to Japan? What was the whole point? What was the whole point
• 34:08
  of doing that? It was a dreamland. It was another world. It was a world away. And there
• 34:15
  was supposedly roofed in gold. The houses had golden roofs and people were buried with
• 34:21
  rubies in their mouth. What more could you want? Therefore, for a century beforehand,
• 34:28
  the English had been trying, Dutch had been trying after they declared independence from
• 34:33
  the Habsburgs. They'd been trying to reach these fabled lands, Cathay, they called them.
• 34:40
  That meant China, Japan, and essentially Korea as well. And that was a powerful, powerful
• 34:46
  motivation. Thousands died doing it. And they still kept on going.
• 34:53
  So they knew full well how dangerous it's going to be and they're like, I'm taking
• 34:57
  my chance.
• 34:59
  The standard voyage at that time, half of the men died on the voyage. That was the standard.
• 35:06
  The extreme, like William Adams' voyage, he started off with something like 124 sailors
• 35:11
  in his 124 mariners on his ships. And just over 20 reached Japan. And within a week,
• 35:19
  most of those were dead as well from starvation.
• 35:22
  Fantastic odds. This is like Stalingrad.
• 35:26
  Probably Stalingrad was better.
• 35:29
  Damn. But it sounds like it's so fascinating. I was thinking about those myths about El
• 35:39
  Dorado that people had in the New World, that everything's made out of gold in the so-called
• 35:45
  New World as well. But I did know it extended also to Japan and probably China or whatever.
• 35:51
  Where is this all coming from? Just people dreaming about richer places because Europe
• 35:56
  was in a...
• 35:57
  They weren't trying to get to the New World because they didn't know it was there. They
• 36:01
  were trying to get to China or Cathay. And they knew Japan was on the western edge. So
• 36:09
  they thought if they... This is Columbus and the people before him. They thought if they
• 36:13
  sailed westwards, they would arrive in Japan first and then China. And then they found
• 36:19
  this whole new continent there or in their terminology, they discovered it. And then
• 36:26
  the gold that the first Spanish conquistadors brought back to Europe formed the basis of
• 36:34
  the El Dorado images.
• 36:37
  That is truly fascinating. How it's all connected like pieces of the mosaic coming together.
• 36:46
  So back to mad lad William Adams. Like you said, he manages to survive this crazy voyage.
• 36:54
  And then on top of that, quite miraculously, and despite the fact that the Portuguese Jesuits
• 36:58
  were egging the authorities on to have him and the entire crew killed, boiled to death
• 37:03
  or whatever. He is spared by the feudal lord who you also mentioned at the beginning, Tokugawa
• 37:08
  Ieyasu, who luckily for him also becomes Shogun not so much after. Now, Ieyasu had a long
• 37:17
  lasting relationship with the Jesuits and was trading with the Portuguese. He had practical
• 37:22
  use of them. Still, he didn't want to do them this, at least in their eyes, small favor
• 37:30
  and kill this dude who was their enemy. Why?
• 37:33
  Well this dude, to convince Ieyasu that he wasn't.
• 37:41
  But he couldn't even speak Japanese. I don't get it.
• 37:43
  He did it. The first interview was done in sign language somehow. I suspect that there
• 37:49
  was a globe. We know that there were globes in Japan at the time. I suspect there was
• 37:53
  a globe. William had a globe himself. Maybe it was his own globe that he used to demonstrate.
• 37:58
  But he also somehow used other sign language. And then after a while, a few hours, so they
• 38:05
  say we don't have the exact details, a Portuguese interpreter was brought in to deal with this.
• 38:13
  Adams spoke at least three languages, possibly four or five before he arrived in Japan. So
• 38:18
  he has been able to communicate with the Portuguese. I'm thinking off the top of my head now, but
• 38:24
  I think the Jesuit was called Morihan. I may be wrong on that detail, so we'll just leave
• 38:31
  it there. But then they carried on the interview for another few hours. The Jesuits were trying
• 38:37
  to persuade Ieyasu that these new guys were pirates, which again was quite a reasonable
• 38:41
  thing to do. And from a Jesuit perspective, it was true. They were pirates. And in their
• 38:46
  boat they had 500 muskets, small guns, and about 30 big guns cannon. A peaceful ship
• 38:55
  does not have that much arms. Well, that's two strikes against the dude. It was touch
• 39:03
  and go. And they would have had good reasons to execute them as pirates. And one of the
• 39:08
  execution methods was boiling alive. So again, that's actually fairly accurate. So I think
• 39:16
  that's the way it works.
• 39:19
  Yeah, there you go. Anyway, but somehow Ieyasu that he's of use, Ieyasu basically brings
• 39:25
  him under his protection, and then leaves William Adams alone for a year or two with
• 39:32
  the rest of his crew. He gives them some money. He gives them a stipend, a very small stipend
• 39:37
  to live off just so that they can stay there. They move to what is now Uraga near Tokyo.
• 39:44
  And they're just kicking their heels. They can't leave without permission. And they can't
• 39:51
  do anything without Tokugawa's permission. And they wait and they wait and they wait.
• 39:56
  And after a couple of years after, well, essentially he's won his battles. He's dealt with all
• 40:01
  the aftermath of his battles. It's called the Battle of Sekigahara. And then Tokugawa
• 40:07
  calls Adams to court to come and see him. And from there, Adams expands his work for
• 40:14
  the Tokugawa family, including Tokugawa's son Hide-tada later on, and starts helping
• 40:21
  with shipbuilding, helping with knowledge of the outside world, which was considerable
• 40:27
  in Japan, but was controlled to some extent by the Jesuits. And therefore, Adams is bringing
• 40:33
  in a different form of knowledge and a different, more balanced knowledge. And Adams was tied
• 40:41
  to nobody. He was shipwrecked. He was on his own. The Jesuits were tied to their own organization,
• 40:47
  which stretched all the way back to Rome. They had their own politics to deal with.
• 40:53
  Adams didn't have any of that. The only person he was connected to in that country, far,
• 40:59
  far away, was Tokugawa Ieyasu and Tokugawa Ieyasu's immediate retains and underlings.
• 41:08
  Therefore, he would dedicate his life to Tokugawa Ieyasu and became Ieyasu's man. Ieyasu from
• 41:15
  there promoted him. He could see that this man was dedicated to him and he promoted him
• 41:19
  steadily as Adams became more useful. He was rewarded with land. He is rewarded with riches.
• 41:26
  He became a lord in Japan. You say he became a samurai. He actually became something more
• 41:31
  than that. He became a hatomoto, which is a senior samurai rank with the direct right
• 41:38
  to request an audience with your lord. Therefore, Adams had the right to request an audience
• 41:43
  with the shogun eventually, which only a very, very few people had that right. The land that
• 41:50
  he was given is now just in Yokosuka, which is currently the main Japanese naval base
• 41:57
  and also the main base of the US fleet in the Pacific as well. That's an irony of history.
• 42:04
  That wasn't intended at the time, of course, but that's where his thief was.
• 42:14
  The shogun strikes, he must have been an incredibly sharp guy because on one hand he had the Jesuits
• 42:22
  who he knew and was getting all the information from them and on the other hand he had this
• 42:28
  newcomer who he didn't know and yet even despite the fact that Adams didn't speak Japanese,
• 42:36
  the shogun or Tokugawa Yasu at the time, he managed to discern some really important facts
• 42:43
  about what's going on between these two powers or what's going on more in the background
• 42:49
  between different Europeans. Even from this very limited type of communication, I mean,
• 42:54
  that's really, really impressive.
• 42:56
  I'm pretty sure that Tokugawa Yasu is one of the world's greatest ever politicians. He
• 43:02
  was the last man standing for a reason. He waited, he waited his turn, he pounced when
• 43:07
  he needed to, then he would withdraw. This is going decades back and he eventually established
• 43:15
  the peace. We know that he was going for a unified peace from a very early age. It took
• 43:21
  him until he was in his 60s to establish that and to reach that, but that was his aim. That
• 43:27
  peace is why he is still loved to this day because that peace is, was the foundation
• 43:34
  of modern nation. So Yasu, I mean, he could never have seen the future three, 400 years,
• 43:42
  but he established rules that formed that future and they were written down. They were,
• 43:48
  you shall do this to establish peace. You shall do this, et cetera, et cetera. And that
• 43:54
  is the basis of this modern nation that we have. You're in Japan, I'm in Japan. And so
• 44:03
  Yasu, as you said, he was a very clever guy, but he was more than that. He was one of the
• 44:09
  most intelligent and politic politicians the world has ever seen in my view.
• 44:20
  Just one more thing before I just remembered, right? You mentioned that even before Adams
• 44:26
  came to Japan, that Ieyasu, Tokugawa Yasu kept the Jesuits at bay, that he kept them
• 44:33
  at a distance. So already at that time, he knew that they have ulterior motives.
• 44:37
  Well, he could guess that. Everybody had ulterior motives when they're coming into Ieyasu's
• 44:42
  presence. Everybody wanted to. I think the Jesuits were no different from Ieyasu. He
• 44:47
  did have a very, very close Jesuit confidant in a man called Rodriguez, Hal Rodriguez,
• 44:54
  who had been brought up since perhaps his teenage years in Japan and was absolutely
• 45:00
  fluent in Japanese, both reading, writing and speech, court speech as well. And he served
• 45:08
  as Ieyasu's interpreter until in the end he fell from grace, partly because of Adams,
• 45:16
  and Adams replaced him. And that was around about 1609, 1610. So that's a long time after
• 45:23
  the Shogun series takes place, a decade after. But I mean, those characters that you see
• 45:29
  in there are based upon real people. Rodriguez is probably among them. He was the main interpreter
• 45:34
  for Ieyasu.
• 45:36
  Just the timelines are different.
• 45:39
  He's concentrated into a very short period of time, around about six months to a year,
• 45:45
  I believe. We haven't got to the end of it yet, and it's a long time since.
• 45:48
  Yeah, yeah.
• 45:49
  Is it a long time?
• 45:50
  Okay, we're going to talk about it. I want to ask you something else before we get carried
• 45:53
  away. You said at the time trade with Westerners was called the Southern Barbarian trade. So
• 45:59
  there was a clear distinction between the Japanese on one hand and many other places,
• 46:02
  like you mentioned, practice this as well all over the world. So Japanese on one hand
• 46:07
  and then the smelly barbarians outside. So I wanted to ask, how come Adams' ethnicity
• 46:13
  or what we today might call race was not an issue when it came to his ascendancy to the
• 46:19
  ranks in society as strict as the one of feudal Japan? I mean, we're practically talking about
• 46:26
  nobility here. You said he wasn't just a samurai. He was a senior samurai who had direct access
• 46:33
  to the ruler of Japan, to Shogun. Was this a special one of a kind type of dispensation
• 46:40
  or were these designations more fluid than we might think?
• 46:44
  They're more fluid, but it was very rare. There was at least one other person, a Dutchman
• 46:50
  from the same ship, the Leaf, called Jan Jostein van Lodenstein, who was also made hatumoto
• 46:57
  of the same rank in very different circumstances. So there's at least one other that was made.
• 47:05
  There was of course Yasuke who became a senior retainer to Nobunaga, who was one of Tokugawa's
• 47:13
  great successors. And these men were very much, in my view, people that made an effort to fit in generally.
• 47:22
  Jan Jostein is slightly different perhaps, but that's another story. Adams and Yasuke
• 47:26
  both tried to fit in with the world around them. They both were fluent in Japanese or
• 47:31
  at least were extremely well versed and could communicate very well in Japanese. Adams is
• 47:37
  recorded as becoming, the English that came later thought he had become Japanese. He was
• 47:43
  so Japanese in their eyes, they described him as naturalized Japan. So we can tell from
• 47:51
  this that he made himself as unstanding out as possible.
• 47:59
  So wearing the same type of clothes, probably the same type of haircut, he had a little
• 48:05
  sword or whatever, he spoke Japanese, he was bathing finally.
• 48:10
  Yeah, he would have been bathing. Everybody that comes to the fan learn the art of bathing
• 48:15
  and they did that in the old days as well as now. That's for another topic, we can talk
• 48:21
  about that another time. Yes, Adams made an effort to fit in. He made an effort to be
• 48:31
  useful but also to be seen to be not so different and I think that's key. This happens everywhere
• 48:37
  in the world. Again, this is not unique to Japan. People that come from the outside and
• 48:43
  adapt themselves to their host culture are normally far more successful than those that
• 48:48
  try to stand out and make themselves difficult or other or separate. The people that fit
• 48:56
  in, the people that are successful are almost always those that try their best to fit in.
• 49:00
  Adams is definitely in that mold. Fair enough. Okay, before we go on and talk
• 49:07
  about your latest book, we just have to talk about Shogun, the TV show. We mentioned it
• 49:14
  already. It has garnered fantastic reviews, mostly praising the degree of authenticity
• 49:19
  and attention to detail. At the time of this conversation, like you mentioned, there's
• 49:24
  still two episodes in the season left but the overall impressions probably won't change
• 49:29
  that much anymore. You've seen the show, right? I've seen up to number seven.
• 49:34
  Yes. Okay. From a historical standpoint, what does it get right and where does it struggle,
• 49:39
  if anywhere? I happen to know the historical advisor,
• 49:45
  Frederick Krantz. Therefore, it will be difficult to decide. Luckily, I don't need to because
• 49:52
  he has put so much detail into getting just everything right that in his words, he was
• 50:04
  even questioned by the cast. Is this really right? These are modern Japanese people questioning
• 50:11
  how it would have been 400 years ago. Krantz stuck by his opinion and his own historical
• 50:17
  research and in the end, we ended up with this Shogun, which I think is, from the Japanese
• 50:25
  perspective, is as authentic as you can get. There's a little few things, especially to
• 50:33
  do with the Europeans, that I think are not quite right actually.
• 50:37
  For example? For example, I don't think the ships at the
• 50:40
  time had hammocks, people sleeping in hammocks. English sailors slept on the floor. They didn't
• 50:46
  have hammocks. The Dutch ship at the beginning had hammocks. I'm not an expert in that field,
• 50:52
  so I'm going to get shot down now. But there's a few little things like that, but there's
• 50:56
  nothing to do with the Japanese side of things. The Japanese side of things, I'm pretty sure,
• 51:00
  is near to perfect. What are the reviews saying in Japan about
• 51:06
  the series? Do you know? I don't think it's actually widely known here.
• 51:13
  Right, right. Yeah, it makes sense. I've not heard any Japanese people talking
• 51:22
  about it unless they happen to be in that small historical world.
• 51:26
  Right, right. I mean, it's still a Western production, right, predominantly, and it's
• 51:30
  based on the novel which was written by a British man.
• 51:34
  I'm going to go out here and suggest that it will come out in Japan in the near future,
• 51:40
  if it's not already, and will become better known. But there was very little, if any,
• 51:48
  publicity here, and therefore not a lot of people are going to know about it yet.
• 51:53
  These things will probably come out the next year. It's normal. The series is sitting with
• 51:58
  foreign rights sales and all sorts of other things as well that they can't come to that.
• 52:04
  What if you compared the show with the older version from the 80s?
• 52:11
  I have seen it. That was probably 20 years ago. I'm not going to say that I'm absolutely
• 52:20
  correct on this, but this time is on purpose. They've made it far more authentic, not just
• 52:27
  because of the cranes, but also because Sanada, the main actor of Tornagoro, specifically
• 52:34
  went in to make it perfect. He was in charge. This is very much a Japanese production.
• 52:39
  Right. He's one of the producers, I think, right?
• 52:42
  Yeah. He's the leading light. He was the one that was out to make it more authentic. I'm
• 52:48
  going to guess that the 1980s version was probably directed by an American.
• 52:55
  Yes, it was. There's a problem with Americans doing it. They will have their own take on
• 53:00
  everything. They will have what they need to fit in for their audience. Therefore, it's
• 53:07
  the same as authors, same as everybody else. Movie makers know how to sell what they would
• 53:14
  need to sell their movies. If you've got that person in charge, then they're going to do
• 53:20
  it their way. I think this time is probably, in my judgment, a far more authentic go at
• 53:30
  getting it right.
• 53:34
  Naturally in the West or outside of Japan, we're most fascinated with stories of outsiders
• 53:39
  stumbling into the world of medieval Japan and then becoming complete badasses, preferably
• 53:43
  with a katana or something. Again, we have the last samurai, the enduring appeal of Shogun,
• 53:49
  the book, the old TV show, the new TV show. I also heard they're making a film about Yasuke,
• 53:57
  the black samurai who you've written a book about as well. It makes sense that we love
• 54:03
  these narratives. However, historically, there was also traffic in the other direction. These
• 54:09
  stories are just as incredible, if not more, even more incredible. For your latest book,
• 54:14
  A Gentleman from Japan, you chose one of these. I have to say that the book is absolutely
• 54:20
  unputdownable. I'm halfway through, but if I didn't have other stuff to do, I would devour
• 54:29
  it in a day. Where did you first stumble on this unbelievable account of Christopher,
• 54:36
  the Japanese man who was sold into slavery, ended up being a European knight and was making
• 54:42
  his way to Queen Elizabeth's court? He didn't make himself a knight, he was a gentleman,
• 54:49
  which is the lowest rank. A gentleman, right. Right. Aristocracy. Where did I stumble across
• 54:53
  it? It's fairly well known among scholars because it's the first time Japan and England
• 55:00
  meet in history. Therefore, if you're into the British-Japanese relations, that is the
• 55:06
  beginning. However, it's kind of niche. It's not been a story that's ever been looked into.
• 55:11
  It's just been a small footnote in most books. However, once I started looking at the story,
• 55:18
  following on from Yasker, I was wanting an opposite Yasker, a person that went out to
• 55:22
  Japan and made a splash in the outside world. There are several very famous stories and
• 55:30
  I needed a new one. And Christopher, once I started delving into his story, provided
• 55:37
  that awesome gateway into this life of the Japanese diaspora in the 16th century. His
• 55:48
  story is astonishing for the fact that it's true. It reads like a novel, even though it
• 55:55
  is true. My book is called A Gentleman from Japan and it's about him going to England
• 56:02
  and becoming close with the scholars and the court of Queen Elizabeth. I'm going to leave
• 56:12
  it there. You'll have to read it if you want to find out more.
• 56:17
  It's just fantastic. So many crazy twists and turns and so many stuff happens to Christopher.
• 56:24
  It really is so incredible that you're like, this cannot be, but it is. It is true. But
• 56:31
  I'm just fascinated and astounded that we haven't heard of this yet in the wider world.
• 56:38
  We heard about William Adams or Yasker, although Yasker also more recently.
• 56:44
  I think that the point about Christopher's story is because he was enslaved, because he
• 56:49
  was in such a precarious position. Again, the stories of these people are not necessarily
• 56:54
  told and not widely publicized. It was at the time, it was all over Europe in several
• 57:00
  languages, but it's not necessarily been told in detail. This certainly hasn't been told
• 57:05
  in English for 400 years. So this is time to bring out these stories. The book is available
• 57:13
  in May. May the 21st is available pre-sale now if you want to get it.
• 57:21
  To be perfectly honest with you, I would really like to see this story, as you said just before,
• 57:28
  we have all these stories about last samurai, about William Adams and Yasker even coming
• 57:32
  to Japan and being badasses. There are all these wonderful things. There are plenty more
• 57:38
  that didn't. They ended up dead. But these are wonderful stories. We know few, especially
• 57:46
  of the bottom of society, the enslaved, the victims. These people are normally treated
• 57:53
  as footnotes. We have so few stories that take this. So Christopher's story is my contribution
• 58:00
  to that part of history. And what I didn't know was that the Shogun series was coming
• 58:05
  out right now because it actually is an unofficial prequel. It leads exactly up to William Adams
• 58:12
  and to Blackthorn arriving in Japan. The final chapter, sorry, I've just spelt it for you,
• 58:18
  the final chapter actually includes all of that. And I had no idea that Shogun was coming
• 58:23
  out this year in just the past before. So it's total coincidence. But if you want to
• 58:27
  know why William Adams was in Japan, if you want to know why Shogun could happen with
• 58:33
  the character Blackthorn, my book is the place to get that background.
• 58:37
  You also provide such rich context about what life was like in Europe for the sailors or
• 58:43
  for the English sailors. Also pretty brutal. I didn't know that. I didn't know any of that.
• 58:50
  You provide context for what life was like in Japan, the slavery thing, the war between
• 58:55
  Spain and England, the piracy. I mean, it's just got all the sexy ingredients a reader
• 59:01
  could wish for, I have to be honest. No spoilers, like we said, just a general kind of overview.
• 59:08
  But I really think an agent from HBO or Netflix should pick up the phone immediately and purchase
• 59:13
  the rights to your book because the story just begging to be made into an awesome TV
• 59:18
  show. They would have to do justice though, no cutting corners with crappy CGI.
• 59:23
  Absolutely. I put this offer on Facebook this week. Anybody that pre-buys it before May
• 59:31
  the 21st, because this will help in all of these things, anybody that does, I'm very
• 59:37
  happy anywhere in the world, send a postcard, a signed postcard, a special limited edition
• 59:41
  postcard to them. All you need to do is contact me at Facebook, Thomas Lockley, author, send
• 59:47
  me a message on Facebook, unconditionally. Just tell me you bought the book and I will
• 59:52
  send you a postcard with a special, whatever you want me to write.
• 59:58
  That's awesome. We'll include the Facebook link on YouTube under the description of the
• 1:00:02
  video along with the link to the book. Professor, a bit of a full circle. Okay, before we do
• 1:00:10
  the last question, I did hear, although my knowledge of history is very hazy, I did hear
• 1:00:18
  of another Japanese embassy who went to Europe, but I'm not sure about the time. That was
• 1:00:24
  probably after, right? Or was it before? We're not talking about slaves or peasants or something.
• 1:00:32
  These were probably aristocrats who went to Europe. When was that? What was that all about?
• 1:00:36
  You're correct. It was just before Christopher arrives. I see. I'm going to leave that for
• 1:00:42
  the book. If you want to read it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. That provides perfect context.
• 1:00:47
  There were four aristocrats who were Jesuits. They weren't Jesuits at the time, but they
• 1:00:52
  were taken as an embassy allegation by the Jesuits to Europe to show how civilized Japan
• 1:00:58
  was. Then the idea was for them to come back to Japan and show how civilized Europe was
• 1:01:04
  and to connect the two so that everybody could see that it was the perfect friendship. Therefore,
• 1:01:13
  these guys who are normally called the Tensho embassy, they became Knights of Rome. They
• 1:01:20
  were fated by all of the kings and queens of Catholic Europe in Italy, in Spain and
• 1:01:27
  Portugal. They were the sensation of the decade, but of course they didn't go to England because
• 1:01:32
  England was protested. The Jesuits would never, of course, be associated. In fact, if they'd
• 1:01:39
  been there, the Jesuits would have either been executed or expelled. It wouldn't have
• 1:01:43
  happened. Queen Elizabeth wanted her own Japanese embassy to come. That's of course where Christopher
• 1:01:49
  comes in to the story and where you can find out more in the book.
• 1:01:55
  Fantastic. Last question, a bit of full circle at the end. I opened this conversation mentioning
• 1:02:00
  the enduring Western fascination with feudal Japan, but I'm wondering how this history
• 1:02:06
  is seen in Japan today. I went to a bar in Tokyo once and there was a younger man, it
• 1:02:10
  was a couple of months ago, in a business suit sitting behind the counter drinking there
• 1:02:14
  as well. We started talking in English because my Japanese was non-existent, not that it's
• 1:02:19
  good today or anything. I told him I like Japanese history. He asked me, what do you
• 1:02:24
  like about it? I told him the Sengoku Jidai, the Warring States period, of course, with
• 1:02:30
  the samurai and all the rest. The guy just said, oh, horse riding. He started doing a
• 1:02:38
  little horse riding maneuver behind the bar. Then he started imitating a samurai riding
• 1:02:45
  a horse and he was laughing hysterically at that joke while he did it over and over again
• 1:02:50
  until he was completely red, like a ripe tomato or something. It was one of the funniest things
• 1:02:55
  I've seen in my life. He couldn't get out of it.
• 1:02:57
  The thing is, he obviously thought that the whole samurai thing was quite funny, almost
• 1:03:03
  silly or something. It made me realize, well, maybe some people in Japan do think that.
• 1:03:08
  It's different than how we usually perceive it. You live and teach in Japan. What is your
• 1:03:13
  experience with contemporary Japanese attitudes about feudal Japan and samurai and how they
• 1:03:19
  may differ from our conceptions?
• 1:03:21
  That is a fascinating story. I never really thought about this question at all. This is
• 1:03:26
  an off the top of the head answer. Older people tend to bring them brought up on what are
• 1:03:34
  called Jidageki. They're a bit like spaghetti westerns or period dramas in European television.
• 1:03:42
  There's a genre, a massive genre, very, very popular in Japan of the same kind of thing.
• 1:03:47
  They treat samurai stories or even stories before that or historical stories in a fairly
• 1:03:52
  romantic way. Normally, reasonably-
• 1:03:54
  Like soap operas.
• 1:03:56
  Some of them are soap operas.
• 1:03:57
  A little bit.
• 1:03:58
  Set 100 years ago. Yeah, absolutely. Quite right. Older people have this kind of image
• 1:04:04
  which is conditioned by these television programs or movies, videos, et cetera. Younger people
• 1:04:12
  everywhere in the world don't tend to watch television so much anymore because we can
• 1:04:16
  see YouTube, we can listen to podcasts like your fantastic one. We can do all sorts of
• 1:04:21
  things and therefore we probably, the younger people probably slightly more separated from
• 1:04:27
  that. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know because the imagery that
• 1:04:34
  drama fiction brings is not necessarily true. If people want to go out and find the real
• 1:04:42
  truth of history, they can read books and they can walk around castles, et cetera, go
• 1:04:47
  to museums. But that's never going to get a mass population of people interested or
• 1:04:53
  with accurate information. I'm going to guess that your friend from the bar-
• 1:04:58
  He was young. He was younger.
• 1:04:59
  There you go. He probably had a couple of whiskies or something before this.
• 1:05:04
  Definitely.
• 1:05:05
  I'm going to guess that his image is not very deep and therefore he's thinking about a movie
• 1:05:14
  scene perhaps of a church. That's probably the limit of his conception. School history
• 1:05:25
  curriculum deal with lots of facts. They don't necessarily, again, the same everywhere in
• 1:05:32
  the world, they don't necessarily deal with what a historian would be interested in. They
• 1:05:36
  deal with the years things happen and why is it significant, blah, blah. They don't
• 1:05:40
  necessarily give you the imagery you need to be a drunken actor in a bar. So his thing
• 1:05:48
  makes perfect sense to me, but it also shows perhaps there's not much of a depth of knowledge.
• 1:05:56
  Professor Lockley, thank you so much for this fantastic conversation. I really, really,
• 1:06:00
  really enjoyed it. I hope we can do this again. Last thing, do you perhaps have any social
• 1:06:04
  media where people can see what you're up to?
• 1:06:08
  Thomas Lockley, author on Facebook. My students told me that I was too old when I just had
• 1:06:13
  Facebook. So I'm on Instagram now. They wouldn't let me have Thomas Lockley, author. So it's
• 1:06:18
  author Thomas Lockley. I have joined TikTok, but I can't get my head around it. So check
• 1:06:25
  me out.
• 1:06:26
  It's for the best. It's horrible.
• 1:06:27
  Check me out on Instagram if you really want to. And also if you just Google my name and
• 1:06:32
  you really want to talk on email in a very old fashioned way, you can Google and find
• 1:06:37
  my email and I'll leave it there.
• 1:06:42
  Perfect people get a gentleman from Japan, the untold story of an incredible journey
• 1:06:46
  from Asia to Queen Elizabeth's court. This book is absolutely amazing. We'll include
• 1:06:51
  the link in the description on YouTube and it comes out May 24th. You said?
• 1:06:58
  21st, May 21st.
• 1:06:59
  May 21st. There we go.
• 1:07:00
  Thank you.
• 1:07:01
  Professor, thanks again.
• 1:07:02
  Thanks for having me. This has been, you are really good. This has been a fascinating interview.
• 1:07:07
  I've had a lot over here.
• 1:07:08
  You're too kind.
• 1:07:09
  Certainly one of the pearls. Thank you very much for having me.
• 1:07:14
  Thank you so much for listening. If you liked what you heard, please consider subscribing
• 1:07:17
  to Smart Cookies on YouTube. What else is there? Apple podcasts and Spotify. And if
• 1:07:24
  you really liked what you heard, feel free to become my Patreon. No, my Patreon on Patreon
• 1:07:30
  by going to Patreon and becoming my Patreon. It's really easy. Just type Smart Cookies
• 1:07:35
  podcast in there. You should be able to find me. Last but not least, I have to thank the
• 1:07:41
  absolute legends that are my producers on this show, my existing patrons on Patreon,
• 1:07:47
  Ida, Mancian, Micheal, Medved, Medinio, Gordon, Yurichuk, Lorenzo, Mila, Carmen, Tai Chi,
• 1:07:56
  Gordon and Veronica. Without you guys, this show wouldn't exist. So massive thanks. And
• 1:08:04
  yeah, see you in the next episode. Bye.