The Landing of de Liefde: An English Navigator Washed Ashore at Usuki, Bungo, in 1600

On April 19, 1600 (the sixteenth of the third month of Keichō 5), at Usuki Bay in Bungo Province (around the modern Usuki City, Ōita Prefecture).

Local fishermen discovered a strange ship drifting ashore. The hull was badly damaged, and dozens of sickly crewmembers lay on deck.

The only ship of the fleet of five that had departed Rotterdam two years before to have survived to Japan — the Dutch ship 'de Liefde' — had landed.

The squadron that departed Rotterdam in June 1598 was, for its time, a cutting-edge oceangoing voyage aimed at Asia via the Atlantic, the Strait of Magellan, and the Pacific.

But four of the five ships were lost — to storm, wreck, and capture by Spanish forces.

Only de Liefde crossed the Strait of Magellan, traversed the Pacific, and reached Japan after nearly two years of voyage.

Her crew had been reduced by illness and starvation from over a hundred to some twenty-odd.

The report of de Liefde's landing reached the center from the Bungo daimyō, and Tokugawa Ieyasu — then at Ōsaka in the final stage of his bid for the realm (Sekigahara was five months away) — summoned the ship's navigator Adams to Ōsaka.

In a long interview mediated by Jesuit missionary interpreters, Ieyasu showed strong interest in Adams's knowledge of navigation, shipbuilding, and Western affairs.

The Jesuits, concerned about the impact on their own missionary activity, urged Adams's execution, but Ieyasu rejected this and chose the road of using Adams as a foreign policy adviser.

The cargo aboard de Liefde — nineteen cannon, five hundred muskets, five thousand catties of cast iron, five thousand cannonballs, woolens and glassware — was seized at Ieyasu's request.

For Ieyasu, hurrying to strengthen his arms on the eve of the Sekigahara campaign, this cargo became precious military material.

Part of the seized cannon is said to have been used later even in the Ōsaka Campaigns (1614-1615).

The landing of de Liefde, going beyond the mere landing of a foreign ship, became an event that left great influence on the foreign relations of Japan and on the political structure of the late Sengoku.