Following the huge success of the FX series “Shogun,” which centers on an Englishman who becomes embroiled in power struggles during the samurai era, there has been a surge of interest in the colorful history of foreigners in Japan. It is with satisfying symmetry, then, that a new book about a Japanese man who goes the other way should appear.
“A Gentleman from Japan,” by Thomas Lockley, an associate professor at Nihon University College of Law in Tokyo, is technically about two Japanese men who were enslaved by Europeans and renamed Christopher and Cosmus (their birth names are historically lost). After a dramatic and circuitous route across the oceans, they ended up in London during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, landing in 1588 and leaving in 1592.
A Gentleman from Japan: The Untold Story of an Incredible Journey from Asia to Queen Elizabeth’s Court, by Thomas Lockley. 432 pages, HANOVER SQUARE PRESS, Nonfiction.
