The Shogun’s Silver Telescope

This book, an explicit attempt to rewrite the early history of the East India Company, aims to ‘put Japan back into a central position in the whole Company thinking’ (p. 7)—‘thinking’ that goes beyond mere trade and reflects the need for ‘the English ... to define who and what they were’ and inform foreign potentates ‘of their existence and importance’ (p. 29). The author, Timon Screech, claims that the company inserted itself consciously and decisively into Japanese politics when the Tokugawa were on the cusp of vanquishing their rivals to become masters of Japan, and that the Tokugawa/Toyotomi rivalry, which brought Japan’s civil wars to a conclusion in 1615, was, thanks to the English, not merely ‘an internal matter’ but ‘part of a wider conflict between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England’ (pp. 185–6). Central to the argument is the contention that, in addition to trying to

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