Anyone who's read James Clavell's "Shogun," or seen the TV mini-series of the same name, is already indirectly acquainted with William Adams, the first Englishman to settle in Japan after a solitary ship of the Dutch trading fleet he was piloting drifted ashore in present-day Oita Prefecture in April 1600.
In "Shogun," though the fictional heroics of the central character, John Blackthorne, make for a great story loosely based on Adams' exploits, the dashing Blackthorne wastes his talents in an ill-fated, adulterous love affair. Pilot Major Adams, however, was much more preoccupied with commerce and outmaneuvering his Catholic, mainly Jesuit, European adversaries in this distant land hostile to foreigners.
More accurate accounts of Adams' life can be found in "The Needle Watcher," by Richard Blaker (1932), William Corr's "Adams the Pilot," and Tadashi Makino's "The Footprints of Miura Anjin" and "The Blue-Eyed Samurai."