For the material pertaining to Adams himself, Milton has been considerably helped by the publication of The British Factory in Japan 1613-23 (two volumes, 1991). These books contain the letters and logbooks of Adams and his colleagues in full. Adams' diaries have always been accessible to researchers, but Milton comments that they are "extremely hard to decipher." Their publication in a printed edition was probably what gave him the idea for this book -- as someone specializing in the period, he would have instantly registered the possibilities inherent in their appearance.
Milton's style is roistering and casual. The following passages can be taken as typical: "The Trouw's crew were made of sterner stuff. Throwing caution to the winds, they pointed their vessel west and headed for the East Indies." Queen Elizabeth "chose to ignore Captain Pet's Arctic failure, condemning him to return to the obscurity from which he had briefly escaped. Preferring to back a winner, she prepared a lavish celebration in honor of Drake's triumph in the tropics ... it was a splendid affair."
"When Ferdinand Magellan had crossed the Pacific, they had only survived by eating stewed mice and sawdust."
Anything amusing, outrageous or grotesque is highlighted. It's not that Milton offers a frivolous account of history exactly. Rather, he extracts vivid and bizarre details from his sources and binds them together with a breezy style. The result is history without tears, something palatable and likely to be highly popular, but it isn't in essence a perversion of the truth. Readers deriving their knowledge from these books will be amused, but they won't be led astray. Milton is a cheerful and entertaining guide, though no one will gain a PhD by using his books as source material.
Adams died in 1620, three years before all the English merchants were forced to leave Japan. At one time James I in London had written letters to the "king" of Japan, but now that episode was over. The brief English trading presence in Japan was all but forgotten, and the country would have to be discovered all over again in the 19th century.
These early figures, with their quarrels over their local lovers, their influence out of all proportion to their real capabilities, and their consequently inflated ideas of their own importance, are amusing precursors of the resident expatriates in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan today. The horrors of the journey out are for the most part things of the past, but the enticements and rewards for living so far away from home, and the psychological and economic reasons for doing so, remain little changed. If you bear this in mind while reading Samurai William it becomes still more entertaining than it is in its own right. It's more likely, therefore, to give pleasure in Tokyo or Taipei than it is even in New York or London, and that's saying quite a lot.
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