"Though separated by ten thousand leagues of clouds and waves, our territories are as it were close to each other"
(Letter from Tokugawa Ieyasu to King James, October 1613)

This conference reviews the first period of partnership between Britain and Japan, 400 years to the month since the British 'temporarily' closed the East India Company's presence in Japan. The conference covers the little-known arrival of the first Japanese in Britain and in 1600 the arrival of the first Englishman in Japan, William Adams from Gillingham in Kent, known as Miura Anjin. Thirteen years later King James's Official Mission to Japan formally opened diplomatic, trade, scientific and cultural relations with the gift of one of Europe's most advanced scientific instruments, a telescope.

This colourful period of history will be examined in the first half of the Conference, while its lessons for current and future relations between Britain and Japan will be the substance of the second half. That part of the Conference will consider the Japan-British partnership today, both at national and local level and under a variety of headings.