The Shogun's Silver Telescope presents a captivating narrative history of the first English encounters with Japan in the quarter century between the founding of the East India Company (EIC), in 1600, and the closing of the English factory in Hirado, in 1623. Structured around the presentation of a silver-gilt telescope by Captain John Saris to Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1613, Timon Screech has spun a richly detailed account of the material conditions of early Anglo-Japanese exchange, the cosmopolitan world of Jacobean London, and the central place of art and religion in both. An art historian specializing in Japan's Edo period, Screech treats his readers to expert discussions of the folding screens and lacquered cabinets brought back to London, though the book's most distinguishing feature is its almost forensic analysis of the composition of cargos shipped from England, among which the dozens of paintings sent aboard the New Year's Gift in 1614 took pride of place. While historians of the East India Company have long been accustomed to paying close attention to bills of lading and records of sales, Screech's vibrant account of the numerous portraits, history paintings, and prints transported in the holds of East Indiamen will likely encourage not a few readers to look again.

The larger argument underpinning the book is that the EIC's leadership selected works of art and exquisite objects such as telescopes not just to appeal to Japanese tastes but to impress upon their recipients a set of promotional messages about “who and what the English were” (9) and how they differed from other Europeans. In its first decade of operations the Company established a burgeoning trading presence in India and the Indonesian archipelago, yet it was Japan, Screech argues, that its directors looked upon as “the greatest prize of all” (33). Not only was Japan a source of cheap silver, but its northern location made it a promising export market for English woolen fabrics. Because the presence of Catholic missionary orders put up barriers to entry into Japan, the English were determined to make an impression capable of outdoing their rivals. Screech makes a credible case that the silver telescope, the first ever to leave Europe, was selected because it highlighted a polemical divide.

At a moment when the Catholic Church was embroiled in intense controversy over the issue of heliocentrism, the English were able to employ this symbol of scientific novelty to assert primacy over the Jesuits in the very area where Japanese interest in European knowledge was greatest—the realm of astronomy. The artworks shipped in the wake of the telescope would have served a similar purpose, as paintings with secular themes helped the English to stress their political and religious differences from the missionaries at a time of increasing anti-Catholic hostility in Japan. Although the argument is not put forward explicitly, the strong implication is that the arrival of the English and the evocative objects they brought “definitively turned the shogunate against the Roman Catholic missions” (181).

In the end, Screech suggests, the English became victims of their own success, as their anti-Jesuit lobbying contributed to the imposition of widespread restrictions on all Europeans, compromising the viability of EIC trade in Japan and leading to its termination, in 1623. Here, The Shogun's Silver Telescope ends somewhat abruptly, and a conclusion that engaged with the larger implications of its argument would have increased the book's appeal for a scholarly audience. While the book is thoroughly researched, it can often be difficult to establish where it advances new interpretations or challenges existing ones, and the author's decision not to engage in historiographic discussion is likely to leave some readers feeling unsatisfied. That said, Screech succeeds in his two stated aims: to demonstrate Japan's centrality to the EIC's early strategic thinking and to provide a clear sense of the individuals who made up the Company. He has done so to great effect, painting one of the most complete pictures available of the social, material, and cultural worlds of the merchant families that shaped England's global trade in the early seventeenth century, and of the stunning cargos shipped back and forth during the short but significant period of direct EIC trade with Japan.