FRIEZE Lates: David Blandy

Programmed to coincide with the exhibition Anjin 1600: Edo Wonderpark, this installation reimagines the story of William Adams (1564–1620), the first Englishman to reach Japan in 1600. Known as Anjin-sama (“Pilot”), Adams became a samurai and a key adviser to the Shogun, helping build Japan’s first Western-style ships. His story is one of cultural transformation: a man who came to see a foreign culture as more civilised than his own, yet could never fully belong to it. Adams’ experience reflects the friction between cultures, a tension intensified by colonialism and still present in our interconnected world. I’m drawn to the idea that identity is malleable, that we search for ourselves in other cultures, in books, films and fantasies. Perhaps Adams discovered he could reinvent himself in Japan.

Ukiyo-e, the woodblock prints that defined Edo-period Japan, depicted a “floating world” of pleasure and escape. Their vision of continuous leisure echoes contemporary consumer culture, while their influence on nineteenth-century Impressionism reveals how cultural exchange can transform artistic traditions. Inspired by Elite, a space-trading game, the installation takes visitors through a spaceship into an imagined Japan. But the spaceship is visibly a set, a fantasy convincing only from certain angles. Like the stories we construct about ourselves, it exposes the fragile nature of our imagined realities.The space station reinterprets the bridge of the 1970s anime Space Battleship Yamato. Created with artist group AAS using recycled analogue technology, it combines British and Japanese science-fiction aesthetics, adding another layer to a fictional ship repeatedly reinvented across generations.

Japanese animator Keiko Shiraishi reinterprets my retelling of Adams’ story, transforming an English artist’s vision of an Englishman changed by Japan into a Japanese woman’s story of self-reinvention. This circular exchange produces a lyrical portrait of a man leaving his former life behind. Finally, a Japanese garden created with English landscape company Rhino Rocks frames the film Anjin 1600: Edo Wonderpark across a sea of sand. With gravel from China and plants from Holland, it becomes another translation: an image of Japan, assembled from elsewhere.