Anjin

Now I like Clavell and all, but he was full of shit here. Anjin does not mean "pilot" in any even remotely recent dialect of Japanese. More than likely, he was thinking of the word 水先案内人 mizusaki annaijin, which is used in writing to refer to the pilot of a ship... but that doesn't explain the portions of Whirlwind in which Japanese sailors called helicopter pilots "Anjin-san": the word for a pilot of any aircraft has always been パイロット pairotto or 飛行士 hikôshi.

There was, however, a man named Anjin who was a pilot. His original name was Will Adams, and his story was the basis for Clavell's hit novel Shogun. When Adams became Japanese and joined the samurai ranks, he was given the kanji name Miura Anjin (三浦按針). Miura, his family name, was the name of the peninsula where Adams lived, while the characters in Anjin roughly translate to "watcher of the needle" ... referring, of course, to the needle of a compass.

Incidentally, just as Clavell alluded to in Noble House, descendants of Will Adams and his Japanese wife are still alive today. However, unlike in Clavell's version of history, they do not carry the family name Anjin. This makes sense, considering that Anjin was Adams' given name.

There can be only one.