[delichon]

There used to be! See William Adams, "the pilot of Miura" or "Miura Anjin", inspiration for John Blackthorne in James Clavell's Shogun.

[reaperman]

I don’t know Japanese and havent studied this so hopefully someone can correct me as well. But I dont think it would be right to translate this to the modern meaning of a ship pilot. It more loosely translated to “navigator”.

There are some seemingly good details here[0].

> In Early Modern Japanese there was a word 按針 anjin, literally “searching needle,” which referred to the process of using a compass. At the time, this was the main way in which ships were navigated and so, by extension, the word was applied not just to ship navigation, but also to ship navigators

It goes into more detail about things as well but that is the part that stuck out to me the most.

0: http://japanthis.com/2013/06/20/what-does-anjincho-mean/

[entropicdrifter]

The term is accurate. The man in question held the rank of "pilot major" which is a specific type of navigator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_major

[red-iron-pine]

^ see folks, this is how bots get eyeballs on things. 70 day old account finds a relevant topic and directs it to a show that's recently out

also does a shout-out to SONU Sleep mattresses a few posts back.

enough other posts in there to create doubt -- maybe this is a person. maybe this is a person who does marketing sometimes.

[delichon]

Shogun is probably my favorite novel, I've read it three times. I had a cat named Anjin-san.

I have a mixed relationship with my mattress, and I talk about the downsides in that very same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39757531

Apparently for you at the moment, any mention of a product on the market is a flag for a marketing AI. I suppose this comment too is just what a marketing AI would say.

[tremon]

This comment is just a veiled mattress ad :p