LITERARY SUBJECTS ADRIFT: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EARLY MODERN
JAPANESE CASTAWAY NARRATIVES, CA. 1780-1880
by
MICHAEL S. WOOD
A DISSERTATION
Presented to the Department of East Asian
Languages and Literatures
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
March 2009
11
University of Oregon Graduate School
Confirmation of Approval and Acceptance of Dissertation prepared by:
Michael Wood
Title:
"Literary Subjects Adrift: A Cultural History of Early Modem Japanese Castaway
Narrratives, ca. 1780-1880"
This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of East Asian
Languages & Literature by:
Stephen Kohl, Chairperson, East Asian Languages & Literature
Alisa Freedman, Member, East Asian Languages & Literature
Maram Epstein, Member, East Asian Languages & Literature
Jeffrey Hanes, Outside Member, History
and Richard Linton, Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies/Dean of the
Graduate School for the University of Oregon.
March 20, 2009
Original approval signatures are on file with the Graduate School and the University of
Oregon Libraries.
© 2009 Michael S. Wood
III
An Abstract of the Dissertation of
Michael S. Wood for the degree of
in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
to be taken
IV
Doctor of Philosophy
March 2009
Title: LITERARY SUBJECTS ADRIFT: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EARLY
MODERN JAPANESE CASTAWAY NARRATIVES, CA. 1780-1880
Approved: _
Dr. Stephen W. Kohl
In the postwar era, early modem ofEdo period (1600-1868) Japan has most
often been represented as a culture in isolation due to ostensibly draconian Bakufu regime
policies that promised death to anyone returning from abroad (sakokuron, or the
"Closed-Country" theory). While historians of Japan acknowledge limited contact with
Dutch, Chinese, Korean, and Tyukyuans, the two hundred and sixty-some years of the
Edo Period has consistently been interpreted as a time in which an indigenous Japanese
culture developed and flourished without the corrupting influence of extensive foreign
contact. This project takes as its subject the stories of thousands of Japanese fisherman
and sailors who became distressed at sea (hy6ryumin) and subsequently drifted
throughout the Pacific before being rescued and repatriated by foreigners during the late
18th and 19th centuries. The hundreds of narratives that comprise this textual category of
vearly modem hy6ryuki or "castaway narratives" served as the primary means of
representing encounters with foreigners in and around the Pacific region and, in turn
projecting an emerging Japanese national consciousness. The origins of these hy6ryuki
are tied to the earlier establishment of diplomatic protocol for handling repatriated
castaways primarily within an East Asian context and the kuchigaki ("oral testimonial")
narrative records that resulted from interrogations of the repatriated subjects by both
bakufu and domain officials. Late Edo castaways also had their stories of drift recorded in
kuchigaki form, however with the encroachment of first Russian, and later English,
American, and other western ships in the waters offthe coast of Japan in the late Edo
period (post-1780) other hy6ryuki forms-both scholarly and popular-came to
proliferate, as it became imperative to translate and re-imagine geopolitical developments
in the greater Pacific. This dissertation not only uncovers a diverse textual and cultural
category ofhy6ryuki, but also the complicated interrelationship between cultural
production and concrete territorial and political concerns of the State. In so doing, it not
only challenges traditional historiography of early modem Japan, but also reclaims a
certain cultural specificity for the late Edo Japanese hy6ryuki, contextualizing these texts
within a more global process of colonization and modem Nation-State formation.
vi
CURRICULUM VITAE
NAME OF AUTHOR: Michael S. Wood
PLACE OF BIRTH: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
DATE OF BIRTH: November 17,1969
GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED:
University of Oregon, Eugene
Meiji University, Tokyo
Tokyo University
Kenyon College, Gambier
DEGREES AWARDED:
Doctor of Philosophy, Japanese Literature, September 2008, University of Oregon
Master of Arts, 1999, University of Oregon
Certificate in Japanese Linguistics and Language Education, 1994, Council of
Local Authorities for International Relations (Tokyo)
Bachelor of Arts, 1992, Kenyon College
AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:
Japanese and East Asian Cultural Studies
Pacific Maritime History
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Professor of Practice in Asian Studies, Tulane University, from summer of2008
Teaching Assistant, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures,
University of Oregon, Eugene, 1996-2001,2003-2006,2008
VB
Visiting Instructor, Department of Cultural Studies, Fuji Women's University,
Sapporo, April 2007 to September 2007
Joshu, Faculty of Law and Politics, University of Hokkaid6, Sapporo, April 2006
to March 2007
GRANTS, AWARDS AND HONORS:
2004 Esterline Award for Outstanding Conference Paper, "Masculinism,
Colonialism, and the Late-Edo Castaway Narrative," Asian Studies on the
Pacific Coast Awards Committee, 2004
Yamada Osamitsu Research Fellowship, April 200 I-March 2002
Meiji University Graduate School Fellowship for Foreign Students, Meiji
University, Tokyo, April 2002-March 2003
PUBLICATIONS:
Wood, Michael. "Masculinism, Colonialism, and the Late-Edo Castaway
Narrative: Japanese Accounts of Port Brothels in the Pacific." In E-
ASPAC: A Peer-Reviewed Electronic Journal for Asian Studies (2005
Issue).
V111
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have benefited immensely from having had many caring friends and generous
mentors at several institutions during the course research for this dissertation. I am
grateful for the training I received at the University of Oregon during my Master's degree
program and in the first year of my Doctoral program, from the following professors: the
late Alan Wolfe, Steven Brown, Andrew Goble, Yoko McClain, Michael Fishlen,
Stephen Durrant, Bob Felsing, Eric Cazdyn, Michael Baskett, Joe Fraccia, Liz Bohls, and
Kyoko Tokuno. From 2001-2003, I carried out research in Japan and studied Edo period
cultural and intellectual history at Meiji University Graduate School under the guidance
of Professor Hirano Mitsuru. At the same time, I was taking seminars in East Asian
history with Professor Ronald Toby at Tokyo University. I was also fortunate enough to
have met Professor Haruna Akira while in Tokyo. My two years in Tokyo were an
exciting time of learning and discovery, and I am most grateful to Professors Hirano,
Toby, and Haruna for making it so stimulating. Professor Hirano's tutorials using Edo-
period handwritten manuscripts and his suggestions for certain archival research were
most helpful. Professor Toby, perhaps more than anyone else, has opened my eyes to
new ways of seeing history and culture. In both his marathon seminars at Tokyo
University and his helpful guidance as a mentor, he has been an inspirational scholar and
teacher. I only regret that I could not arrange for him to be part of the formal dissertation
committee. The advice and generosity of Haruna Sensei both in Tokyo, and later as a
IX
fellow participant in a series of conference panels on castaways, are most appreciated. I
am also thankful for the kindness of all my seminar mates at Meiji and Tokyo University.
While I cannot name them all, I must note Saito Tomomi, Kato kun, and Fujii kun at
Meiji, as well as Watanabe Miki and Peter Shapinsky at Tokyo University. It was in
conversations with them that I was able to work out some of the early kinks in my
research. The Yamamoto family was most kind to let me stay in their guesthouse in
Tokyo for two years. I spent another two years, from 2006-2007, in Sapporo as ajoshu
in the Faculty of Law and Politics at Hokkaido University, and later, as a researcher at the
Center for the Advanced Study of Law and Politics and as a part-time lecturer in
Japanese history at Fuji Women's University. During this time I was fortunate enough to
worked with so many outstanding colleagues from whose kindnesses I benefited. While
space does not allow me to mention everyone by name, I would like to thank Professors
Matsuura Masataka, Hasegawa Ko, Makabe Jin, and Sorai Mamoru of the H6gakubu;
Professor Inoue Katsuo of the Bungakubu; as well as Professor Imanishi Hajime of Otaru
University of Commerce. Participation in the Inoue zemi was a wonderful chance to
refine my thoughts as I was begim1ing to write the final two chapters. I am also grateful
to my fellow seminar mates in Hokkaido (particularly Asai san and Matsumoto san), the
graduate students with whom I shared research space, Maeda san of Hokkaido University
Press, Michael Burtscher now at Tokyo University, Ishihara san of Sapporodo, and
Akizuki Sensei. The companionship of my fellow graduate students at the University of
Oregon over the last ten years has also been appreciated. While I cannot name everyone,
I would like to personally thank Kyle, Ken-, Sudeshna, Peter, Masako, Junji, Takashi,
xCelia, Charles, Nate, Paulo, Tom, Roberto, Madoka, Tony, Kathryn, Miwako, Akiko,
Alex, Dave, Rod, Jayson, Eric, and all the Friday night musicians.
I reserve my greatest gratitude for my committee members who have given
selflessly while I have tried to finish this project, and my family members, who have
patiently waited for me to finish. Professor Jeffrey Hanes who, before I was ever in the
doctoral program, gently guided me with questions and at times, more direct advice, has
also been one of my closest and most careful readers. Professor Maram Epstein has
offered me fresh eyes and helped immensely in getting me to say what I want to say.
Going over drafts in her backyard will be one of my fond memories of the dissertation
writing process. I am also grateful to Professor Alisa Freedman, who managed to
participate in a dissertation defense despite her most hectic and busy summer in Tokyo.
However, without the enduring mentoring of my committee chair-Professor Stephen
Kohl-this project would not be what it is today. How many advisors would drive half
way across the country with a canoe atop their car in order to go camping for a week with
one of their graduate students? Not only did he first introduce me to this topic ofEdo
period castaway accounts, he has spent years translating documents with me, engaging
my thoughts, and serving as a model teacher. To both him and his wife, Katie, I partially
dedicate this dissertation. I wish we had more time to visit before I leave Eugene.
Without the help of such committed committee members, I would never have finished
this project. However, any shortcomings are mine and mine alone.
I much appreciate the concern and support of my parents and in-laws, the
Kanazawa's. But it is with love and gratitude that I also dedicate this dissertation to my
wife Asako and our son Noah. We shall be together again soon.
Xl
Xll
To Asako and Noah, whose exile has been difficult; and Steve and Katie, whose blessings
have been patience and kindness.
X111
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. HISTORY OF DRIFT/DRIFT OF HISTORY 15
The History of Drift 19
The Drift of History 52
III. IN DEFENSE OF LITERATURE/A LITERATURE OF DEFENSE 67
In Defense of Literature 91
A Literature of Defense 137
IV. TRANSLATING WORLDS: ACCOUNTS OF A COLONIZED
PACIFIC 156
V. GEOGRAPHIC AND DIPLOMATIC REVOLUTIONS: REITERATIONS OF
THREE EARLY EDO PERIOD CASTAWAY ACCOUNTS 238
Tenjiku Tokubei 244
Dattan Hyoryfiki 269
Magotaro/Magoshichi Accounts 288
VI. UNn~HABITED ISLES AND THE SPACE OF THE KINKAI ("NEAR
SEAS") 299
Mujint6 of the Ogasawara and Torishima Islands 304
Chishima Islands and Ezo 329
Takeshima and Utsuryodo (Kr.: Dokto, Ulleungdo) 340
VII. CONCLUSION 351
APPENDICES
A. SELECTION OF EDO CASTAWAY n~CIDENTSAND RELEVANT
HYORYUKI 366
B. EDO CASTAWAYS TO RUSSIA 371
C. KANBUNINTRODUCTION TO BANDAN (1849) 372
D. DICTIONARIES AND LEXICONS IN EDO PERIOD HYORYUKI 374
E. COMPLETE TRANSLATION OF TOKUBEI TENJIKU MONOGATARI
(1707) 379
BIBLIOGRAPHY 393
XIV
LIST OF MAPS
Map Page
2.1. Map of Asia by Abraham Ortelius (1575) 73
4.1. Go Tenjiku zu (1364) 257
4.2. Enkyu bankoku chikai zenzu (1802) 258
4.3. Hansen bushu bankoku shoka no zu (~1710) 258
4.4. Namba Map 259
4.5. Shincho itto no zu (1835) 260
4.6. Bankoku ichiran zu (1809) 261
4.7. Kanei hyoryuki Map ofKorea 277
4.8. Chosen monogatari Map ofKorea 278
5.1. Map from "Kanei hyoryuki" 346
5.2. Map from "Chosen monogatari" 347
xv
LIST OF DIAGRAMS
Diagram Page
4.1. Japanese Diplomatic Perception (post-Razan) 285
4.2. Japanese Ideological Perception 285
1. NSSSS#
2. EHSS#
3. TKIR#:#
4. EHHS
5. DKSS#
6. NKBT#
7. NKBZ#
LIST OF ABREVIATIONS
Nihon shomin seikatsu shiry6 shusei. Tokyo: Sanichi
Shobo. 1985. Followed by volume number.
Ishii, Kendo. Ishii Kend6 Korekushon: Edo hy6ryuki
s6shu. Edited by Yamashita Tsuneo. Tokyo: Nihon
Hyoronsha, 1992. Followed by volume number.
Hayashi, Fukusai. Tsuk6 ichiran. Edited by Hayakawa
Junsaburo. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankokai, 1912-1914.
Followed by kan and volume number.
Arakawa, Hidetoshi. Kish6 shiry6 shiriizu 3: Nihon
hy6ryu hy6chaku shiry6. Tokyo: Chijin Shokan, 1962.
Edo hy6ryuki s6shu bekkan: Daikokuya K6dayu shiry6
shu. Edited by Yamashita Tsuneo. Tokyo: Nihon
Hyoronsha,2003. Followed by volume number.
Nihon koten bungaku taikei. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
1970. Followed by volume number.
. Nihon koten bungaku zenshu. Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1972.
Followed by volume number.
XVI
XVll
LIST OF ILLUSTRAnONS
Illustration Page
1.1. Scene in which castaways perform kamikuji .47
2.1. "Tokei monogatari jo kanazuke narabi insh6" 108
2.2. Kind6 nisshi shi6 no ichi 126
2.3. Page series from Tokei monogatari 129
3.1. A page from Oroshiya no kotoba 159
3.2. A page from ZOtei ka-Ei tsugo 163
3.3. A page from Kankai ibun 164
3.4. Page from Hy6ryuki 169
3.5. Page from Funaosa nikki 180
3.6. Frontispiece to Seiy6 jij6 197
3.7. Two images of shimabito from Kankai ibun 207
3.8. Detail from Oroshiyajin sh6ho no zu 208
3.9. Image of dochakumin from Tokei monogatari 210
. 3.1 O. Image of Anthony from Tokei monogatari 213
3.11. ImageofshipfromOshukuzakki 215
3.12. Image of natives from Hy6son kiryaku 222
3.13. Bankoku j inbutsu zu 225
3.14. Hokkaid6 kyu dojin hogo h6 231
4.1. Woodblock print for Onoe Kikugor6 Ichidaiki 245
4.2. Illustration for Oto ni kiku Tenjiku Tokubei 246
4.3. Illustrated program for Tenjiku Tokubei ikoku banashi 246
4.4. Page from Ch6sen monogatari 281
INTRODUCTION
I realize the past five or six years [of my absence] has caused some serious
trouble. While I feel that going adrift was no fault of my own, officials of
all rank, as well as my parents, siblings, and even my relatives know what it
means to face difficulty. I am neither a bad person nor a son lacking filial
piety, please grant me this much, even if my brush skills are lacking. The
truth is I want to return to my home country, a desire higher than the
mountains and deeper than the seas, yet I fear that my return would cause
problems for the Shogun and other officials in our country, thus I refrain
from trying to return. Up until now, I have suffered certain adversities of
the sort that are unparalleled in this world. Here is a summary of those
circumstances.!
So begins a letter dated the 9th month of 1842 sent from Macao by a distraught
Japanese sailor stranded in China by the name of Jusaburo. Resigned to the idea of
never being able to return to his family in Japan, the letter in its entirety is as
emotionally heart-wrenching as it is resigned to perceived bakufu policy of forbidding
the repatriation of castaways. Despite the fact that Jusaburo and his six fellow
castaways were not able to return to Japan aboard the Morrison in 1837, many other
Japanese drifters during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did in fact manage to
I This letter by Jusabura ofHigo along with a letter by his fellow castaway Shaza are part of the Tahoku
Daigaku collection. They were written and sent from Macao in the autumn of 1842 and are addressed
both to officials in Nagasaki and family in Higo. Jusabura's letter (part of which is quoted here) is
written almost exclusively in katakana script and at times is difficult to read. Dr. Stephen Kohl and I
translated these letters into English in 2003-2004 and we worked with Kata Takashi's published katsuji
version of the texts. See, Kata Takashi, ed. (S6sho Edo bunko ichi) Hy6ryu kidan shusei (Tokyo:
Kokusho Kankakai, 1990),390.
1
return from abroad and had their adventures recorded and disseminated for a larger
readership.
This dissertation takes as its topic hy6ryuki O~imgc.) or Japanese castaway
narratives written and circulated from roughly 1780 to 1880-a period of time
corresponding to the late-Edo period. The stories of Japanese sailors and fisherman
who accidentally went adrift while at sea during this time period manage to paint
intriguingly contradictory visions of western colonialism, empire, trans-oceanic trade,
whaling, missionary work, and exploration taking place in the Pacific. Similar to
earlier castaway accounts from the first half of the Edo period, these stories served as a
site for the engagement of worlds that existed only on the extreme horizon of Japanese
thought, and in this sense these documents reflect an ever-shifting sense of the world
beyond the seas over the course of the Edo period. It will be argued that by the late
eighteenth century this textual category of hy6ryuki and its primary subject-
hy6ryumono ¥~im~- take on particular formal qualities and come to be recognized
through a particular set of inscription practices. Notwithstanding the existence of
earlier accounts, from the 1790s we begin to see a flourishing period of production and
a fascinating case in which concrete world historical conditions intersect with a more
abstracted ideological realm of cultural production. Tracing new ways of thinking that
emerge in these texts concerning language, geography, ethnography, and an
2
increasingly defined sense of national identity, we can read the historical and literary
development ofthese texts vis-a.-vis the encroaching conditions of colonialism and
empire that came to dominate the space of the Pacific. The castaway as subject
became both a regulated and contested discourse and the texts responsible for this
invention came to comprise a systematized archive in which various discourses of
identity and nation were dramatically engaged. This subject of the castaway as a
literary and existential category had its birth in a specific set of contingencies
coalescing around the geopolitical conditions often dubbed "early modernity" in which
the earth and its many residents first became imaginable in specific ways.
The Edo or Tokugawa period of Japanese history (1600-1868) has commonly
been represented as one of nearly complete isolation, during which time a traditional
Japanese culture developed and flourished within the confines of a hermetically sealed
archipelago of islands.2 Free of any corrupting foreign influence, this budding culture
is said to have become the fully blossomed flower of a "modem," but "unique" and
"homogenous" Japan. Although the simplicity of this narrative has been elaborated
upon in numerous ways, and has occasionally come under critical scrutiny, the
overarching teleology and assumptions of a pure "national culture" incubated through a
2 Jusaburo's attempted return to Japan on the Morrison in 1837 and the subsequent attack on this ship at
both Uraga and in Kagoshima by Japanese forces that prevented the repatriation of seven castaways
aboard the ship, is the only documented incident in which castaways were prevented from being
repatriated due to threat of force. In fact, this somewhat anomalous incident has contributed greatly to the
notion that Japan long maintained strictly enforced prohibitions against Japanese returning from abroad.
3
4period of utter isolation has remained a pervasive narrative. Thus, it is little surprise
that when people in both Japan and abroad ask me what I currently research, the idea of
Edo period castaways both embarking to and from Japan, and furthermore, the notion of
first- or secondhand accounts of the world beyond the seas written during this time
leaves them asking more questions. While Nakahama "Jon" Manjiro, and to a lesser
degree Daikokuya Kodayu and Hamada Hikozo, are relatively well known among
Japanese people today, when I explain my research interests most listeners remain in
disbelief when I tell them that those who had their stories documented upon their return
to Japan during the Edo period number in the hundreds. Disbelief gives way to
fascination once I begin to reiterate some of the more remarkable experiences these
sailors and fisherman relate in their accounts.
The beach, as Greg Dening has pointed out, is a liminal space between two
worlds. It is a natural border zone not only between the world of the land and the
world of the sea, but also the old and the new, the world of the native and the explorer
or scientist. The beach stands between worlds and people as an important threshold and
locus of cross-cultural contact and performance. Furthermore as a site of return, it
serves as a stage on which certain rituals of repatriation are enacted. "It was in that
very narrow band [of sand] where acts of possession and dispossession and walking
5along that threshold were performed," writes Dening.3 Likewise, the stories of
castaways that pass over the beach are stories of boundary and border crossings, and as
such were often transgressive, if not potentially subversive. In this sense, these stories
should be of interest to anthropologists, historians, geographers, and literary scholars
alike.
The writing of these hy6ryuki accounts was an activity charged with political
and ideological import. Through their regulation, production, replication, and
dissemination these texts represent a broad textual category that conveyed knowledge of
others, while also inscribing a new self-identity in the form of an emerging national
body for Edo readers. The overwhelming focus on defining the "Japanese" body in
terms of diet, hairstyle, language, clothing, song, religious practice, and other
performative acts is a characteristic common to most late-Edo hy6ryuki. In other
words, the subject ofthese accounts is just as much an emerging national, cultural, and
metaphysical Japanese identity, as it is the exotic and foreign bodies and spaces of far
away places. Thus, the production of these accounts and the establishment of varying
formal aspects of hy6ryuki genres both speak to a shifting and gradually colonized
3 See Tim Dymond, "A Library Sailor: An Interview with Greg Dening," in Limina: A Journal of
Historical and Cultural Studies, Vol. 7 (200 I), 8. See also Greg Dening, Islands and Beaches (Honolulu:
University of Hawai' i Press, 1986).
Pacific, while also projecting a certain epistemological foundation for Japan's own
national territorial and cultural claims.
Pointing to archeological evidence, we might rightly say that maritime drift has
taken place from pre-historical times and that cultural exchange resulting from these
accidental trans-oceanic encounters was significant.4 The vast archive of world
folklore provides us with numerous examples of castaway figures such as Urashima
Taro and the Book ofJonah. Likewise, monumental cultural texts such as the Kojiki
and Homer's Odyssey, also suggest that the castaway figure is in fact a "monomyth"
and heroic archetype that embodies a formulaic departure, trial, and return on a journey
of self-discovery. Certainly, the conditions of drift have long been ripe with dramatic
and metaphorical meanings. But while synchronic similarities linking Edo period
castaway accounts to classical canons and prehistoric folklore are certainly evident, this
project focuses on the historically and culturally specific characteristics of late-Edo
accounts, in order to understand them in a specific Pacific context of the late-eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. In other words, while castaways may be as old as
4 Numerous archeologists have attempted to prove pre-historical transoceanic cultural exchange by
drifters. See; Betty J. Meggers, Clifford Evans, and Emilio Estrada, "Early Formative Period of Coastal
Ecuador: The Valdivia and MachaliIIa Phases," in Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, Vol. I
(Washington: US National Museum, 1965),219-234; Michael Coe, "Archeological Linkages with North
and South America at La Victoria, Guatemala," in American Anthropologist (New Series, Vol. 62, No.3
(June 1960)),363-393; and Matsushima Shunjiro, Sakoku wo hamideta hy6ryumono: sono ashiato wo ou
(Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1999), 120-125.
6
7humanity's first attempts to float, the form any such narrative takes is inevitably both
historical and particular to the language, traditions, and milieu through which it is told.5
The Japanese language today distinguishes between foreign sailors who drifted to
Japan (hy6chakumin, ?~~t:R;) and Japanese sailors who drifted away from Japan
(hy6ryumin, ?~mtt:R;), although this usage does not seem to have developed in any strict
sense until the twentieth century. It must be said from the outset that the study of these
two subjectivities-the drifter to Japan and the drifter away from Japan-as well as
their resulting textual legacy in the form of hy6chakki O~~~c) and hy6ryuki, are
intimately related. While this present study will occasionally employ literary and
historical documents related to hy6chakumin, the main focus is placed on accounts
relating to Japanese sailors and fisherman who drifted from Japan and had their
accounts recorded as hy6ryuki texts upon repatriation. The reasons for this decision
are based on the fact that repatriated Japanese castaways were treated differently from
foreigners who accidentally drifted to Japan, and because Japanese castaways and their
interrogators-State bakufu and domain officials-shared a common language allowing
5 John Cawelti, in a book-length study of literary formulas argues that a "literary formula" has both an
historical and an ahistorical component that defines it. "Actually, if we look at a popular story type such
as a western, the detective story, or the spy adventure, we find that it combines these two [historical and
universal] sorts of literary phenomenon. These popular story patterns are embodiments of archetypal
story forms in terms of specific cultural materials. To create a western involves not only some
understanding of how to construct as exciting adventure story, but also how to use certain nineteenth- and
twentieth- century images and symbols ... along with appropriate cultural themes or myths ... Thus
formulas are ways in which specific cultural themes and stereotypes become embodied in more universal
story archetypes." John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and
Popular Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Presss, 1976),6.
8for much more detailed record of their experiences.6 Accounts of Japanese castaways
or hy6ryumin are therefore qualitatively different from the related category of texts
concerning foreigners drifting to Japan (hy6chakki).
This study is also historically bound, focusing on an approximately a one
hundred-year period ranging from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries.
While part of this project does consider how accounts predating this period come to be
retold after 1780, the majority of documents considered here regard Japanese sailors
that drifted through Pacific colonial sites and witnessed the expansion of western forces
in the embodiment of missionary, trader, naturalist, native, soldiers, and whaler. It will
be demonstrated that Japanese castaway accounts began to undergo a formal
transformation in the mid- to late-eighteenth century, and that this formal transformation
6 The use of "State," "Nation," and in particular, their hyphenated pairing in the form of "Nation-State,"
can be problematic when speaking about the Tokugawa period. As has already been suggested,
Tokugawa Japan (1600-1868) has traditionally been represented as a collection of more than 200 domains
or han existing in a feudal dark period of isolation in which the idea of a unified nation was unimaginable.
With Japan's "opening" to the West in the 1850s (or 1860s, 70s, or 80s) Japan quickly industrializes and
rises to status offull-tledged Nation-State. Japanese historians of this time period generally prefer the
term kinsei :ifri:lt or "early modern" to talk about what they do, and this term semantically suggests a
nascent period of development moving towards a developed polity with conscripted military, nationwide
education system, unified language and mass-media system, and clear control of subjects' daily lives. It
is my contention that this model of historical development is problematic for numerous reasons,
nonetheless I will occasionally refer to the bakufu as a state-centered regime in the context of
early-modern diplomacy and foreign affairs. This is not to suggest an earlier origin of a Japanese
"Nation-State," but to suggest that, in an international sphere the bakufu exhibited an active role as state
authority and demonstrated significant control over foreign contact. Likewise, while the fourteen year
old Manjir6 went adrift offthe coast ofTosa in ] 841 he probably had little concept of any latent
"Japaneseness," all evidence suggests that upon his return ten years later, he had a very developed sense
of national identity. In other words, it was nearly impossible for late-Edo castaways not to develop a
strong sense of national identity over the course oftheir interactions with peoples outside Japan. In the
context of late-Edo castaway accounts, the notion of both a geographic and cultural Japanese nation is
often assumed and postulated; therefore use of "nation" at times becomes inevitable.
9congeals in texts relating the repatriation of the first Japanese to witness colonial
expansion of Russia in the North Pacific.
In 1792, Daikokuya K6dayu and Isokichi became the first Japanese castaways to
return from Russia, and at the same time, the floodgates of Pacific colonialism were
opened; with Russian expansion in the north, English and Spanish trans-Pacific trade,
and later by primarily American whalers. During this roughly one hundred year period,
multivolume accounts based on the testament of repatriated Japanese sailors and
fisherman and written by elite scholars and government officials proliferated. As the
geographic and ethnographic imaginary of a Sino-centric world (ka-i chitsujo ¥~f;icFf)
gave way to the more massive colonial world system and its equally abstract discourses
of science, commerce, race, nation-state, and empire, these stories underwent certain
formal transformations.7 We can read these texts as defensive reactions to western
expansion, projections of an epistemology that laid the foundations for Japan's own
colonial projects, and a formally codified category of literature, marked by inter-textual
reference, literary and narrative devices, and identity performance. In this sense, this
project attempts to uncover the historical and geographic specificity of late Edo
Japanese castaway account. In so doing, we shall see how a particular literary and
7 The phrase Nihon gata ka-i ishiki appears to have first been used by Asao Naohiro in his "Sakokusei no
seiritsu" in volume 4 of K6za Nihon rekishi (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1970, 59-94. Arano,
Yasunori introduces the phrase Nihon gata Ka-i chitsujo in his Kinsei Nihon to Higashi Ajia, Tokyo
Daigaku Shuppankai 1998, 4-15.
10
cultural form such as hy6ryuki has the power to produce particular visions of the world.
In short, hy6ryuki during the late-Edo and into the early-Meiji eras served as an
important medium through which to translate, interpret, and project textual and
discursive concepts such as empire, colony, nation, race, and other ideologically
charged categories so important to nineteenth century Pacific spaces.
Like their predecessors before the late-eighteenth century, these newer castaways
still told stories of powerful fast ships and superior navigational techniques, but
increasingly they also began to describe the conditions under which indigenous peoples
come to be exploited as colonial subjects, the extraction of wealth and natural resources
in these new lands (and waters), and global networks of trade and immigration. Unlike
earlier texts from the first half of the Edo period and before, no longer was the
possibility of westerners in the Pacific something based upon contingent drift from the
south (Nanbanjin or "Southern Barbarian"). This new textual topography of Pacific
space was now intimately tied to a colonizing Europe and the increasingly influential
Americas, as a growing body of Japanese intellectuals began to call for defensive
measures.
In Chapter One we will consider both the historicity of drift and also the limits of
a traditional historiographic model of national history (kokushi OO~) that has tended to
excise from the early-modern moment the experience of drift. Doing so, we will see
that the cultural production oflate-Edo hy6ryuki has its formal and textual origins in
earlier bureaucratic and diplomatic practices that developed in an East Asian context.
As such, the primary materials of this chapter are historical documents relating to not
late-, but early-Edo castaway incidents.
The second chapter takes as its topic, the more literary and textual aspects of
late-Edo accounts, linking these transformations of a cultural hy6ryuki form to concrete
geopolitical concerns centered on Ezo, the North Pacific, and Russian encroachment.
As late-Edo Japanese officials and intellectuals, came to understand, appropriate, and
counteract, the philosophical justifications for western Pacific colonial expansion, it
became necessary to not only engage perceived threats diplomatically, but also to
inscribe these new others and this newly imaginable global space of the Pacific through
novel forms of hy6ryuki. These new hy6ryuki initiated by, but not limited to the
earliest accounts of repatriation from Russia, are formally marked by a scientific and
geographic tone, based upon interviews and meetings with castaways. These texts
often include dictionaries, maps, as well as ethnographic images and description and are
clearly informed by both intellectual and aesthetic ideals of fact and realism. These
second-order castaway accounts are generally focused upon peoples outside a
traditional Japanese discourse of difference among its East Asia neighbors, and in
particular describe and explain a growing western presence in the Pacific. In this
sense, we might provisionally consider these 1ate-Edo hy6ryuki as part of a larger global
11
12
phenomenon of castaway writing that defines one of the first trans-national literary
forms of global conquest and exploration.
Chapter Three looks more closely at how these Iate-Edo hy6ryuki served as
vehicles for envisioning the world beyond the beach and translating the radical newness
of global Pacific conditions for a domestic readership. Beginning with a consideration
of foreign language dictionaries-a particular formal characteristic of late-Edo
hy6ryuki-this third chapter identifies an assumed logic of equivalency outside a
Sino-centric model that is reflected in these lexicons of a new Pacific topography,
which in turn became a necessary, but imperfect means to explain and project new
global hierarchies ofrace, gender, ethnicity, and relative civility.
While accounts that describe a western dominance in the Pacific generally only
appear after 1794 with the writing ofHokusa bunryaku ~tt1l1fJm:fr, not all accounts
embrace this new textual model for inscribing stories of drift. As we shall see in
Chapter Four, while the writing of the Hokusa bunryaku and other accounts such as
Kankai ibun ~14jH'Hll did offer later hy6ryuki authors a fonnal model by which to
encode stories of drift, earlier Edo incidents of drift were being "re-discovered" at this
very time as source material for yet other, more popular cultural forms such as
published adventure-like stories and even kabuki andj6ruri theater plays.
The final chapter of this project returns to a more historical methodology to
uncover more overtly political deployments of castaway stories in the late- Edo period.
Through a consideration of mujint6 hy6ryuki ~A!j~l:djl'OJ1E1lcor "castaway accounts to
uninhabited lands"-a third sub-category of the Edo period castaway account-Chapter
Five demonstrates how hy6ryu sites on the periphery of the archipelago also served an
important role in articulating the emerging boundaries of the nation and its peoples.
This project has been written and conceived at a moment when globalization,
studied in universities and protested in the streets, has come to be all too often either
mindlessly celebrated or vehemently dismissed. Today, it appears that a new form of
castaway narrative-represented by television shows such as Survivor (broadcast from
2000, Mark Burnett, executive producer) and Lost (broadcast from 2004, 1.1. Abrams
and Damon Lindelof, co-creators), as well as movies such as Cast Away (2000, Robert
Zemeckis, director)-have become exceedingly popular. Although the research for
this dissertation was not directly inspired by this global trend in popular culture, it
should be acknowledged that the conditions of a certain globalization, namely the
ability to carry out research at American, Japanese, and European universities,
participate in international conferences, and furthermore challenge long-cherished
assumptions of academic disciplines and area studies-based knowledge, cannot go
unmentioned. In short, we should acknowledge at the outset that at a moment when
the world seems smaller than ever and technology produces certain temporal
compressions previously unimaginable, the figure of the castaway in both historical
literature and in terms of science-fiction narrative have reemerged at the forefront of
13
both intellectual curiosity and entertainment. Therefore, the purpose of this study is
not to simply uncover a body of texts that have remained more or less outside the scope
of Japanese studies. but instead to consider just how the castaway narrative has come to
be appropriated and disseminated as an ideological text serving competing apparatuses
of power.
14
15
HISTORY OF DRIFT/ DRIFT OF HISTORY
Some of the earliest written Japanese historical documents to survive today
testify to the exceptional nature of castaways. For example, in the twenty-fourth
volume of the Zoku Nihongi *Jc S **2 there is the story from 763 C.E. of a ship returning
from Korai ~~ (Kr.: Koguryo) that became distressed and drifted, only to be saved
after proper supplication was offered to the gods.14 Other texts such as Matsura no
miya monogatari t£illJ',§tto/Jjj!f, probably written by Fujiwara Teika JilJJ-jj:JE* around 1185,
foreground the experience of a heroic Japanese figure in China and chronicle the super-
human challenges posed in repatriation. ls This early literary castaway account, if we
might provisionally call it that, represents the historical figure Kibi-no-makibi 6fi11j~fiIIj
in hyperbolic terms, ultimately emphasizing a certain Japanese cultural superiority over
China. According to Maruyama Masao the national character of Japan emerges through
encounters with the outside and a particular dialectical relationship between native and
foreign. Addressing what he called "pre-modern forms of nationalism," Maruyama
invoked Tokutomi Soho (1863-1958) to describe the process by which:
14 The date is J('fZ:i:"t-1::;1F. Zoku Nihongi (Kuroita Katsumi, ed.) (Tokyo: Yoshikawa K6bunkan, 1966),
138. Likewise, Arakawa Hidetoshi lists no less than 113 accounts of drift taking place before 1600. See
his, Nihon hy6ryit hy6chaku shiry6 (Tokyo: Chijin Shokan, 1962), 1-57
15 Matsura no miya monogatari (Kubota Takao, et aI, eds.) (Tokyo: Kamin ShobO,1996).
16
A threat from abroad immediately directs the nation's thoughts
outwards. This leads immediately to the rise of a spirit of
nationalism. This directly induces national unification.... The
concept 'foreign nations' brought forth the concept 'Japanese
nation.' The day when the concept of'Japanese nation' arose was
the day when the concept 'han' vanished. 1
This projection of a Japanese identity vis-a.-vis peoples of other Asian lands, as
we see in Matsura no miya monogatari, has continued on and off throughout the last
millennium, and some of the earliest Edo period castaway accounts such as Dattan
hy6ryitki iin.§.r~'U51E'1lc (1644), as well as later Edo period hy6ryitki such as Shanghai k6ki
J:r4jH1i:'1lc (1868), can attest to this. However, for a nearly eighty-year period initiated by
the repatriation of Daikokuya K6dayu and Isokichi in 1792, the focus of hy6ryitki takes
a dramatic and noticeable turn in terms of the logic and representational forms by which
the Other comes to define Japan and Japaneseness. 17 In particular, certain late-Edo
period hy6ryitki written by "nativist" kokugaku OO'¥scholars such as Funaosa nikki f.t'd*
S'1lc (1822) or Tokei monogatari ffifH~~fr (1849) articulate a distinct "Japaneseness" for
the castaway and readers alike. 18 These narratives of Japanese subjects adrift both
present stories that consciously engage in a larger kokugaku discourse of Japanese
literary traditions while also invoking a distinctly nationalist discourse of shinkoku fiflOO
ideology that defined Japan as a divine nation by which gods and kami commune with
16 Cited by Maruyama Masao, Nihon seiji shis6 shi kenkyit (Tokyo Daigaku Shuppan, 1952). Translation
is Hane's in Studies in the Intellectual History ofTokugawa Japan (Mikiso Hane, trans.)(Tokyo:
University of Tokyo Press, 1974),342.
17 A third castaway, Koichi, was also repatriated from the ShinshO-maru however he did not survive long
enough to have his story recorded.
18 Both of these accounts are found in Tanigawa Kenichi, et a!., eds., Edo shomin seikatsu shiry6 shitsei,
vol. 5 (Tokyo: Sanichi Shobo, 1968), 503-550 and 3-298, respectively. This is a major collection of
castaway documentation and will be abbreviated hereafter as ESSSS5.
17
and protect Japanese castaways at sea. These late-Edo castaway accounts present the
castaway subject as a product of a highly differentiated native culture vis-a-vis the West.
In fact, while there are several multivolume and elaborated castaway accounts relating
other areas of Asia before 1792, the vast majority (if not entirety) of more detailed
hyoryuki produced after this time focus on encounters with westerners and travel
through a western-influenced terrain. The few accounts taking place in Asia and written
after the 1790s such as the relatively short Ruson (Luzon) koku hyoryuki g*~¥~¥JrE13c
(1845) which takes place throughout islands ofthe Philippians, emphasizes colonial
relations and trans-Pacific trade and is far removed from traditional representations, or
"iconographies of difference" describing early Asian neighbors. 19
Other accounts written between 1792 and 1872 by Rangaku lIi'¥or "Dutch
Learning" scholars such as Hokusa bunryaku ~t~lYJ~ (1794) and Kankai ibun ~$~IYJ
(1805) also project a similar national subject in the embodiment ofthe castaway, and a
linguistically, culturally, metaphysically, and politically unique Japan. Unlike accounts
written by kokugakusha, the frame of these texts relies less on references to classical
literature such as Genji monogatari ¥lJJl:a!jo/)~tt, Kojiki 11$13c, and Ise monogatari {jt~!jo/)~tt,
and instead upon a proto-ethnographic discourse that borrows from both Chinese
gazetteers and European scientific, encyclopedic works. Thus, castaway narratives in
several guises have served as potentially fertile textual sites for an emerging discourse
of Self and Other throughout time, but by the late-Edo period the framework by which
19 The two other examples that come to mind are Magotar6/ Magoshichi accounts that are the subject of
Chapter Four and the Shanghai K6ki of 1868 which is introduced in Chapter Three. For Ruson hy6ryiuki
see ESSSS5, 571-580.
18
to project a "Japan" and its others either politically, ethnically, or culturally was
inflected through the seemingly scientific discourses of ethnography and geography on
the one hand, and the equally powerful metaphysical abstractions of shinkoku OE/JOO,
"Divine Nation") ideology and "nativist" culture and language on the other.
19
HISTORY OF DRIFT
Despite several examples that predate the Edo period, the category ofhy6ryuki
is generally considered by Japanese historians to be an early-modern phenomenon and a
result of maritime prohibitions (kaikin yilt~) instituted by the Tokugawa bakufu regime
in the 1630s and ostensibly maintained until the 1850s.2o While Haruna Akira
recognizes that events designated as hy6ryu were not limited to the early-modern or
kinsei era (generally recognized to be synonymous with the Edo or Tokugawa period),
he emphasizes the significance of these events for the maintenance of national integrity
within East Asia during this same period. Furthermore, he points out that these events
were important means of learning about the world outside of East Asia.21 At the same
time focusing on formal qualities that distinguish Japanese hy6ryuki, Haruna notes that
the textual category that takes as its subject events of drift is a particularly early-modern
phenomenon in Japan.22 Likewise, the historian of Japan-Korea relations Ikeuchi
Satoshi, just looking at documented accounts of drift between the Japanese archipelago
and the Korean peninsula, identified 91 cases involving 1235 Japanese individuals
20 See Haruna, "Hyoryilki," in Kokushi daijiten (Kokushi Daijiten Henshil Iinkai, eds.) (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1990), 1034; Arakawa Hidetoshi, Nihonjin hy6ryuki (Tokyo: Jinbutsu Oraisha,
1964),20; Kawai Hikomitsu, Nihonjin hy6ryuki (Tokyo: Shisosha, 1967), 306-307, 310-312; Kobayashi
Shigefumi, Nipponjin ikoku hy6ryuki (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 2000), 13-14.
21 Haruna Akira, "Hyoryil," in Kokushi daijiten (Kokushi Daijiten Henshil Iinkai, eds.) (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1990), 1033.
22 Haruna Akira, "Hyoryilki," ibid.
20
drifting to Korea between the 1618 and 1872. Even more astonishing are the numbers
he gives for Koreans drifting to Japan; 35 incidents between the years 678 and 1079, 50
examples taking place between 1289 and 1591, and an amazing 971 cases between 1599
and 1872 (roughly corresponding to the early-modern period).23 Today there remain
thousands of representative documents that comprise this textual category of hy6ryuki.
24 They range from the 1) shorter kuchigaki i=I i§:and derivative forms recorded by
bakufu and domain officials, to the 2) more elaborate multivolume collections that often
included illustrations, poetic interludes, maps, dictionaries, and other more detailed
information generally written by scholars, to even 3) accounts which reflect oral story-
telling or performative origins. In other words, these texts comprise what Natalie Davis,
in her study of sixteenth century letters of remission in France, calls a "mixed genre"
that simultaneously served as "judicial supplication," "historical account," as well as, a
good "story.,,25 We would be right to conclude that the number of documented
castaways in East Asia skyrocketed during the roughly 250 years of Tokugawa rule, and
furthermore, that the practice of relating these maritime mishaps in a formal and
codified manner became common practice.
23 See Ikeuchi Satoshi, Kinsei Nihon to Chosen hyoryitmin (Kyoto: Nozomigawa Shoten, 1998),26, 13.
24 The largest modern collections of accounts (in katsuji) include Yamashita Tsuneo, Yamashita Tsuneo,
ed., (Ishii Kendo Korekushon) Edo hyo/yitki soshit, 6 voIs. (Tokyo: Nihon Hyoronsha, 1992) which is
based upon the lifework ofIshii Kendo (1865- I943), who collected Edo period hyo/yitki (hereafter ErIS,
followed by vol. number and pages); Arakawa Hidetoshi, ed. Nihon hyoryit hyochaku shiryo, No.3 of
Kisho shiryo shiriizu (Tokyo: Chijin Shokan, I962) (hereafter NHHS); and numerous other collections.
25 Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century
France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, I987),4.
21
But what of this term hy6ryU? It has certainly been in use in both Chinese and
Japanese sources long before the Edo period.26 A survey of the specific language used
in individual castaway accounts reproduced in printed form (katsuji), as well as several
dozen handwritten documents that have yet to be transliterated into contemporary type,
the earliest use of the term hy6ryu O~¥JfE) appears in the Nihon kiryaku ~ **2~ (written
around 1036). This reference, while brief, clearly states; :&5'l:;-tif-=jj ;It ~ , ){t}~OO~ 1:,
iWiK)d~i5fE::k~OO("Sometime in the Third Month of the Seventh Year of Ch6gen [1034]
Tsushima reported that a castaway from Korai drifted to Osumi."i7 Nonetheless, this
reference appears to be an historical anomaly, since most other accounts predating the
Edo period employ other more-or-less synonymous terms or, as we see in Taketori
monogatari tt.!&tIo/Jitfr, simply the individual characters tadayou/ hy6 O~ or alternatively,
jJl/!1%!) or nagare/ryu OJfE).28 Other terms commonly used before the Edo period include,
hy6t6 kaichu 0~~¥~1:jJ) and hy6t6 O~~),29 ryugu OJfE~) and raichaku C*3l!'f),30 ryurai (YJfE
*)31 hy6cho O~~),32 hy6chaku O~3l!'f),33 as well as phrases such as, hy6han kaij6 O~¥z¥~
26 The Morohashi Kan-Wa daijiten, lists two Classical Chinese textual references under the heading
"hy6ryil." These include a reference to the Hou Han Shu (f&7~i-=) and the Yan Tie Lim (1lI&~~iJij). See Dai
Kan-Wajiten (Morohashi Kenji, ed.), vol. 7, (Tokyo: Taishukan Shoten, 1968),207.
27 See Arakawa Hidetoshi, (Kish6 shiry6 shriizu 3) Nihon hy6ryil hy6chaku shiry6 (Tokyo: Chijin Shokan,
1962), 18.
28 This analysis is based on texts included in the largest single-volume anthology of castaway accounts
and the only collection that includes accounts from before the Edo period. Respective page numbers in
the following footnotes refer to Arakawa (1962).
29 Examples of which can be found in the Nihon kiryaku (S **[1.W~), Zoku Nihongi (®'C=**[1.), and Zoku
Nihon k6ki (®'C S *1&*[1.).
30 Sandaijitsuroku C= 1-\;~~).
31 Nihon shoki (S *i-=*[1.) Ruijil kokushi (!j;JHJtl~.se.), and Zoku Nihongi.
22
J::), hankai hyofu O£1m:1~'U~l), hyofu (Mtm), hankai sofuhyo O£1m:JlfmMt), and hyohan
yochu O~1Z1$r:p). However with the publication of the Korean (in Chinese) Haedong
chechukki by Shin Shuk-chu $,J-;xfrt (also know as the Kaito shokokki 1m:*~tOO*,c in
Japan) in 1471, usage of the term hyoryu becomes more pervasive.34 Comparing this
text with another roughly contemporary Korean text-The Veritable Records ofKing
Sejong the Great, pJ<:**:=E.~~-we again see much of the same thing, that is, frequent
usage of the term hyoryu, and in particular usage of phrases such as wagakuni hyoryujin
(Jp.)/ uri nara pyoryuin (Kr.) (ft~1~1JiEA).35 This strongly suggests that the usage of
the term hyoryu in Japan became more frequent only after it began to appear in Korean
diplomatic and historical documents. In fact, looking at several Japanese documents
that record the arrival ofthe first Portuguese in Tanegashima, we do not find the term
hyoryu used once, suggesting that a growing preoccupation with recording castaway
accounts had little to do with the arrival of westerners and was instead rooted in an East
Asian diplomatic context. Since the publication of Arano Yasunori's s Kinsei Nihon to
Higashi Ajia ("Early Modern Japan and East Asia") the repatriation of castaways
32 Nihon shoki, Zoku Nihon kOki, Tei6 hen nenki (m::E*.\Jj\iF'ilC), Buntokujitsuroku (:>tf,!i:~~), Sandai
jitsuroku, and Zoku Nihongi.
33 Zoku Nihongi, Sandaijitsuroku, Nihon kiryaku, and Nihon k6ki (EI ;:$:1&*C)
34 According to a searchable database of the text at
http://www.tulips.tsukuba.ac.jp/limedio/dlam/B 1241 I89/l/voI06/kaitosho.txt , nine usages of the term
hy6ryu appear. These include the seven instances of the more interesting phrase waga hy6ryunin
("castaway of ours," ft¥~¥ilEA). This phrase emphasizes the Korean origins ofthe said castaways and
thus suggests a strong emphasis national identity. I would argue that this also reflects the fact that Korean
and Japanese protocol had been established and official repatriation procedures were in place by at this
time. A more detailed explanation will follow.
35 For example, see Arakawa (1962), 33-46.
23
between the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago has often come to be seen
as a formalized process consciously constructed to maintain borders between nations.
Arano in particular has argued that these dual systems of repatriation remained
consistent and intact from the recognition of the p )loin yongnae ch 'awae O~A~JBl\:~f~,
a Korean term for castaway repatriation envoys from Japan) in 1627 to the beginning of
the modern era.36 Arano's work initiated an important debate that began in 1994 when
Haruna Akira first questioned whether repatriation of castaways was a formalized,
structured "system," and instead suggested that it was a set of more sub-national,
localized processes for repatriating castaways arriving in Japan.37
During the Edo period too, the term hy6ryu did not exist alone, but instead was
used along with several other terms. By the end of the 17th century the term hy6ryu to
denote Japanese drifting away from Japan, and the term hy6chaku to denote foreigners
drifting to Japan seem to be used frequently enough to argue they were in common
usage. The same cannot be said for the related term hy6ryuki or "castaway narrative."
While there are numerous examples of this term in the titles of later Edo accounts, the
usage of alternative terms is nearly baffling. We shall see in Chapter Two that the
variety of titles that the texts themselves take in the later Edo period, reflect the variety
of audiences and purposes for which these texts came to be written.
Although regulations controlling the construction of ships and maritime trade
with non-Japanese (kaikin r4ij;~) had undergone significant reformulation by the 1640s,
36 Arano Yasunori, Kinsei Nihon to Higashi Ajia (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1988), 127-128.
37 HarunaAkira, "Hy6ryumin s6kan seido no keisei in suite," in Kaijishi kenkyit, No. 52 (July 1995), 1-45.
24
both the bakufu as well as han officials were in no way ignorant of the world around
them. It is perhaps wise to remember the vast distances Japanese ships freely sailed in
the name of trans-Pacific trade before the l630s.38 When the ex-governor of Luzon-
Don Rodrigo de Vivero-was shipwrecked off the coast of Japan en route to New Spain
in 1609, Tokugawa Ieyasu 1J[\)II*F>Jtprovided this castaway with a ship to take him to
Mexico City via Acapulco. Accompanying Vivero on the journey were 23 merchants
and seamen from the Japanese archipelago and Alonzo Munoz, an official Franciscan
envoy representing and sent by Ieyasu to Phillip III of Spain.39 Certainly this was not
the only trans-Pacific venture originating from the Japanese isles at the time. With the
introduction of portolan charts, astrolabes, and new naval construction methods, Date
Masamune {¥j¥J&* had Western-style seafaring ships built and sent to Mexico on two
occasions.40
Even before the Tokugawa bakufu was established, the possibility of world
travel was made very real by the presence of, first Iberian, and later other Europeans in
various ports throughout the Japanese isles.41 Furthermore, castaways-ranging from
38 See, Iwawo Seiichi, Shuinsen to Nihonmachi (Tokyo: Shibund6,1954) and Thomas A. W. Nelson,
"Merchants and Mercenaries: The Overseas Japanese Diaspora in East Asia in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth-Centuries," (unpublished presentation given at the AAS Annual Meeting, New York (March
2003).
39 For a summary of this event see the "Introduction" to Kaigai ibun (trans. Richard Zumwinckle &
Tadanobu Kawai) (Los Angles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1970),9.
40 See Matsuda Kiichi, Keich6 shisetsu-Nihonjin hajime no Taiheiy6 Man (Tokyo: Shinjinbutsu Oraisha,
1969), 164- 236.
41 C.R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1951 ).
25
Chinese merchants, to difficult-to-determine "pirates" (kaizoku rm;~1X), to Iberian
explorers with their African slaves and South Asian translators-circulated with some
regularity in the increasingly internationalized seas of East Asia during the 16th century.
The Dejima diaries kept by the Dutch as an official record oftheir outpost in the bay of
Nagasaki demonstrate this point. We begin to see how the stories of shipwreck
circulated in a particularly inter- and trans-national space of ports and on the decks of
ships whose crews were never necessarily of the same national origin. For example, in
the margins of the diaries we may read of six castaway European sailors being sent to
Nagasaki from Ryukyu, via Satsuma in 1703. Of the six, halfwere Dutch, but two
Englishmen and an Irish filled out the crew. Likewise, following the notes scribbled in
the margins of this official diary of the Dutch Factory, we learn of the Dutch ship Arion,
the details of which are outlined and revealed over a several week period in the jottings
of Opperhoofd N.J. Van Room during his directorship at Dejima. In July of 1715 a
Japanese by the name of Magobei had told a Dutchman in Nagasaki that he had heard
from a Chinese sailor that a Dutch ship had been wrecked in the Paracelcus Islands in
the 11th month ofthe previous year. Although the ship in question is not specifically
named in this initial hearsay, over time, through information supplied by an informal
network of international traders and sailors the marginalia scribbled by Van Room and
his successor, Gideon Boudaan, reveal that the ship in question is the Arion. 42
With the consolidation of power in Tokugawa regime record-keeping relating to
castaways, both hy6ryumin and hy6chakumin, became formalized in the form of
42 J.L. Blusse and W.GJ. Remmelink (eds.), Dejima Diaries Marginalia, 1700-1740 (Scient(fic
26
kuchigaki or "oral debriefings" upon arrival or repatriation, and provide a textual
archive far beyond the records kept by Dutch officials in Dejima. With an increase in
the number of not only Europeans but also other colonized subjects of Europe appearing
in East Asia, the logic of Western imperial expansion and colonial exploitation
appeared not as a mystery, but instead as both a powerful ideology and serious political
threat which required monitoring and regulation. The technologies of the modern world
system that made such travel to Southeast Asia, Mexico, and even as far as Europe
possible, were not limited to navigation.43 The mapping of a planet that allowed for
access to faraway places and foreign spaces, also insisted upon a concept of the nation-
state, nation-based ethnologies, control over delineated territories and hierarchical
relations among the civilized and barbaric, ruler and ruled, advanced and retarded
peoples. The Japanese islands were in no way immune to these conditions, and it is no
coincidence that the formation of what is referred to as the baku-han system ~#lmljltJ
Publications ofthe Japan-Netherlands Institute, No. 12) (Tokyo: Nichi-Ran Gakkai, 1992),188-193.
43 While Euro-centric in perspective, Wallerstein's notion of a modern world-system is helpful and
appears to have exerted some influence on more directly relevant research such as Martin Green's work
on castaways and more recent attempts to write global environmental histories of the early modern world.
See, John F. Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental HistOlY ofthe Early Modern World
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). Wallerstein's macro-historical project is best
represented by a three volume series simply titled, The Modern World System. Unfortunately his
understanding of Japan's role in this "modern world-system" is never articulated, or only tangentially
articulated as a victim of Dutch hegemony over Indo-Sino-Japanese trade networks. See, Immanuel
Wallerstein, The Modern World System 11: Mercantilism and the Consolidation ofthe European World-
Economy, 1600- 1750 (New York: Academic Press, 1980), 107. One significant problem with
Wallerstein's approach is that it seems to strip away any possibility for agency, instead falling back upon
the supremacy of economic forces. For example, he writes, "Incorporation into the capitalist world-
economy was never at the initiative of those being incorporated. The process derived rather from the need
of the world-economy to expand its boundaries, a need which was itself the outcome of pressures internal
to the world-economy." See, The Second Era ofGreat Expansion ofthe Capitalist World-Economy,
1730-1840s (San Diego: Academic Press, 1989), 129. In doing so, change on a localized level appears as
something simply imposed from the outside, and not something negotiated through appropriation,
invention, and resistance-a position taken in this paper.
27
came into existence by the beginning of the seventeenth century in order to effectively
articulate and regulate a national border.44
In order to consolidate national hegemony and secure political stability, the
bakLifu implemented a series of regulations beginning in the 1630s that were meant to
effectively control foreign contact through monopoly rights on foreign trade being
granted to specific han. These dictates were by the nineteenth century known
collectively as sakoku rei &JiOO%or "closed-country laws," however judging from the
plethora of Japanese castaway accounts extant from this period of ostensible seclusion,
it is quite clear that contact with the "foreign" was never effectively eliminated. What
have variously been called "Closed-country laws" and "maritime prohibitions" (kaikin)
are in fact at least two sets of edicts issued by the bakuju in 1609, 1633, 1635, 1636, and
1639, as well as 1806, 1825, 1842, and 1843.45 It is important to point out that while
neither the word sakoku nor kaikin appear once in any of these documents, it is evident
that during two moments in the Edo period, first in the early17th century and again in
44 On the formation of Early Modern borders in Japan see, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, "The Frontiers of
Japanese Identity," in Asian Forms ojthe Nation (Tonnesson & Antlov, eds.) (Richmond: Curzon, 1996);
Bruce Batten, "Frontiers and Boundaries of Pre-modern Japan," in Journal ojHistorical Geography, 25,
2 (1999); Ronald Toby, "Kinseiki no 'Nihonzu' to 'Nihon' no ky6kai," in Chizu to ezu no seiji bunka shi
(Kuroda Hideo, et aI., eds.)(Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2001), 79-102. The terms baku-han
taisei and baku-han kokka have proven problematic, and more recently Mizubayashi Takeshi has offered
jukugo kokka or "compound State" to describe the existence of both a State-level authority such as the
bakuju and more regional "country" or domain networks of power. See Mark Ravina, Land and Lordship
in Early Modern Japan (Stanford University Press, 1999), particularly first chapter. I bring it up here
because it will prove useful when we begin to look at who was writing later Edo castaway accounts.
Regarding the baku-han debate over just how much of a Nation-State Japan was in the Edo period, I refer
my readers to Ronald P. Toby, "Review: Rescuing the Nation from History: The State of the State in
Early Modern Japan," in Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 56, No.2 (2001) 197-237.
45 Kikuchi, Shunsuke, Tokugawa kinrei ko, vol. 1-6 (Tokyo: Shih6sh6, 1932-1939). Cited in "Hy6ryu no
jidai haikei ni kan sum shiryo," in Nakahama Manjiro shitsei (Kawasumi Tetsuo, ed.) (Tokyo:
Shogakkan, 1990),963-969. This is not meant to be a complete list of laws that have at some point or
another been called sakoku rei or kaikin.
28
the first half of the nineteenth century, the bakufu made concerted efforts to regulate
overseas exchange through legislation.46 Looking at the document from 1635 that is
most often cited by historians, we see the first three articles read:
*Japanese ships going to foreign countries are strictly prohibited
*Anyone assisting a Japanese in going to a foreign country or otherwise
allowing for their passage shall certainly be executed, while the ship will
be impounded and the ship owner interrogated
*Any Japanese residing abroad, who returns will be executed 47
According to these terse proscriptions, the consequences of drifting abroad
might appear fatal. Furthermore, the document reflects a strong sense of a national
subject (Nihonjin) and a clear distinction between "the foreign" (ikoku) and domestic.
Ronald Toby summarizes these early seventeenth century laws regulating maritime
travel in the following manner:
The measures, which are said to comprise the seclusion policy-
prohibitions on Japanese overseas voyages, restrictions on the export
of weapons, bans on Christianity and on Catholic travel to Japan, and
the like-were indeed promulgated by the bakufu, but they did not
conceive of their actions as shutting Japan off from the rest of the
world, nor would they have recognized the term we most commonly
see for their policy. That term sakoku, a term which has dominated
46 Although the documents themselves do not mention either sakoku or kaikin the terms were used in
official histories written towards the end of the Edo period. For a history ofthe term sakoku see Ronald P.
Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development if the Tokugawa Bakufu
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 11-16. Late Edo usage of the term kaikin can be found in the
Tokugawajikki 1J&i,) II ~1jC (1809-1843). See Kobayashi Shigefumi, Nipponjin ikoku hy6ryitki (Tokyo:
Shogakkan, 2000), 13.
47 Hiraga Noburu, ed., Nihonshi shiry6 senshit, vol. 1. (Tokyo: Bon'ninsha, 1990), 141-142. It should be
noted that these first three articles are nearly identical to the document titled Kaneijit tori doshi nigatsu
Nagasaki bugy6 he no h6sho J[7k+@~=jj jH\li-$":1T1IZ$":i!from 1633. See Nakahama Manjir6
shitsei (Kawasumi Tetsuo, ed.) (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1990),963.
29
the modern historiography of the Tokugawa period, was not a
contemporary seventeenth-century term.48
It is also important to point out that the only documents traditionally referred to
as sakoku rei that mention castaways directly are those documents from 1806 and 1843,
both of which, far from promising death to Japanese drifting abroad or foreigners being
cast ashore in Japan, instead establish a humane protocol for dealing with such
distressed victims.49 In fact, only one document from the later Edo period that has
come to be considered sakoku rei ever mentions actually firing upon foreign ships and
that is the Ikoku sen uchi harai rei of 1825: A document made famous by the Morrison
Incident of 1837 in which a ship attempting to repatriate castaways was repelled by a
battery of fire. 50 Because of the controversy that this incident stirred, the uchi harai
order was, by 1842, replaced by a much friendlier approach to foreign ships off the
coast of Japan. In these two documents from the 1806 and 1843, castaways are to be
cared for with food, water, and firewood or, in the case that they are Japanese castaways,
they are to be turned over to bakufu authorities. In looking at this set of documents that
48 Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development ([the
Tokugawa Baku[u (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 11.
49 The document of 1806, titled, Oroshiya sen no gi ni tsuki gosho tsuki Bunka san nen toradoshi
shOgatsu nijitroku nichi ;jQ;:' L~~BZ 1N=1tiJ!lJiH1 )(1r:,,:::::Jcf. Jll:Jcf.lEjj itr; 1'3 • deals specifically with
castaways (hy6chakumin) from Russia and states, "If in fact they have met with storms and have become
cast away, lack food water and firewood, and cannot immediately return to their country. as a response
these things should be provided so that they might return home." The document from 1843, titled Tempo
jityon usagi doshi hachigatsu muika gaikoku he hy6ryu no mono tsurekoe s6r6 setsu uketorikata no koto
:::R1Jf:+1m9P-qoJ\.jj r; 1'3 Yj..OO¥I¥~¥jjEz1!fil~1'*Il1istl&j]Z*. states that any castaway returning on a
foreign ship should be received and, as with the previous year's regulation, firewood, water and food
should be given to the foreign ship no matter what port they call on." See Nakahama Manjir6 shitsei
(Kawasumi Tetsuo, ed.) (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1990), 966.
50 More accurately titled, Ikoku sen noriyose s6r6eba, uchi harai yoshibeki gosho tsuki bunsei hachinenn
toridoshi nigatsujithachi nichi ~OOjijJri**1,*/'\, RJ:jTrb \§,iJ!lJ~1t )(I!ilOl.Jcf.J!!'iJcf.=jj +AS. Ibid. 967.
30
have come to be known as sakoku rei, we can conclude that laws passed in the early 1i h
century were specifically addressed to people willfully traveling in and out of Japan and,
in particular, is concerned with Catholics (Bateren 1'¥.:RJt) and regulation of
international trade.
Studies of Edo period castaways in the 20th century have almost always begun
with a discussion of sakoku policy and then proceeded to attribute the dramatic increase
in the sheer number of castaways during the Edo period to a draconian bakufu policy of
isolation. A particular pattern emerged with the publication of the first book-length
academic study of the topic by Yoshioka Nagayoshi in 1944. In his Hy6ryusen
monogatari no kenkyu, he establishes both a natural and "man-made" reason to explain
the numerous castaway accounts written during the Edo period. For the former, namely
Japan's legacy as a island nation "surrounded by the four seas" (written at the height of
Japan's continental expansion!), he emphasizes Japan's proximity to the kuroshio
current that could potentially pull Japanese ships in a northeasterly direction and,
meeting with the Liman current in the North Pacific, produce storm-prone seas.51 The
other, "man-made" condition he addressed early on was the Tokugawa sakoku seisaku
(Closed-Country policies), which he claimed forbade the construction of large ships and
the development of scientifically-based navigational methods.52
In 1956 the historical geographer, Ayuzawa Shintar6, published the first book-
length study ofEdo period castaways in the post-war era. In his introduction he argues
51 Yoshioka Yoshinaga, Hy6ryusen monogatari no kenkyu (Tokyo: Hokko Shobo, 1944),50.
52 Ibid., 50.
31
that Japanese castaways have not been granted the recognition they deserve for the
important roles they played in world history and geography, while in the first proper
chapter he attempts to unravel the seemingly oxymoronic sub-title of his text-Sakoku
jidai no kaigai hatten or "Overseas Development during the Age of Isolation"- by
offering two accounts that in his argument, demonstrate that Edo period Japanese
willfully used the castaway to exploit and develop new territories. 53 While his thesis is
somewhat convoluted and based on two somewhat specious accounts, he nonetheless
gestures towards seeing the castaway in terms of a larger world history and offers an
implicit critique of sakoku policies (with phrases such as, "sekai chiri karamo mataku
dokuritsu shiteita to omowaregachina, sakoku jidai no Nihonjin," or "the Japanese of
the 'Closed Country period, who have come to be thought of as completely independent
of even world geography.") However, nowhere in his text does he question the
existence of such policies. In fact, he instead points to a specific policy of the bakufu's
that limited the size of ships during the Edo period, and thus logically argues that
smaller ships led to more maritime accidents. Furthermore, he states that Edo period
castaways, when drifting abroad to foreign spaces where they could not verbally
communicate, could simply outline an image of a one-mast ship in the sand that would
be taken to mean they were Japanese, thus implying that the bakufu also prohibited
ships with more than one mast,54 While he is generally careful to cite historical sources
throughout most of his study, this anecdotal reference (which he suggests happened
53 Ayuzawa Shintar6, (Nihon rekishi shinsho) Hy6ryu: Sakokujidai no kaigai hatten, (Tokyo: Ibund6,
1956), unnumbered introductory pages and 1-9.
54 Ibid, 1.
32
more than once) to drawing ships in the sand, remains undocumented. Nonetheless,
these two spurious causes for a dramatic increase in the number of castaways during the
Edo period have been picked up and reinforced by most, later scholars of castaway
accounts.
In 1960 the geographer Muroga Nobuo and Yamori Kazuhiko published their
study of Bandan iiH~, a castaway account written in 1841 by the Confucian Koga
Kinichiro ll~~~&~based on interviews with a sailor named Jirokichi. In the extensive
introduction, the first part of which is not so subtly titled, "Sakoku and hyoryu," they
reiterate and build on Ayuzawa's understanding of the relationship between castaways
and bakufu maritime laws, writing, "During the Edo period, the ships of Japan did not
have keels. With only one mast and one sail, it was not possible for them to freely
navigate the deep sea.,,55 In 1964 Arakawa Hidetoshi, the most prolific collector and
transcriber ofEdo period castaway narratives during the post-war period, offered a
slightly different take on the cause for such an explosion in the numbers of castaway
accidents during this time.56 Reflecting his training as a climatologist, Arakawa turned
to natural phenomenon to explain the cause for so many incidents of drift, all the while
paying lip service to sakoku. 57 Looking at the times of the year in which a
disproportionate number of accidents took place and textual evidence in castaway
accounts that mention onishi kaze C::k®@' "Great Western Winds"), he argues that
55 Muroga Nobuo and Yamori Kazuhiko, Bandan: hyOlyit no kiroku I (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1965), 3.
56 Arakawa Hidetoshi, Nihonjin hyoryitki, (Tokyo: linbutsu Oraisha, 1964).
57 Ibid., 9-10.
33
strong and unpredictable seasonal winds that develop during the winter months were
primarily responsible for the large number of Japanese castaways,58
Kawase Hikomitsu attempted to synthesize Arakawa's scientific take on
castaway accounts with the more commonly accepted historical understanding of this
relationship between sakoku and castaways. He points out that sakoku laws were
directed toward ocean-going ships and international contact, and did not pertain to
domestic shipping, which was based on a form of navigation known as yamami WJi'..
(also referred to asji mawari :tlliJ!g!andjikata nori:l:-illJJ:*:) in which the ship followed a
visible coastline using landmarks such as mountains, islands, and beaches as guides,59
The following year he refined his ideas concerning the reasons for castaway narratives
in an article titled "Hyoryu" that appeared in a book-length collection of research on
Edo period maritime culture,60 While he does not mention restrictions on ship
construction that had been a significant factor for earlier researchers of hy6ryu, it was
the bakufu policies of sankin k6tai (~tYJx{~ "alternative attendance") and the collection
of nengu (if.ffit "annual taxes") that led to an increased number of castaway accounts in
the Edo period,61 For Kawase, it was the growing population in Edo and other urban
areas and the need for more and faster transportation routes between urban centers of
58 Ibid., 11-19. His interest in currents and winds was pursued even more convincingly in his later
published Ikoku hy6ryu monogatari (Tokyo: Shakai Shis6sha, 1969), 199-215.
59 Kawase Hikomitsu, Nihonjin hy6ryuki (Tokyo: Shakai Shis6sha, 1967),272-275.
60 Kawase Hikomitsu, "Hy6ryu," in Fune (Sud6 Toshiichi, ed.) (Tokyo: H6sei Daigaku Shuppan Kyoku,
1968), 238-276.
6\ Ibid, 239-240.
34
consumption and sites of production that led to an increase in accidents. To prove his
point, and echoing nearly verbatim Arakawa's work, he mentions that there was a
disproportionately greater number of accidents taking place from the 10th to the 1i h
month (lunar calendar), precisely when annual shipments of tax rice were being
shipped.62 In short, he presents an argument that resonates well with other historical
approaches to Edo period history that focus on an increasingly centralized center of
power and increased urban development. In 1990 Kata Takashi continued this line of
thought arguing, "The reason for so many castaway accounts in the early modern period
is first and foremost the environmental conditions of currents and climate which Japan
finds itself surrounded by, followed by an increase in maritime activity that
accompanied the formation of a national market and maintenance of coastal routes."
Although he later argues that the term kaikin is more appropriate than sakoku, he
nonetheless clearly states that the conditions of a "Closed Country system" ( I ~J\i.OO J mlJ)
resulted in insufficiently constructed ships and an underdevelopment in Japanese
maritime technology ( I~J\i.OO J mlJ 1:: J: Q ;f1J~Bo),t~@s"J.x ~(s J:: :9i-?4':~1t:#Jt1;l-rOY,R~J~Ut J::" i?,t~~
~;h-n'\Q.)63
Despite Kawase and Kata's subtle shifts, the notion that the Tokugawa bakufu
strictly regulated the size and shape of ships during the Edo period continued to persist
in castaway studies. In the same publication where Kawase's article appeared, the
maritime historian Ishii Kenji identified the supposed laws in question, pointing out that
62 Of 147 cases, 88 take place during this time. Ibid, 241-242, 309.
63 Kat6 Takashi, (Sosho Edo bunko ichi) Hyoryu kidan shusei (Tokyo: Kokusho Kank6kai, 1990),428-
429.
35
in 1635 construction of ships over 500 koku was banned.64 Likewise, Nanba Matsutaro
addressed the causes of castaway accidents in an article on sengoku bune or "1000 koku
ships," and provided perhaps the most schematized understanding ofEdo castaways,6S
Here, in a sub-section of his studies titled "hy6ryu no hisan to sono genin," or "The
misery and causes of drift," Nanba breaks down the causes into three groups; 1)
fundamental causes, 2) indirect causes, and 3) direct causes.66 Under the category of
"fundamental causes," he attributes the following three factors to bakufu policies of
sakoku. First, Japanese sailors did not have knowledge of trans-oceanic navigation.
Secondly, they did not have the necessary equipment for such long voyages. And
finally, Japanese compasses that were in use at the time, were inferior to western
devices and untrustworthy on rough seas. His category of "indirect causes," includes,
by this time, the much echoed reasons that Japanese ships were characterized by their a
single large sail, a single mast, and a large and unfixed rudder, and lacked a watertight
deck-all hallmarks of the sakoku argument-but he also adds that ships during this
time were routinely overloaded with cargo. Finally, his "direct causes," which include
the fact that the mast frequently had to be cut down if the ship found itself in rough
waters; that the relatively large, unfixed rudders were frequently broken in strong cross-
currents; and that life boats (tenma, 1~)~l~) were frequently discarded, only emphasized
64 Ishii Kenji, "Kinsei shoki no seiyagata hasen," in Fune (Suda Toshiichi, ed.) (Tokyo: Hasei Daigaku
Shuppan Kyoku, 1968), 126.
65 Nanba Matsutara, "Sengoku bune no kakai," in Fune (Suda Toshiichi, ed.) (Tokyo: Hasei Daigaku
Shuppan Kyoku, 1968), 204-238.
66 Ibid, 222-224.
36
bakufu maritime regulations as a cause for such tragedy at sea.67 In short, post-war
scholarship of Edo period castaways from Ayuzawa to more recent writers such as
Yoshimura Akira have attributed bakufu regulation of ship construction and the rubric
of sakoku to be the essential factors in explaining the subject of early-modern drift.68
Besides Arakawa, who looked to wind patterns and currents to explain the early modern
phenomenon of castaways, the one notable exception among this generation of scholars
is Haruna Akira, who in 1979 first published his study of the three H6jun-maru
survivors who drifted to the Pacific Northwest coast of North America in 1833.69 Here
he is very careful to avoid attributing this incident to any Tokugawa edict regulating
ship construction, instead pointing out that regulations regarding ship construction
issued by the bakufu in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were expedient
political means that never were meant to be applied to commercial ships.7o While he
uses the phrase sakoku chitsujo ~JiOOf:;l(ff:on one occasion (p. 33), it is in a discussion of
the production of castaway accounts, and not as a reason for the H6jun-maru's fate. In
1981 he published a collection of essays dealing with various Edo period castaway
accidents under the title of Sekai wo miteshimatta otokotachi.71 This text approaches
the topic ofEdo castaways from a much broader perspective, but again he rarely falls
67 Ibid.
68 Yoshimura Akira, Hy6ryit (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1980).
69 Haruna Akira, Nippon Otokichi hy6ryitki (Tokyo: Shinbunsha, 1979), I am using a later edition of this
text published in 1988. Citations come from Haruna Akira, Nippon Otokichi hy6ryitki (Tokyo: Chao
Koronsha, 1988).
70 Ibid., 34. Also see the extended footnote # lOon pages 306-307 regarding sakoku.
71 Haruna Akira, Sekai wo miteshimatta otokotachi (Tokyo: Bungei Shunshu, 1981).
37
back on saoku ron. In fact, here he suggests that castaway narratives are somewhat
exceptional in that their accidental nature precludes them from the stipulations of the
bakufu's sakoku rei. 72 Finally, his 1982 work, Hy6ryu, he is clear in pointing out that
ship size and construction techniques by the Bakumatsu period (1850-1868) were not
regulated, but instead quite diverse.73
The only two book-length studies on early-modern Japanese castaways in
English from the post-war era are Nishinomiya Kazuo's unpublished dissertation, "A
View of the Outside World During Tokugawa Japan: Reports of Travel by Castaways-
1636 to 1856-," and Katherine Plummer's The Shogun's Reluctant Ambassadors. 74 If
anything, these studies only emphasize a direct connection between Edo period
castaways and bakufu sakoku policies. For example, in the latter we see Plummer
reading the letter of Tokugawa law in a fairly interpretive manner when she extrapolates
from a 1638 "sakoku ordinance" (quite independent of repatriated castaways) that
"those who drifted to foreign countries, knew that once they had stepped on foreign soil
they would never be allowed to return home.,,75 She conflates Japanese fisherman and
sailors with Christians and trans-oceanic traders, when she speaks of the "fear and
72 Ibid., 10.
73 Haruna Akira, Hy6ryi1: Josefu Hiko to nakamatachi (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1982), 11-14. The
more recent research of the bakumatsu maritime historian Asai Ryosuke suggests as much.
74 Nishinomiya, Z. Kazuo, "A View of the Outside World During Tokugawa Japan: Reports of Travel by
Castaways~1636 to 1856~" unpublished dissertation form the Department of Geography, University of
Washington, 1972. This is more or less a translation of Ayuzawa's text. Katherine Plummer, The
Shogun's Reluctant Ambassadors: Japanese Sea Drtfters in the North Pacific (Third edition, revised)
(Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1991.
75 Plummer (1991), xiv.
38
trepidation that gripped the hearts" of these men, the majority of whom never sailed too
far beyond sight of shore.76 The fact ofthe matter is, while most sailors probably did
fear for their lives at sea at some time, very few probably worried about being killed
upon repatriation in the event that they did become cast away to a foreign country.
While there are some castaways who committed suicide upon repatriation, there are no
examples of castaways being put to death for accidentally going abroad. There is
however one case from 1753 in which a castaway by the name of Sannosuke was put to
death once it was revealed that he in fact intentionally lied about going to Luzon.77 This
is also one of several examples of castaways demonstrating an awareness that contact
with Christianity was forbidden. Plummer's fundamentalist interpretation of early
seventeenth-century edicts, coupled with other mis-readings ofthe Tokugawa era (they
had no currency!) allows her to conclude, "The long era of self-imposed seclusion, in
which everything foreign was rejected, contributed to the prevailing 'insular mentality'
among the people of the island nation.,,78 While she does cite Arakawa's work on
seasonal weather patterns, she seems to borrow even more heavily from those who
earlier argued that bakufu regulation of ship construction was the primary factor in
maritime accidents during this time.79 Plummer is so confident of a direct tie between
Edo period castaways and sakoku policies, that she even argues that castaways were the
76 Ibid., 1.
77 See Nagasaki shi 1ii:~;tinArakawa (1962), 236-238.
78 Plummer (1991), 6, 8.
79 Ibid., 9-19.
39
original cause of such policies. Pointing to the case of a Spanish ship that came
aground in the Province ofTosa in 1596, she writes that the castaway showed the
Japanese a globe of the earth and "threatened Japan with vengeance if the Spanish were
detained," while also explaining that Spain's imperial strategy as such: "We send out
missionaries to convert the people; then traders follow. When trade is flourishing we
send out armies who, with the native turncoats, annex the nation.,,8o Needless to say, in
analyzing five Japanese documents that mention this incident, I cannot corroborate
Plummer's anecdote nor find any suggestion that this event may have led to the closure
of the country.81
Although Plummer elevated the importance of sakoku rei as the determining
factor for not only castaways, but also the entire Edo period, Haruna was perhaps wise
to express a certain skepticism. In 1995, in an article on a maritime accident of 1861,
Yamashita Tsuneo emphasized the varying particulars of any given castaway and
warned ofthe dangers of generalizing about Edo period castaways.82 In the same year,
Adachi Hiroyuki published his study of Edo maritime history in which he explains the
bakufu edict that has so often worked its way into post-war Edo period castaway
studies.83 Adachi's research traces the long-held misunderstanding that the bakufu
80 Ibid., 4.
81 Genshinki 5G!€ll.1lC, Taik6ki ::t:M1li..'., Ota Gyitichi zakki ::t:lE4='-*!t1li..'., Nanro shi J¥il*it, and the Tsitk6
ichiran @JiJn:-J[ all mention a Spanish or Luzon ship becoming distressed in Tosa in the year 1596.
They all seem to be the same account that Plummer refers to. See Arakawa (1962),54-57.
82 See Yamashita Tsuneo, "Bunkyil gannen Kumano nada hy6ryil jiken no tokuisei," ::t!l\5G1tO. ~!I!tit~
?Ttf${tj:0)!f,fJH1in Nihon kaijishi no shomondai, senpaku hen (vol. 1) (Ishii Kenji, ed.) B *?fjr$5t'.O)1l1fF,,~
~ fiYdJiJB~(Tokyo: Bunken Shuppan, 1995).
83 Adachi Hiroyuki, Iy6 noJune: y6shikisen d6nyit to sakoku taisei (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1995).
40
regulated ship construction during the Edo period through the prohibitions of keels and
multi-masts to the prolific maritime historian, Unekawa Shizuo's 1927 work titled
Kaiun k6 kokushi. 84 He demonstrates that in referring to an edict from 1635 that limits
the cargo load of ships to 500 koku, Unekawa adds (without any textual proof to back
his point) that ships of more than two masts and with keels were also banned. In turn,
he suggests that Unekawa may have based this extra-textual interpretation on much
earlier treatises written in the late-Edo period that mention Japanese ships being limited
to one mast (although proscriptions against keels do not appear), such as Koga Daan's
~.1[jlJJ1fl;Kaib6 okusoku ¥EJ[lJj~!7JWof 1838 and Sata Chfrrya's 13":jj'icpIl!iChury6 manroku cP
~N¥~~of 1826.85 Likewise, certain hy6ryuki written at the very end of the Edo period
also vaguely mention prohibitions, such as an account from 10lh month of 1842.86
In 2000 Kobayashi Shigefumi, picking up 011 Yamashita's concerns and citing
the work of Adachi, dismantled the notion that sakoku either led to a castaway
phenomenon or the regulation of ship-building and vindicated Haruna's earlier
skepticism. He points out that the edict from 1635 originally referred to by Unekawa
was in fact the seventeenth article of the revised Bukeshihatto of that year. While it did
prohibit the construction of war and military ships of more that 500 koku, three years
84 Ibid, 12. Also see, Unekawa ShizuoiEJ-JI/wJ;x, Kaiun k6 kokushi ffl~J!~~ (Osaka: Kaiji Ih6sha,
1927).
85 Ibid, 13. Hokkaid6 University Library has a two volume manuscript copy ofD6an's text (1811['.
0256(05)-1,2). For a study of the Koga family see, Makabe Jin, Tokugawa kOki no gakumon to seiji:
Sh6heizaka gakumonjo jusha to bakumatsu gaik6 heny6 (Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2007).
86 The account in question states, 1-:'£ <-=-*rlJFLZ{!Hi~t§JJX:ti1i,:::{.r*J see Tsukoichiran zokuhen 5: 352.
41
later the rule was rewritten and limited to only war ships.87 Kobayashi concludes that
this law that has so frequently been referred to as the ultimate sakoku policy, was in fact
only meant to suppress the naval power of rival daimyo through the regulation of only
ships of war. "The construction of sea-faring commercial ships, ships with more than
d k I · h'b' d ,,88two masts, an ee constructIOn were never once pro lIte .
In light of Adachi and Kobayashi's critique of sakoku edicts and the frequently
accepted historical relation they have had to the phenomenon of Edo period castaways,
we must conclude that what have come to be called sakoku policies or kaikin had no
direct bearing on the construction of these ships. But the question of why Japanese
commercial sailors did not adopt safer vessels remains? As these earlier scholars of
castaways have frequently pointed out, the very structure of Japanese cargo ships during
the late Edo period played an important role in accidents of drift.
Briefly returning to the "direct causes" of Edo period hy6ryu mentioned by
Nanba, namely damage to the rudder and cutting of the mast, it does appear that the
very architecture of these launches probably led to an increase in the number of
castaway accidents. What Kata and others commonly refer to as wabune ("traditional
Japanese ships"), is in fact a broad category that in the early Edo period consisted of
various regional vessels suited to local waterways and transportation needs.89 Looking
87 Kobayashi Shigefumi, Nipponjin ikoku hy6ryitki (Tokyo: ShOgakkan, 2000), 54. See also, Adachi
Hiroyuki, 14-15.
88 Ibid., 54.
89 The futanari plied waters ranging from Kyushu in the south to waters off Ise in the north, while z6ga
and bezai ships were common in the Inland Sea. Adate ships were found in south of Honshu, while
hokkoku, hagase, kumi, and maze were common to waters of the Japan Sea (which was not called Japan
Sea in Edo period). See Nishinomiya (1972),20. William Wayne Farris also has an unpublished
42
at late-Edo castaway accounts, a vast majority of reports involving Japanese castaways
(Nakahama Manjiro being an important exception) became distressed while aboard the
more specific sengoku bune T:P~Bor bezai sen #::tfiYri. 90 These ships, characterized by
their large unfixed rudders and single (sometimes double) fixed mast construction, are
said to have originally developed for the purpose of transporting large loads over 1000
koku of rice or its equivalent (approximately 10000 cubic feet) in the relatively calm
and shallow waters of the Seto Inland Sea. By the late seventeenth century they had
become the vessel of choice for shipments of nengu payments of rice and other goods.
Before the late seventeenth century long distance transportation routes were usually a
combination of land and waterways. For example, goods from Hokuriku would be
shipped to Obama and then taken by land route to the north end of Lake Biwa, where
they were again put on a boat to be shipped to Otsu. From Otsu, they would be
transported again overland to Miyako and Osaka.91 Once circumnavigation around
Honshu was realized, it became more economical to use strictly maritime routes. For
example, the time in transit for shipments from Ou (northern tip ofHonshu) to Edo was
summary of pre-modern shipbuilding practices, "Shipbuilding in Japan, Origins to 1600," that was
presented at the University of Oregon, Tools o/Culture conference organized by Andrew Goble inJune
1999.
90 There are exceptions to this, the most obvious being the case of Nakahama Manjir6--Japan's most
famous castaway-who went adrift off the coast of Tosa in a smaller fishing boat in 1841. It should also
be noted that the term Kita mae bune which appears more regularly in the later Edo period was a term to
designate a particularly large bezai ship used primarily for sailing to Tohoku and Hokkaido by way of the
Japan Sea. See Ishii Kenji, "Wabune no kazo," in Nihon shomin seikatsu shiry6 shitsei, vol. 5 (Ikeda
Hiroshi, ed.) (Tokyo: Sanichi Shobo, 1985),869-884; Ishii Kenji, "Sengoku bune," and Nanba Matsutaro,
"Sengokubune no kokai," both in Fune (Sudo Toshiichi, ed.) (Tokyo: Hosei Daigaku Shuppankyoku,
1968), 150-182 and 204-238, respectively; Kanezashi Shozo -ili:}iiiJE~, Nihon kaiji kanshit shi S *?4iJ:'I'1t
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1967), 1-14.
91 Nishinomiya (1972), 19. Kawamura Zuiken is known to have developed a route through the
Shimonoseki Straights in the mid-1 i h century, thus dramatically shortening the time between Hokuriku
and Kinki regions.
43
reduced from one year to one month.92 The bezai or sengoku bune were most suited to
the venture of shipping goods along long stretches of coast. Aside from being able to
transport large quantities of goods with relatively small crews, the primary advantage of
these ships was their maneuverability. In shallow waters the sail could be dropped and
the rudder raised, allowing for easy access to moorings. Furthermore, the removable
decking facilitated easy loading and unloading, even if the trade-off was a porous deck
that occasionally led to swamping in rough seas. In short, these ships proved most
effective for navigating the coastal trade routes that rarely ventured beyond the sight of
land.
However, if one of these ships met with rough seas, the oversized rudder or part
of it would often shear off, leaving the ship uncontrollable, top heavy, and unstable. To
improve stability, sailors would sometimes not only drop the sail and anchor, but also
cut the mast, thus rendering them completely dependent on the whims of the currents
and winds. 93 While earlier hy6ryu scholars falsely attributed the idiosyncrasies of such
boats to bakufu isolation policies, it is hard to refute the point that such ship building
practices, coupled with the increasing domestic trade needed to supply the growing
populations of urban centers in the archipelago, resulted in a growing number of
distressed ships and castaway incidents.
92 Nishinomiya (1972),20.
93 It is interesting to note that the Portuguese Mendes Pinto, on his second voyage to Japan in a Chinese
junk, became cast away and eventually drifted to Ryukyu after the mast of the Chinese ship he was on
was cut during a storm. He tells us that the mast crushed fourteen people, among them five Portuguese.
This suggests that the act of cutting masts was not new to later Edo castaways, and very well may have
been common practice on Chinese junks as well. See Rebecca D. Catz, The Travels ofMendes Pinto
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989),287.
44
There are numerous examples in Edo period castaway accounts that demonstrate
this. 94 In most cases, cutting the mast takes place soon after the rudder is damaged. For
example, in an anonymously written Meiwa yon idoshi OkushCt Onahama no mono,
crew of the Sumiyoshi-maru, who in 1767 returned to Japan from Annan (Vietnam)
after two years, we read:
In the morning of the following day, our rudder ruined by the
great western wind and rough seas, we began to drift. We cut
down the mast and of the 25 or 26 bales of edible rice, we
dumped almost all of it into the sea. Everyone cut their hair
and Shichibei threw the knife he owned into the sea. The storm
passed, winds changed from time to time and we spent about
thirty days without any country in sight.
94 A partial and incomplete list includes, Bishit Dno murafune hyoryu ikken fiMI'I:*!I!HiJiYd1!j";ritE-ftj::
(1669)(NSSSS5, p. 553), Nisshitbune hy6ryit kiji B ~1'1'1~8r!j";1itEili:. (1696) (Kate, p. 164), Enshitbune
mujint6 monogatari il1'1'IJiYd1!\tAJ1!,~iiJjji3- (1739 or later) (NSSSS5, p. 469), H6reki hyoryit monogatari
3s:R'!'1~1JtE~jji3-(1754)(Arakawa,p. 72), Okubito Annan koku hyoryitki ~A~i¥f~1!j";1itEilc. (1767) (Kate,
1990, p. 31), Annan koku hyoryit monogatari ~i¥f~1!j";1itE~jji3- (1767) (NSSSS, p.591), Sasshitjin T6koku
hy6ryitki roiHI'IAm~1!j";1itEili: (1774) (Kate, p. 34), Ka-i kyitnen roku *~1L1:p~ (1776) (Arakawa, 1969, p.
126), Mujint6 danwa ~AJ1!,jj~jj3 (1787) (Kate, p. 92), Shoei-maru T6koku hyOlyitki t~*1Lm~~1itEili:
(1788) (Kate p. 83), Hokusa bunryaku ~tttljfjOOft (1794), (NSSSS5, p.), Nanpyoki i¥flJmili: (1797) (Kate, p.
193), Mujin shima he hy6chaku no mono ginmisho ~A L;:t ""-1!j";3WZ b 0)04''*'1: (1797) (Arakawa, p.
291), Morokoshi hy6ryitki m±~1itEjjC (1799) (Kate, p. 264), Kodayit taizen ¥*:K:*~ (1800) (Kate, 54),
Roshiakoku hyominki ~Jl9£IE:OOr!j";B:;ilc. (1800) (Arakawa, p. 163), Hyofutan 1!j";:K~ (1801) (Arakawa, p.
93), Tokuj6-maru Rokoku hy6ryitki t<*1Litl~j!j";1JtEilc. (1804) (Kate, p. 317), Funaosa niki Jil'd* B ili:
(1822) (NSSSS5, p. 508), Bunkajitsan hinoe ne doshi Sasshit hy6kyaku kenbun roku Jtft+ c=.j];j~~iIi+I'1
~~~Ijfj~ (1816) (Kate, p. 325), Nankai kibun i¥frm:;);i:1jfj (1820) (NSSSS5, p. 627), Perao monogatari .r-:.
'7 ;t~jji3- (1835) (Kate, p. 380), Kishitko Kumano hyolyitbanashi ;);i:1'1'11=11l~!I!J~litE~ (1841) (NSSSS5, p.
443), Tokei monogatari a~m.~jji3- (1841) (NSSSS5, p. 16), Bandan *~ (1842) (NSSSS5, p. 300), T6k6
kibun *Jfr1i:;);i:1i!J (1843) (NSSSS5, p. 312), Rusonkoku hy6ryitki g* ~~1!lEili: (1845) (NSSSS5, p. 573),
Nagase murabito hy6ryitdan :BtlftHA1!j";1!lE~ (1850) (NSSSS5, p. 671), T6y6 hy6kyaku danki *1$1!j";~~
~ (1852) (NSSSSS5, p. 601), Hy6ryitsen kikigaki ~1itE~8~~'I: (1853) (Arakawa, p. 220), Kishitsen
Beikoku hyoryitki ;);cj'IHf:i*OO~1itE~ (1854) (Kate, p. 401), [Manjir6] Hy6ryitki 1!j";1JfE~ (1854?) (Arakawa,
p. 190), [Hikozo] Hy6ryitki r!j";1JfEilc. (1863) (Arakawa, p. 236). Dates in parenthesis refer to the year the
text was written except for the first document which appears to be a much later retelling by the author of
the third account listed, based on a story the author heard from his grandfather. Citations are abbreviated
as follows: "Kate" is Kate Takashi, Hy6ryit kitan shitsei (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankekai, 1990); "Arakawa"
is Arakawa Hidetoshi, Kinsei hy6ryitki shit :ilIi:lti\\'l1JfEilc.~Tokyo: Hesei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 1969).
Page numbers refer to place where mast cutting is mentioned.
45
~ 13 !ji:)j :*WJ$lJ'fL YHl (~ ..C fIl: :a:-1JU~ L, Pj,: 1m 2: Q ',. 1~ {-;t, ~fLH: :a:- tJJ 1JT ,
*=+3i, ~**.fl:*1~7~L~I'i0<lR.H~ML ~~:a:-tJJ, -tA11I:rPJTM"
0) MH~·: :a:-lijH~ti t:, {~(' <!:: v\'" t' t, fl>!< l~ J$l~ f), fL =+ 1'"11iiJ~
<!:: tit <1~\'!;'095
Other accounts suggest that cutting the mast was meant to stabilize the vessel
and alleviate undue wind pressure. Accounts such as the Ka-i kyunen roku ~~1L~~
claim that even after dropping the sail, the wind bent the mast like a bow (f±I'i~ <!:: Pj,:t:::.
I'iJr),96 as does the Nankai kibun WJ1iUc~ (ffQ:t!.lf.~ J tzD~ JJX:7 /"A, "The mast was
blown like a drawn bow,,).97 Other texts such as Tokei monogatari suggest even more
strongly the necessity of cutting the mast (~B:a:-t:::.--t'tPJ"13 <!:: ~fLf±:a:-tJJ f) , "Saying we had
to save the ship, the mast was CUt.,,98 Likewise, in Enshusen mujint6 monogatari Ji'HIJtlid
~A!1J'J~i!-we read, "Since it was becoming more difficult to maintain the boat, we did
explanations are fairly matter-of-fact, however in at least two texts-Ruson koku
hy6ryuki written in 1845 by Otsuki Bankei (second son of Gentaku) and the testimony
of the castaway Kiyotaro from 1854- cutting of the mast is something done only after
consultations with the gods. 100
95 Kat6 (1990), 31.
96 Arakawa (1969),126.
97 NSSSS5,627.
98 NSSSS5, 16.
99 NSSSS5, 469.
100 Kobayashi points out that in the kuchigaki of Kiyotar6 of the Eiryoku-maru it states that through
divination they were told NOT to cut down the mast, but they did anyway. See Kobayashi Shigefumi,
Nippon ikoku hyoryuki (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 2000),63; and Irj!j':*jj!~(i')B5:a:-~*~J in ~@*1i:-'U,rc,jU
vol. 116.
46
Day became night, the wind and waves raged, and since the boat
already appeared dangerous, we began to jettison the cargo but the
winds would not stop and only increased. The crew cut their hair
together, prayed to the gods and Buddhas, and carried out a
kamikuji divination ceremony in which we were divinely instructed
to cut the mast. While discarding of the mast the wind did not abate
in the least, but begging for immediate mercy from this predicament,
we were at once heard. Although the wind gradually grew quiet
throughout the 18th [same day], we did not know our direction as
we drifted on the great sea.
11Z~=A IJ, J!l~5ffim<, J~!,H~m)itft!: <t§J?,.r-..{~~={t, ~k J:1\Ifi'taljMf{~.r-..*,
5ffi~J!l~~$,*M-~.i'm, ~~i'*£L,~.i'.~~.r-..~, mtti'
mtL2::0)1J!1JW.n=1i, ~JH'±i'mMf{~lJ~L J!l-rRH=~~$, JJ:U=I'i~-'F-J:lb~t~
pt 2::, -~Jt'I~1±llliiE IJ 0 ?,tJVFJr, +JU3 ~=~ lJ.@:k J!l~'irt~=t§JJX:{~.r-..*,
j]jIj t ~*Q, *1$~=YJiEtLY~H}IOl
Is this Deus ex machina moment simply an invention on the part of the
castaways Chojiro and Kihei on whose testimony it is based or is it something that the
author Otsuki adds to the text? The numerous references to kamikuji and other rituals
of divination throughout these texts frequently add a component of mystery and awe to
the narrative, whether or not we as readers can determine with any certainty the factual
circumstances and the sincerity of the narrator's metaphysical beliefs. 102
101 NSSSS5, 573,
102 Kamikuji t$lliilI(alternatively mikuji 1d'PlliilI) was a form of divination in which potential answers to
questions directly posed to divinities were written on small pieces of paper, balled up, and usually placed
in a small wooden box filled with dried rice. After waving ajuzu or stick with strips of paper attached
above the box, the balled up paper that became agitated (possibly through static electricity) was
determined to be the divinities answers. Questions usually posed (in the context of castaway accounts)
often included, "How far are we from shore?" "What direction is Japan?" and "Should we consume the
remaining food on board?" We might also note that in western castaway accounts too there are many
instances of the distressed sailor begging for divine favor or grace. See Kobayashi Shigefumi, Nippon
ikoku hy6ryitki (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 2000), 56-61.
47
Illustration 1.1. Scene in which castaways perform kamikuji. Tokei monogatari (1849)103
Calling on the gods for advice in this passage dramatizes the telling by
introducing an unexpected and unknowable element of divine intervention through a
reference to kamikuji. In fact, kamikuji is commonly referred to in late-Edo hy6ryuki,
and appears to have been a practice exclusive to sailors and exotic enough to readers to
warrant editorial explication on the part of the authors. 104 The metaphysical component
to this passage is not limited to the mast cutting, it also appears that the storm's passing
is a direct response to the prayers of the sailors. Kobayashi-in looking at an account
written 1840 titled, Ch6shi minato goj6mai niuchi ginmi ikken ~t-ri*ift'jJ~*tiIf-nt:Jo~JJ*-
103 This photograph is taken from the document that is kept by the Maeda Sonkeikaku Bunko in Tokyo.
104 For example, see Ikeda Hirochika, Funaosa niki in NSSSS5, 507.
48
f!:j::-argues that cutting the mast served as important proof ofjust how serious the
conditions at sea had become and thus vindicated the sailors who also felt the need to
jettison valuable cargo. I05 In this somewhat exceptional case the crew met with a storm
at sea and drifted for 22 days before returning to Japan. Kobayashi points out that
authorities doubted their story because, while they cut their hair and jettisoned the cargo
of rice, they did not cut the mast. I06 It may be that the many references to divine
intervention, kamikuji, and other metaphysical elements in late-Edo hy6ryuki did serve
the function of emphasizing the castaways' own passive role in the disaster. On the
other hand, there are cases in which the cargo is not jettisoned, but the mast is cut and
gods are invoked. Furthermore, Kobayashi's reading does not address the constellation
of events that include cutting of hair. Although haircutting did not seem to carry much
weight in the eyes ofthe authorities who interrogated the castaways, references to
cutting ofthe hair appear frequently in conjunction with cutting of the mast in late-Edo
accounts. The topic of hair cutting and other somatic transformations will be addressed
in more detail later, but for now let us consider these hair cuts as a literary mimetic
device that recalls both a religious mendicant as well as the ship itself. One function of
haircutting is that it forged a sense of solidarity among the crew. I07 (notice that it is
always done as a group with everyone's participation), and this might actually serve
105 Chashi minato goj6mai niuchi ginmi ikken £J6-T¥§HffIl:fJJX*1lD'tT~O~8*~f!:j:: in EHSS5, 459-532.
106 Kobayashi (2000), 63.
107 Hair cutting was often done as a group, although there are exceptions such as Funaosa nikki where
only one crew-member cut his hair. Hair cutting was sometimes accompanied by group vows or
promises that those who survive should inform the next of kin of those who don't, etc.
49
Kobayashi's claim that these scenes were meant to absolve castaways of specific
responsibility. But just as rendering the ship mast-less and rudder-less marks the
initiation of drift and the moment when the ship is beyond the will of human control,
the ritual act of haircutting also marks a more profound transformation in the castaway
who, aboard a derelict ship, now found himself without family and beyond the semiotic
sphere where hair-styles carry specific social meanings. The castaway has shed (and
will continue to literally shed) the trappings of a world he leaves behind as he drifts
over the smooth space of the sea.
We might note that numerous hy6ryuki share a similar pattern and order of
events that suggest a formalized protocol when confronted with storms at sea. In the
previously cited Meiwa yon idoshi Okushu Onahama no mono text, Ruson koku
hy6ryuki, Tokei monogatari, and a great many other hy6ryuki, the inciting moment of
drift takes place at a time of day that is transitional, the wind and waves are threatening,
and the condition of the boat is compromised. Furthermore, the series of responses on
the part of the crew is remarkably consistent, with the mast being cut, the cargo
jettisoned, hair being cut, rituals particular to sailors (ie., throwing metal objects in the
sea and kamikuji) are performed, followed by the passing of the storm and the boat
being rendered to a state of drift. While the more frequent references to mast cutting in
late Edo-period castaway accounts may be taken as evidence of some inherent flaw in
the design of Japanese ships at this time, no one has yet considered the consistency with
which these passages appear in the hy6ryuki. It is highly unlikely that this particular
combination of events-rudder being damaged, cutting the mast, jettisoning the cargo,
50
cutting the hair, praying to the gods, and divining solutions- appearing back-to-back in
so many texts is simply a coincidence. In fact, it is just one of several formal
conventions that characterize late-Edo hy6ryuki.
The conscious effort expended by the authors of these accounts when addressing
these important moments of cutting and praying that begin most late-Edo castaway
narratives is attested to by the editorial commentary incorporated into the texts. For
example, in H6reki hy6ryu monogatari 'i:M1)l'!;11rE~jj! (1754) we read in a smaller inter-
linearly script a detailed explanation of the method Japanese sailors use to cut the
mast. I08 Ikeda Hirochika, in his Funaosa nikki, employs a two-character space
indentation throughout his text in order to distinguish his editorial additions to the story
of his informant, the castaway JUkichi. lo9 He states in a rather extended note, that while
foreign (ikoku) ships depend on knowledge of world geography, compasses, and
astronomy, Japanese sailors rely on kamikuji and prayer. 110 He concludes, "this is the
wisdom of a divine land that must be respected." JiI$[g&IO)7.P L =- ~, • .,&,.r-...'2-' =$=(::: It Iv lll In
much the same fashion, the authors of Tokei monogatari (also cited earlier) add an
indented paragraph that explains why and how sailors in general cut the mast of a
108 Arakawa (1969), 72.
109 The term is niji sage, and a sample of what this text looks like in shahon form can be found in Chapter
Three. This various ways of weaving castaway testimony and editorial commentary are another formal
aspect oflate Edo castaway narratives, and reflect the complicated levels of narration and authorship.
110 The dualistic discourse on wa bune and their opposite, ikoku or iy6 bune, seems to have been well
established by the later Edo period. See, Shiba K6kan's Granda tensetsu (1796) flJII";R~>I., Granda
tsithaku (I805) flJII"iml&s, and Shunba r6hitsuki (1811) *¥~tl~~ all cited in Kobayashi (2000), 55.
III NSSSS5, 507.
51
ship.112 By recasting the singular event of shipwreck into a procedural response known
to all Japanese sailors, the authors of the above three examples effectively characterize
distressed sailors in terms of a national subject. While several post-war hy6ryu scholars
have attributed the causes of castaway accidents to certain structural deficiencies of
wabune and a lack of knowledge regarding modem navigational techniques, Edo period
hy6ryuki authors such as Ikeda Hirochika saw their stories as evidence of a native
"wisdom of a divine land."
112 Ibid., 16.
52
THE DRIFT OF HISTORY
As we have seen, post-war studies of hy6ryu have been informed by the dual,
entrenched notions of sakoku or a self-imposed isolation and, on the other hand, the idea
that Japan's unique geographical position as a maritime nation on the edge of the
kuroshio current. Arguably these two conditions-isolation and an organic, unique
culture that was reinforced by it (ie., feudalism)-have in fact been the foundational
frame by which to represent Edo since European historiographic methods were applied
to Japanese history. Particularly in the post-war period, the emphasis on both sakoku
and Japan's shimaguni ("island nation") status has meshed well with the dominant cold-
war U.S.lJapan alliance. In effect, Japan appeared as the stunted nation, so long
impoverished in its own isolation, but graciously opened-up by the United States.
This however was not always the case. In late-Edo period hy6ryuki at least,
particularly those written by kokugaku, Rangaku, or Confucianist scholars, any sense of
insularity is well-disguised by the tendency of the authors to frequently demonstrate the
their vast knowledge of foreign customs, geography, climactic conditions, even if they
appear dreadfully off from the perspective ofa modern-day readership. Likewise, Japan
is frequently compared and contrasted in these texts in terms grounded in quasi-
scientific methodologies and expressed in terms of realism. The effect at times renders
Japan in terms of equivalency, as one among many other world nations that can stand in
for comparison.
53
Likewise, several Edo period anthologies of hy6ryuki such as the seventy-four
volume Kaihy6 ibun 14Jt*J!<lVJfound in the Doshisha University archive, contain not
exclusively castaway accounts, but are also often interspersed with world maps and
other accounts that do not necessarily place Japan in some isolated bubble, but instead
attempt to order and schematize a world geography. The first Meij i period (1868-1912)
scholar to actively identify and collect hy6ryuki and hy6chakuki was Ishii Kendo. 113
The results of his long-standing interest in castaway accounts are best represented by
the hefty six-volume collection of accounts collected and transcribed by Ishii,
posthumously edited by Yamashita Tsuneo and published in the early 1990s.114 While
his primary contribution to the field was the actual collection and transcription of
numerous accounts into printed form, and not their analysis, it is curious to note that the
term sakoku does not appear once in original edition introductions written by Ishii
himself. The first academic treatment of these texts in book-length detail was Yoshioka
Nagayoshi's work published in 1944 and mentioned earlier. While Yoshioka
emphasized the influence of a sakoku policy, he does so in a manner that reveals the
ideology of such a historiography. While he shares with many post-war scholars this
reification of isolation, the terms in which he does it and the general direction of his
studies, which culminates in a celebration of "Japanese Spirit" (Nihon seishin S*rert$),
li3 Ishii Kend6 (1865-1943) will be discussed in more detail throughout this project. His first work on
castaways seems to have appeared in 1892 (see Yoshioka, 21), although his K6tei hy6ryu kidan zenshu t3i'
~n~¥ilEi§f~:£:~ (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1900) and his Ikoku hy6ryu kitan shu ~OO~1J1E~~~ (Tokyo:
Fukunaga shoten, 1927) both stand as the first post -Edo collections of castaway accounts and a shift
towards a recognizable and legitimate category of study.
114 (Ishii Kend6 kurekushon) Edo hy6ryuki s6shu [Six Volumes] (Yamashita Tsuneo, ed.) (Tokyo: Nihon
Hy6ronsha, 1992-1993. Hereafter, EHSS, followed by volume number.
54
is markedly different from later post-war scholars. For example, in the introduction to
his Hy6ry£tsen monogatari no kenky£t, he claims that his own interest in the subject has
been driven by the limitless examples of a "Japanese-type self consciousness" (Nihon
teki jikaku) and "strong faith in the descent of imperial power from Ise" (Ise s6by6 he
no tsuyoi shink6) that the texts offer. 115 In his concluding paragraph, he even suggests
that the sakoku policies of old are linked to the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere of
his day as he dedicates his research to those, "Imperial Army soldiers and many sailors
who are kept so busy today, under the influence of the Greater Asian War, protecting
distant borders and peripheral boundaries of the nation, perhaps in the many islands to
the south and north where they strategize day and night." (~13 ::k-*BE~$Tf=, ~<.m
f=, f'it::.~mO)~{mn=, jjjU'i, J¥j7J~t7Jl$J::.O)~J.tf= 131Jd'f~, .:x1'i~ytO)*(=Ij'!)f(-~it Gh"'J
"'J;b 0 ¥:jj~q.AlklHS~~R~O)) 116
While the notion of sakoku may have harbored particular ideological directives
during the war years when Yoshioka was writing, it seems that the notion of sakoku
gained most force as a guiding principle of early-modern historiography in the post-war.
The vision of Japan-U.S. relations as one based on the benevolent "opening," on the
part of Commodore Matthew Perry, ofa backward, feudal, and closed Japan of 1852-
1853, meshed well with the ideological imperatives of Japan-US Cold War alliances. In
fact, for MacArthur's surrender ceremonies aboard the USS Missouri in September
1945, Perry's flag was employed as a powerful image of staged diplomacy and
115 Yoshioka Nagayoshi, Hy6ryCtsen monogatari no kenkyCt (Tokyo: Hokko Shobo, 1944),22.
116 Ibid., 22.
55
constituted a symbolic link to and continuity with the sakoku historic paradigm,
suggesting a second benevolent "opening." By the late 1960s certain cracks began to
appear in this fairly persistent notion that Japan was closed off and isolated from the
rest of the world from the 1630s until the 1850s.
In the preface to the Stanford University Press re-print of his State and
Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan, Ronald P. Toby attributes these cracks to a shift in
the global status of the United States. Looking back on the historicity of his own
research carried out in the late 1970s and originally published in 1984, he writes,
Certainly since the mid-1970s, with the American defeat in
Vietnam and the loss of transatlantic primacy; the surge of
Japan into economic and industrial prominence, first in steel
and shipbuilding, then autos, then postindustrially in ceramics,
biotechnology, computers, and robotics, Japan and the West
have both come to question the assumption that Japan is
follower and the West leader.117
This growing skepticism with a "historiographically" defining concept of a
closed early-modern Japan was almost exclusively generated from not Japanese
historians (kokushi), but instead by historians primarily found in the sub-field of history
in Japan known as East Asian history or T6y6shi, a field that is focused on the cross-
border relations within a regional Asian sphere. This group of East Asian (T6y6shi)
historians, which includes Toby among others, has been most instrumental in providing
a new framework to view the Edo period. Since the publication Asao Naohiro's work
in the 1970s, followed by Ronald Toby, Arano Yasunori, Tashiro Kazui, and others, the
117 Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development ofthe
Tokugawa Bakufu (Stanford: University of Stanford Press, 1991), xv.
56
challenges to sakoku ron have clearly come primarily from historians looking at Japan's
relations within an Asian diplomatic and trade sphere that appears anything but,
isolated. 118 While these East Asian historians have convincingly demonstrated the
extensive diplomatic and cultural exchange between Japan and other countries taking
place during the Edo period, they have also come a long way in outlining the extent of
"active, autonomous Japanese relations with the world abroad, one that places Japan at
the center of the world as the Japanese conceived it, rather than at the margins of a
China-centered world or beyond the periphery of a Eurocentric one. ,,119 Likewise, the
influence of these East Asian historians has led scholars of Japanese castaways to see
the phenomenon of early-modern castaways as part of a larger East Asian phenomenon
that also included repatriation of castaways from China, Korea, and Ryfrkyfr. 120
In particular, Ikeuchi Satoshi's work on castaways between Japan and Korea has
demonstrated the history of castaway repatriation protocol between the two countries.
His work further nuances the earlier work of Arano and reveals evidence of policies
being established between the two countries in regards to castaway repatriation from as
118 Asao Naohiro, "Sakokusei no seiritsu," in K6za Nihonshi, vol. 4 (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press,
1970) and Ronald Toby, "Reopening the Question of Sakoku: Diplomacy in the Legitimation of the
Tokugawa Bakufu," Journal ofJapanese Studies, 3,2 (Summer): 323-364. See also, Ronald P. Toby,
State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development ofthe Tokugawa Bakufu
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991). Tashiro Kazui, "Foreign Trade in the Tokugawa Period-
Particularly with Korea," in Emergence ofEconomic Society in Japan, 1600- 1859 (Hayami, et aI., eds.)
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 105-118. Tashiro Kazui, "Foreign Relations during the Edo
Period: Sakoku Reexamined," JJS 8:2,283-306.
119 Toby (1991), xvi.
120 Haruna Akira, "Rekishigaku ni okeru 'hyoryu' no genzai," in Ch6fu Nihon bunka, No.1 0 (March
2000),67. Arano Yasunori, Kinsei Nihon to Higashi Ajia (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1998),
117-147.
57
early as 774. 121 However it was not until the l450s that the practice of repatriating
these castaways exclusively through Tsushima developed, and furthermore it was a
relatively short-lived practice, having collapsed by the mid-16th century.122 He
concludes that until the Edo period, it was still possible for castaways to return on their
own with the help oflocals, even if historical documentation regarding these cases is
relatively rare. Ikeuchi's research into repatriation protocol between Korea and Japan,
suggests that any Japanese policies relating to the repatriation first developed in the
context of Japan-Korea neighborly relations. This corroborates the linguistic history of
the term hy6ryu presented earlier in this chapter. As we have seen, it was not until the
publication ofthe Haedong chechukki by Shin Shuk-chu I'fl,rRfrtin 1471, that the term
hy6ryu becomes pervasive. Together, this suggests that a systematic process of
handling, nursing, and repatriating castaways that developed in the early Edo period,
began with localized concerns regarding drift between the Korean peninsula and the
Japanese archipelago. While the process of repatriating castaways between these two
countries directly through Tsushima was not quite universal at this time and certainly
presented the Tsushima han with a new source of expenses, with the centralization of
the Tokugawa baku/u's claims to power in the early seventeenth century, Ikeuchi argues
that the Nagasaki bugy6 came to be responsible for assistance to and repatriation of
Korean castaways. To demonstrate this major shift in repatriation policy, Ikeuchi cites
121 Citing Arano and Yamauchi Shinji, he notes that in 774 the kokushi at the site of repatriation was
required to provide food and aide to castaways, as well as submit reports to offices in Dazaifu. Ikeuchi
Satoshi, Kinsei Nihon to Chosen hyoryumin Kyoto: Nozomigawa Shoten, 1998),35.
122 Ikeuchi (1998), 35, 37.
58
two incidents of Korean castaways drifting to Tsushima in 1640 and 1644, respectively.
Both groups of castaways, although landing in Tsushima, were first sent to Nagasaki
before being returned to Korea. 123
Arano's contribution to the field of East Asian castaway studies has managed to
shift the discussion of sakoku policy, by suggesting an alternative term-kaikinrei im~
-i'Jor "maritime prohibitions"-that allows us to see bakufu policy regarding foreign
relations not as some feudal cutting off from the rest of the world, but as a set of
periodic decisions meant to engage with the world on the bakufu's own terms. 124
Arano's seminal work on the formation of a systemic castaway repatriation (hy6ryumin
s6kan taisei 1~i5TE.B;;*JJ-{*ilJlj) has in fact opened the door for a younger generation of
123 Ikeuchi (1998), 38.
124 Following Itazawa Takeo, Ronald P. Toby has provided a clear and succinct history of this term. He
points out that the first usage of this word was by Shizuki Tadao in an abbreviated translation of the title
ofthe sixth section of the appendix found in Kaempfer's Das Heutige Japan which he mentions in an
argument against the idea of developing trade with Russia. 124 While Kaempfer's writings are based on
his experiences in Japan from 1691-1692, fifty-some years after the first set of maritime prohibitions
were instituted, Shizuki's usage of the term was within the context of domestic debates concerning Russia
taking place in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. What we may conclude from this is that
not only was the myth of sakoku-that is, an understanding that there was a consistent policy of
isolationism from the 1630s onward-invented in the first decade ofthe nineteenthcentury, but
furthermore that that myth was propagated in part by a 40 year period of intense polemical debate and the
issuance of new kaikin. See, Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the
Development ojthe Tokugawa Bakuju (Stanford: University of Stanford, 1991), 12-19; Arano Yasunori,
Kinsei Nihon to Higashi Ajia (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shppankai, 1998), i-xvi; Itazawa Takeo, Mukashi
no Nany6 to Nihon (Tokyo: Nihon Hoso Shuppan kyokai, 1940), 145. (Cited in Toby); and "An Enquiry,
whether it be conducive for the good of the Japanese Empire, to keep it shut up, as it now is, and not to
suffer its Inhabitants to have any commerce with foreign nations, either at home or abroad." in
Kaempjer's Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed (Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey, ed.) (Honolulu: University
of Hawai'i Press, 1999). Kaempfer's manuscript was not published until 1727. This first published
version was in English, upon which subsequent Dutch and French editions were based. Kobori Keiichi
(cited in Toby) however has pointed out that the English edition is not an accurate translation ofthe
original German manuscript which does not include an equivalent to the phrase, "to keep it shut up."
Thus it would seem that the addition of this phrase suggests that sometime between the 1690s when
Kaempfer was writing his manuscript and 1727, when the English edition appears, the notion of Japan
being a "closed country" first makes its way into the English speaking imaginary.
59
scholars interested in castaways between Japan and other areas of Asia, including
Ryukyu and Korea. 125 But although the notion of sakoku seisaku (or "Closed Country"
Policy), which came to define early-modern Japanese historiography, has come under
critical scrutiny, in popular culture and sanctioned history curricula for Japanese public
school students, sakoku remains a powerful framing technique for defining and
projecting a Japanese identity.126
By the late 1980s, works by Toby, Kazui, and Murai Shosuke'sAjia no naka no
Chf1sei Nihon opened up a space from which to critically analyze the notion of national
seclusion, and have paved the way for a much more nuanced history that accounts for
both deliberate and accidental international exchange. 127 While others certainly came
before him, Arano Yasunori' s 1988 publication Kinsei Nihon to Higashi Ajia, it still
stands as the most thorough dismantling of the sakoku historical paradigm. More
importantly, he demonstrates that these maritime prohibitions were not some conspiracy
125 Arano Yoshinori, Kinsei Nihon to Higashi Ajia (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1988),3-19,117-
147. Watanabe Miki's work has specifically focused on Ryukyuan castaway policies and her work to date
is best represented in her "Hy6ryu hy6chaku to kinsei Ryukyu," in Okinawa ken shi: kakuronpen, vol. 4
(kinsei) (Naha: Okinawa Ky6iku Iinkai, 2005), as well as "Chu-Nichi no shihai ronri to kinsei Ryukyu:
'Chugoku jin, Ch6sen jin, ikoku jin' hy6chaku min no shochi wo megutte," in Rekishi gaku kenkyil, vol.
810 (January, 2006). As for Korea-Japan castaways, see Ikeuchi Satoshi, Tottori ni nagaretsuita ChOsen
jin (Tottori: Tottori Kenritsu Hakubutsukan, 1998; and his much more expanded study titled Kinsei Nihon
to ChOsen hy6ryilmin (Kyoto: Nozomigawa Shoten, 1998).
126 Paul Varley's popular textbook on Japan begins its first chapter on the Edo period echoing a still
common conceit often heard among Japanese scholars and students of history: "The great peace of more
that two and a half centuries that followed the founding of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1600 was made
possible largely by the policy of national seclusion ... Yet, we cannot simply assume that in the absence
of the Tokugawa seclusion policy, Japan would have moved steadily or smoothly into more intimate
relations with the West." H. Paul Varley, Japanese Culture, Third Edition (Honolulu: University of
Hawai'i Press, 1984), 146.
127 Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development ofthe
Tokugawa Bakufu (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991) and Murai Shosuke, Ajia no naka no
Chusei Nihon (Tokyo: Azekura Shobo, 1988).
60
against contacts with westerners (as has so often been argued), but that they had their
origins in a greater East Asian development for regulating and overseeing contacts
between Japan and other Asian neighbors. 128 Furthermore, Arano's proposition that the
formation of kaikin as a tool for regulating relations among Japan and its Asian
neighbors led to a systematic process for nursing, repatriating, and debriefing castaways
(hy6ryumin s6kan taisei, l~f;lE~.i!~{*mlj), has allowed historians since to begin looking
at early-modern castaway accidents as not exceptional incidents, but instead as events
that if not common, were at least routine in the manner in which it was bureaucratically
handled. 129
Another important element in this historiographic shift, taking place among
early-modern East Asian scholars was the recognition of a Japan-centric ka-i ideology
S *~*5!f;}t!,;f~," Early on, Ronald Toby, citing the work of Bito Masahide, notes that by
the seventeenth century, Japanese intellectuals had begun to reconfigure Japan as the
new cultural and intellectual center of Asia, displacing the formerly recognized center
of civilization (ep*) in Ming China. 130 Arano, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Etsuko Hae-jin
Kang, and others have since elaborated on this ideological paradigm or world-view. l3l
Morris-Suzuki explains it as follows:
128 Arano (1988), 4-8.
129 Ibid, 125-139.
130 Toby (1991), 202-204.
131 Tessa Morris-Suzuki schematizes the ka-i order as a civilized center, from which emanate concentric
circles of civility, the distance from the center correlating with relative levels of barbarism. See
proceeding footnote. Etsuko Hae-jin Kang, following the work of Toby and Arano, among others, argues
for that following the collapse of the Ming Dynasty in China, both a Japan-centered ka-i order (Nihon
61
The prevailing image of the world from this perspective was a
mental map borrowed from China, according to which the
known, settled, orderly centre (ka) was surrounded by
boundless circles of increasing strangeness, disorder and
barbarism (i). This ka-i vision of the world is nicely illustrated
by the widely sold Japanese-Chinese Illustrated Encyclopedia
(Wakan sansai zue) of 1712... Immediately surrounding Japan
are the 'foreign countries' (ikoku) - including China, Korea, the
Ryukyu kingdom, Ezo (The Land of the Ainu), Tongking and
Cochin - whose inhabitants write with Chinese characters and
eat with chopsticks. Beyond that lie the realms of the 'outer-
barbarians (gai-i), who write horizontally and eat with their
hands. The gai-i include a number of readily recognisable
societies such as Siam, Luzon, Java, Bengal and Holland, as
well as other less familiar places like the Land of the Bird
People and the Land of the Creatures with Six Legs and Four
W· 132mgs.
As the title of one Edo castaway account-Ka-i kyunen roku, which will be
discussed in detail in Chapter Four-might suggest, the abstract and discursive
categories of center (ka) and periphery (i) figure prominently in late Edo castaway
accounts. 133 The formation of a competing Japanese early-modern worldview vis-a.-vis
China, and later encroaching Western nations, in conjunction with a metaphysical
gata ka-i chitsujo), as well as a Korea-centered ka-i ideology (Chosen gata ka-i chitsujo), developed in
both Japan and Korea respectively, and that it further determined the diplomatic protocol between the two
countries. See, Etsuko Hae-jin Kang, Diplomacy and Ideology in Japanese-Korean Relations: From the
F(fteenth to the Eighteenth Century (London: Macmillan Press, 1997).
132 Tessa Morris-Suzuki, "A Descent into the Past: The Frontier in the Construction of Japanese History,"
in Multicultural Japan: Palaeolithic to Postmodern (D. Denoon, M. Hudson, G. McCormack & T.
Morris-Suzuki, eds.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),83.
133 First written in 1776, this is an account of Magoshichi (also known as Magotaro) and is the subject of
Chapter Four of this dissertation. The text exists in katsuji in Arakawa Hidetoshi, Kinsei hyoryitki shit
(Tokyo: Hosei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 1969), 121-159.
62
discourse of Japanese superiority referred to as shinkoku or "divine nation" thought,
informed the production of so many of these late-Edo hy6ryuki accounts. 134
This re-evaluation of sakoku discourse is ongoing and has most recently been
further developed by Fujita Satom in his Kinsei k6ki seiji shi to taigai kankei. 135 His
work relates how the origins of sakoku or the idea of Japan as a closed country (sakoku
soh6kan) emerged as a defensive reaction on the part of the baku/u in regards to the
possibility oftrade with Russia during the time of Tanuma Okitsugu E!3?'.g~t'Jz in the
1780s. This defensive positioning of the baku/u contra Russia was continued with the
succession of Tanuma by Matsudaira Sadanobu t~~JE1~ and the repatriation of
Daikokuya Kodayu and Isokichi in 1792. With the first repatriation from Russia of
Japanese castaways and the stories of Russian global domination that they related to
baku/u and Japanese intellectuals, hy6ryuki quickly took on a new form, as they came to
explain and warn against the gradual encroachment of western empire in Asia and the
Pacific. Fujita's recent work has therefore proven particularly helpful for this study that
begins with the case of Kodayu.
Acknowledging that highly regulated contacts that did take place during the Edo
period were generally limited to the "four windows" to the outside world, namely
Nagasaki, Tsushima, Ryukyu, and Ezo-chi, it is difficult to deny that maritime
regulations (kaikinrei), systems of repatriation (hy6ryumin s6kan taisei), not to mention
more diffuse discourses of Japan and the rest of the known world that retroactively
134 Ka-i (~-~), usually translated as "civilized-barbarian," but also "center-periphery."
135 Fujita Satoru, Kinsei k6ki seiji shi to taigai kankei (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2005).
63
came to stand for the rubric of sakoku, had much to do with the formation of a body of
texts relating the experiences of drift by distressed sailors and fisherman. 136
This present study is indebted to this foundation of critical historiographic work
provided by earlier East Asian historians, as well as a redirected focus on the regulative
and structural systems of dealing with castaways vis-it-vis the bakufu State already
carried out by Arano, Watanabe, and Ikeuchi. While certainly owing a great debt to
other castaway scholars, and more generally East Asian history research, this present
study embraces a slightly different methodology. As historians, the methods of
previous scholarship are marked by a positivist historical approach with little interest in
the textual aspects ofthe accounts. In other words this project, unlike earlier studies of
early-modern castaway, attempts to uncover the textures and formal qualities of the
accounts themselves. Unhindered by the question of accuracy or factuality in the
accounts, this study considers not only documents considered historical, but also more
"fictionalized" versions of drift, as well as performances in both the kabuki and bunraku
theaters.
In the case ofpost-Edo Japan, the entrenched division of history into national
history (kokushi OO,§!:), East Asian history (T6y6shi *1$51;:), and world history (sekai shi
-tlt3ll51;:, read "history of the west") has produced for the State apparatus a convenient
division of the past that allows the current Nation-State of Japan, as well as its
geopolitical allies such as the United States, to imagine the present country as
thoroughly advanced toward the future, while at the same time, grounded in a idyllic
64
vision of its own hermetically sealed past. While not nomads, the figure of the
castaway is part of the larger category of "transhumants," that include refugees,
vagabonds, prisoners of war, immigrants and others subjectivities occupying spaces
between nations, and that more importantly often fall outside the scope of national
histories. Similar to Elaine K. Chang's strategy ofdifferentiating "runaways" from
Deleuzio-Guattarian notions of the "nomad," we shall differentiate the "castaway" from
the "nomad" on the grounds that, with the castaway we are concerned with an
ostensibly unintentional exodus that takes place at a historically specific moment
marked by the expansion of global capital and imperialism on the one hand, and an
emerging discourse of "Japaneseness" set off against the rest of the world on the
other. 137
Authorship too, is a particular problem with many of these late-Edo hy6ryuki
when we consider the extensive practice of inter-textual reference, citation, not to
mention the role of a speaking castaway subject and his various interlocutors such as
bakufu and han interrogators, those writing the document, and even actors and kami
shibai performers who retell historical incidents of hy6ryu for a more popular
audience. 138 The hybrid and poly-vocal quality of these texts is further compounded by
what Peter Shapinsky, in his yet to be published dissertation on pirates, or more
137 See Elaine K. Chang, "Run Through the Borders" in David E. Johnson & Scott Michaelsen, eds.,
Border Theory: The Limits ofCultural Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 169-
194.
138 Kami shibai ffJ:E;!JiS-performances were popular oral narrations of stories accompanied by picture cards.
Several sets of such picture cards relating to the story of Nakahama Manjir6 cards appear to be in
existence, including a set at the Kujira hakubutsukan in Taiji, Wakayama.
65
accurately kaizoku, refers to as the "terra-centrism of landed discourse." Drawing on
the work of Alain Corbin, who demonstrates how medieval Europeans conceived of the
sea as a particularly frightening and unknowable space that was also the source of
disease; and Richard Strassberg, who reveals a similar othering of the sea in China,
Shapinsky convincingly argues that pre-modern history of the sea in Japan is inevitably
compromised by the fact that most stories of seamen are refracted through the land-
based concerns ofthose recording them. 139
Those who engaged in nautical functions only acquired
significant representation in and access to written sources by
entering into relations with landed centers of authority. The
foundations of this written discourse were suffused with a rich
terra-centric bias that constructed the sea as an other-space and
those who coursed its fields of waves as others. However,
because landed authorities delegated maritime duties to littoral
inhabitants, maritime praxis was determined not by landed
discourse, but by mariners themselves. Thus, seascapes
(representations of maritime space and populations) were not
purely terra-centric creations, but hybrids born at the point of
interface of terra-centric discourses with maritime praxis. 140
Much like the slightly earlier historical documentation that Shapinsky employs
in his study of piratical figures, hy6ryuki too, reflect a particular hybrid nature. In
dealing with repatriated castaways, the land-based bakufu and han officials who
routinely debriefed them, as well as other literate intellectuals who record their stories,
in fact engage in a process of reterritorializing these drifters who occupy the smooth
space of the sea. In short, while we might want to consider the castaway as a figure
139 See, Peter D. Shapinsky, "Lords of the Sea: Pirates, Violence, and Exchange in Medieval Japan," Ph.D.
Diss., University of Michigan, 2005. See also, Alain Corbin, The Lure a/the Sea (Jocelyn Phelps, trans.)
(Oxford: Polity Press, 1994); and Richard E. Strassberg, A Chinese Bestimy, (Berkeley: U. of California
Press, 2002).
66
outside the bounds of the State, their stories as written by these officials and
intellectuals, instead recast them as representative Japanese subjects and serve to
describe not only the foreign, but more importantly the divinely sanctioned and inspired
realm of the Tokugawa regime.
140 Shapinsky, 73.
67
IN DEFENSE OF LITERATURE/ A LITERATURE OF DEFENSE
In our answers we were less concerned with the real truth than we were with trying to please [the Prince
of Tanegashimaj. But this was the case only in certain instances when it was necessary to help
ourselves out with afew little falsehoods.
-The castaway Fernam Mendez Pinto writing of his arrival in Tanegashima
I shan't take the time here to repeat any of their questions or the answers I gave, because they all dealt
with matters of no great importance and I can see no purpose it would serve other than to fill up space
with things that would inspire more boredom than pleasure.
-Mendez Pinto, in regards to a nearly fatal shooting incident involving a Prince of Bungo
We armed ourselves with the saddest and the most wretched outward appearances that in the midst ofall
the misery we were going through at the time we were still able to fe ign, for, after God, it was always this
make-believe that helped us more in this situation than all the other means we sought.
-Mendez Pinto, after being cast ashore in the Ryukyu Islands l
Stories of maritime drift require the reader first to believe. The speaking
voices that narrate such tales frequently frame the narrative as real and are often at pains
to stress the truth of the account. And yet as we read, we discover the real can only be
mediated through a voice and narrative that at times of convenience is, "less concerned
with truth." Depending on the "few little falsehoods" and "make-believe," the
trajectory of a desperate castaway's story, is almost always toward "pleasure," rather
than simply the facts that might "inspire more boredom." Ifwe are to believe the
1 These three quotes come from The Travels ofMendes Pinto (Rebecca D. Catz, trans.) (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1989),276,282, and 290, respectively.
68
claims of Fernam Mendez Pinto (1509-1583) that appear in the posthumously published
Peregrinations of 1614,2 we may accept that he, along with his two fellow castaways
Crist6vao Borralho and Diogo Zeimoto who washed ashore on the island of
Tanegashima in 1542, became the first Europeans to "discover" Japan? This
accidental encounter by castaways (whether we might believe it or not) fueled a frenzy
2 The full, cumbersome title of this text is, "Peregrinafam de Fernam Mendez Pinto em que da conta de
muytas e muyto estranhas cousas que vio & ouvio no reyno da China, no da Tartaria, no de Sornau, que
vulgarmente se chama de Siiio, no de Calaminhan, no do Pegu, no de Martauiio, & em outros muytos
reynos & senhorios das partes Orientais, de que nestas nossas do Occidente, ha muyto pouca ou nenhua
noticia. E tambem da conta de muytos casos particulares que aconteceriio assi a elle como a outras
muytas pessoas. E no Jim della trata brevemente de alguas cousas, & da morte do Santo Padre Francisco
Xavier, unica luz & resplandor daquellas partes do Oriente. & reitor nellas universal da Companhia de
Jesus, or in English, "The Pilgrimage of Fernam Mendez Pinto in which is told the many and very strange
things he saw and heard in the kingdom of China, in the one of Tartary, in the one of Sornau, usually
called Siam, in the one of Calaminhan, in the one of Pegu, in the one of Martauao, and in many other
kingdoms and lordships of the Oriental parts, and that in our Occident there are few or no accounts. And
also the account of many particular affairs that occurred both to him and many other people. And in the
end of it briefly regards some things, & the death of the Holy Priest Francis Xavier, sole light and
brightness of those parts of the Orient, & universal ruler of the Society of Jesus in those parts." Needless
to say, I will use the shorter, "Peregrinations."An original printed version of the text from 1614 is in the
Tenri Central Library Rare Books Collection. See, Seiyojin no mita Nippon: Maruko Pooro kara Perii
made, (Kyoto: Tenri Gyararii, 1985),6. For a modern English translation see, The Travels ofMendes
Pinto (Rebecca D. Catz, trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
3 Two other European accounts from the sixteenth century claim that the first three Portuguese to arrive
in Japan were Antonio da Mota, Francisco Zeimoto, and Antonio Peixoto. Citing Hans Haas, Catz notes
that Japanese sources identify Mura Shukusha and Kitishita ta Mota. Because contemporary texts do
not corroborate his claims, Pinto's claims have been met with skepticism. See (Catz 1989,591).
Neither Catz nor Haas point out that in the 13'h section of the 5'h volume of Hoshi Nihon kiM (2$'ft [:.J *
*21'i ,:n.~m+=:iff~Ji'D'1*O)lj2) states, "The first Europeans to learn of Japan were the famous travelers
Roburokuisu(?) and Maruko Yuuro (note: these two people were from the 13th century). Afterwards in
the 16th century a Portuguese man called Heruchinanto Mendesu Pinto boarded a Chinese boat with a
piratical-looking Samiboteka and intending to sail from Macao to RyGkyG, drifted instead to Japanese
shores, therefore becoming the very first in Japan." See, Arakawa (1962), 49. All other Japanese
accounts I have seen date the incident to the 8th month of 1543. Other discrepancies, such as the number
of castaways (one text claims 100) stick out between Pinto's ostensible version of the story and Japanese
documents. See Nanpo bunshu 1¥fmJ:)(~, Shimazu kokushi ~~OO5l:, Tanegashima kafu fl-T~*~~,
Nagasaki shi fitPffif51:, and Bubishi 1tt1fflJ;G;. All are to be found in (Arakawa 1962,47-49).
69
of discourse in Europe on Japan and other recently witnessed lands.4 While Japan
existed on European maps and in certain European texts more than two centuries before
the appearance of Pinto's Peregrinations, ostensible eye-witness accounts by first
Iberian, and later other European missionaries, merchants, and travelers were written
and read as authoritative sources of geographic, ethnographic, and ecological fact.s At
the same time, the veracity of these texts was often challenged. As we see in the
epigraphs above, the text at certain moments, in its own telling, frequently undennines
the ostensible objectivity of an eyewitness account. Whether to please a prince,
pleasure the reader, or fall back on an expedient "make-believe," the truth of castaways
and the stories they tell on both the beaches of discovery and the rocky shores of
repatriation are suspect precisely because the meaning oftheir unique experience, if not
their own bodily survival, depends upon pleasing and performing before an audience.
Or, as an account regarding Pinto's contemporary, Peter Serrano, who found himself
upon a barren island for seven years beginning in 1540, states: "For seamen are much
more ingenious in all times of extremity than men bred at land."6
Despite Pinto's "ingeniousness," or perhaps because of it, the claims of
discovery he makes have been questioned from the moment of their first appearance,
4 Peregrinations was translated into Spanish, French, German, Dutch, and English with numerous
editions and printings during the seventeenth century. Catz claims that it superceded Don Quixote in
popularity. Some of these translations were abridgements such as the version that appeared in Purchas
His Pi/grimes published in London in 1625. See (Catz 1989, xxv ii).
5 For examples of European maps that include Japan prior to the 1543, see Nakamura Hiroshi, East Asia
in Old Maps (Tokyo: Kasai Publishing, 1964).
6 Charles Neider (ed.), Great Shipwrecks and Castaways: Authentic Accounts ofDisasters at Sea (New
York: Dorset Press, 1990),2.
70
leading readers to playfully ask, "Fernam, Mentes? Minto!" or "Do you lie Fernam?
Yes, I lie." Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) referred to Pinto as the "Prince of
Liars," while the English dramatist William Congreve (1670-1729) ridiculed him in his
early comedy Love/or Love, writing, "Mendez Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of
first magnitude."7 It happens that the fate of Pinto's legacy as both liar and witness
reflects a more general contradiction embodied by this new historical and literary trans-
oceanic subject of the castaway. The reception of Peregrinations as both an important
document of discovery and source of world-political knowledge on the one hand, and as
a literary and dramatic re-telling, if not fantastic fiction on the other, is emblematic of a
more general pattern shared with other accounts of discovery and drift. For both the
ocean-going discoverer and castaway- two figures not mutually exclusive, but as Pinto
demonstrates, often related-it was first and foremost their stories, more than the gold,
or captives, or rare zoological and botanical species, that could be shared and circulated
most effectively. These stories were real, but also read. It was the re-telling of one's
experiences, a testament without recourse to corroboration, sometimes based on oaths,
but always depending on language whose factual content no matter how accurate, ceded
meaning to form or the particular way of telling.
The castaway, like the discoverer, missionary, pirate, and whaler occupied a
watery world quite mysterious, if not foreign to many land-locked readers. From the
perspective of the reader, men venturing out beyond any visible or heretofore imagined
7 See HerbertA. van Scoy, "Fact and Fiction in Mendez Pinto's 'Peregrinacam'," in Hispania, Vol. 32,
No.2 (May, 1949), 158.
71
horizon, enduring both the fear of the unknown and the particular hardships of the sea,
thus gained a certain privileged access to this space beyond the imagination of more
"grounded" readers. The dangers and exotica ofthese places "beyond the waves"
were only magnified if a ship became distressed and ventured into literally "uncharted"
waters. Aimless drift, perhaps fortified by a strong dose of hope or anxiety, thus
became a narrative of providence or chance, fortune or tragedy, and a drama of
transformation and return. In short, between the rocks on the coast and a hard place at
sea, the castaway is faced with the peculiar challenge of rendering his most
unbelievable story believable. These stories ostensibly report the facts of what
happened, but describe a space beyond the imaginations and experiences ofthe reader.
Like the Great Kahn's atlas in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities-a provocative meditation
on the act of transforming space into language through the repetition of discovery-
they are, "maps ofthe promised lands visited in thought but not yet discovered or
founded [by readers]."8
In telling a story of the outside, the castaway continually risks slipping beyond
the frames of reference any reader might bring to the text. The castaway is thus
suspect in the very telling of his story.9 Like Job's messenger or the Pequod's orphan
8 Halo Calvino,Invisible Cities (San Diego: Harvest Books, 1978), 164.
9 Yann Martel's 2002 Booker Award winning novel Life ofPi seems to quite consciously embrace this
aspect of castaway accounts. The story is framed as a true account reported to the author by a Japanese
official named Okamoto. Okamoto is sent along with Chiba to interview an Indian castaway that
washes up on the shores of Mex.ico. After recounting his ordeal and the fate of the Japanese ship he
originally boarded, the Japanese men are incredulous and ask for the true story. Pi then imagines a story
that is more believable but not true.
72
Ishmael, who "escaped alone to tell thee," the castaway all too often has no witness to
corroborate the details, and furthermore, rarely has the language to even describe such
spaces of alterity, let alone the fears, losses, suffering, and eventual joy or perhaps
ambivalence of repatriation. Furthermore, we might consider that often those who
managed to return from a shipwreck often had to explain to investors, bosses, and
relatives, the fate of their cargo and company. Because castaway accounts had to
account for the losses and tragedy so often associated with maritime disaster, these
stories frequently rendered the speaker free of personal responsibility for the losses, but
also suspect to the readers. We might imagine for example how the topic of hunger, so
common to the castaway experience, might become a taboo subject lest relatives of one
who did not return might construe the repatriated castaway's story as a veiled
justification for cannibalism. "Survivor's guilt" it seems was just one way of turning
facts into drama. 10
Pinto's tale of Tanegashima while certainly read as both a literary and
sometimes questionable historical document, also invokes a historical milleu in which
the world was being re-imagined in a particular manner. This historical worldview
whose cipher is to be found in the texts of the day, for example later versions of Marco
Polo and Rustichello da Pisa's co-authored nMUiane (The Travels ofMarco Polo) or
10 The story of Jl1kichi of Owari as it is written by Ikeda Hirochika in Funaosa nikki explains that upon
returning to his home village, Jl1kichi had vowed to erect a monument for his fellow crewmen who did
not return. The funds for this monument (which is still standing in Nagoya) are gathered from
admission fees charged to displays held at temples and shrines of the exotic goods with which he returned
and by printing a Russian-Japanese lexicon which he sold. His experience of sixteen months drift is
riddled with inconsistencies regarding how they fed themselves and what was done with the corpses of
those who died.
73
maps by Gerardus Mercator or Abraham Ortelius such as Theatrum Orbis Terrarum,
literally swept the world, overlaying the sphere of the globe with a body of continents
and oceans, mountains and rivers, boarders and territories, in a limited and closed
planetary space.
Map 2.1. Map of Asia by Abraham Ortelius (1575)11
Ifwe are to again take Fernam Mendes Pinto for his word, we might imagine
him on the beaches of Tanegashima in 1542, not only introducing the arquebus to
pleased feudal lords, but also completing one segment of a newly imagined global
II This map is contained in the Kokuritsu Rekishi Minzoku Hakubutsukan.
74
circuitry whose mathematics works out to be 4 n r 2 and that was realized only twenty
years earlier by Juan Sebastian Elcano and Magellan's seventeen other surviving crew
members who managed to return from the first documented circumnavigation of the
globe. 12 Whether your planetary radius worked out to be 1650 ri or 1150 nautical
leagues, the world was now a finite space that could be plotted out and represented in
radically new ways. 13
The fishermen and other Japanese witnesses on the beaches of Tanegashima
who accidentally "discovered" Europe in the guise of Pinto (or other castaways washing
ashore upon the archipelago) thought these new people to be Indians (Tenjiku jin).14
Just as Columbus thought he had reached India when landing on Hispaniola, the first
12 Carlos Quirino has argued that Ferdinand Magellan's slave, Enrique of Malacca, was in fact the first
human to circumnavigate the world. This argument depends on whether the slave was originally from the
Philippines. See, "The First Man Around the World Was a Filipino," in Philippines Free Press, Dec. 28,
1991.
13 The geometric formula cited here is not for circumference of a sphere, but surface area of a sphere. It
was the ability to accurately calculate multidirectional movement over the surface of the oceans, and not
simply travel in a theoretical straight line around the world that defined this transformation in the way
global space was represented and understood. This development was made possible in part due to
breakthroughs in techniques for measuring longitude. While the history of longitude is not just one
breakthrough moment, but instead a series of developments that took place beginning in the early
seventeenth century and continued to be driven by various rewards sponsored by European countries over
the course of200 years. By 1714 the English Parliament passed the Longitude Act that offered £
20,000 to anyone who could design a practical timepiece accurate enough to plot a ship's location within
thirty miles after a six week sail across the Atlantic. The Parliament continued to provide prize money
through the Board of Longitude until 1824.
14 Toby (1994) begins his article with a quote from Cosme de Torres writing to Francis Xavier simply
stating, "[the Japanese] call us 'Tenjiku' [Indians]." (Translation and editorial additions are Toby's.)
Elison in his Deus Destroyed translates a document titled Kirishitan ("Christian") monogatari (1639) that
Toby also cites. In this fascinating document we might find a good example of how the Iberian Other
came to be viewed and read at the very beginning of the post-Iberian interlude. See George Elison,
Deus Destroyed: The Image o/Christianity in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1973),319-374.
75
Japanese to engage Portuguese turned to their inner maps to make sense of the occasion.
As chance would have it, the extreme peripheral space of these otherwise yet-to-be
congruous hemispheres overlapped in the site ofIndia/ Tenjiku and served both as the
origin ofthe unfamiliar. With the West facing east and East facing west the Other was
determined to be India/Tenjiku, but not for long. Europe would begin to appear on
Japanese maps with greater and greater detail, while the Pacific Rim became more
cartographically clear to Europeans and thus a circuit was completed and the act of
representing the world has since gradually become a matter of detail and scale.
Ronald Toby has pointed out the profound implications this "Iberian irruption"
had on the very ways in which Japanese came to understand themselves and others.
This absence of Other from the iconographic / cognitive landscape of
Japan prior to the Iberian irruption, the intensity with which Japanese art
and masque adopted the Iberian troupe during the Nanbam (Iberian)
interlude, 1543-1640, and the assumption by old, familiar Others
(formerly excluded from the Japanese landscape) of the place the Iberians
had made for themselves are suggestive of transformations in
consciousness wrought by Japan's experience of Other in the Nanban
century. 15
As Pinto's example has already demonstrated, castaways arriving on the shores
of Japan (hy6chakumin, i~~.B:), as well as those drifting from Japan (hy6ryumin, i~YJ1E
.B:) were quite often the very embodiment of this transformed consciousness, and upon
repatriation, their narratives served as both exotic tale and important medium through
which this transformed consciousness was projected. With an explosion in the writing
15 Ronald P. Toby, "The 'Indianness' of Iberia and the changing Japanese iconographies of Other," in
Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters Between Europeans
and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Period (Stuart B. Schwartz, ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994),325.
76
of castaway accounts more or less simultaneously developing in countries throughout
the world between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this textual category stands as
perhaps the first trans-national literary form of empire and trans-oceanic conquest.
Pinto's story of drift is but one of several other accounts in world literature that parallel
the history of global expansion and trade. Peter Serrano, Alexander Selkirk, Choe Pu,
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Hans Staden, and Hendrik Hamel are just a few examples
from a vast body of texts collectively known as castaway accounts, the formation of
which was made possible by trans-oceanic exploration and empire building begun in
earnest in the sixteenth century.16
Among historians of early-modernity and enlightenment, the discovery of the
Pacific-the antipode of Europe-closes the circuit that circumscribes a finite global
16 The experiences of Alexander Selkirk served as the basis for Daniel Defoe's The Life and Strange
Surprizing Adventures ofRobinson Crusoe. ofYork. Mariner .. first published in 1719. See Daniel
Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (New York: Penguin Books, 1965), 301-310. Choe Pu was a Korean castaway
from the late 15 th century whose text (Kr: P'yohae-rok, J: Hyokai roku or Todo kotei ki) came to Japan in
the late 16th century. It appears to have been a popular text among Kyoto scholars. See John Meskill,
Choe Pu's Diary: A Record ofDrifting Across the Sea (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965),21-
24. The Spaniard de Vaca's account, first published in 1555, has been called, "the first major narrative
of the exploration of North America by Europeans." (Enrique Pupo-Walker) I am grateful to Professor
David Lubke for first suggesting the significance of this text. See Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca,
Castaways (Enrique Pupo-Walker, ed., Frances M. L6pez-Morillas)(Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993). The remarkable story of Hans Staden has been brought to my attention by both Professors
Neil Whitehead and Gordon Sayer. See Neil L. Whitehead, "Hans Staden and the Cultural Politics of
Cannibalism," The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 80, No.4, Special Issue: Colonial Brazil:
Foundations, Crises, and Legacies. (Nov., 2000), 721-751, and Gordon M. Sayre, American Captivity
Narratives: Selected Narratives with Introduction (New Riverside Editions) (New York: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 2000),18-58. Hendrik Hamel's account of shipwreck off the coast of Cheju Island and
subsequent travels in Korea and Japan first appeared in Amsterdam and Rotterdam in 1668. See Gari
Ledyard, The Dutch Come to Korea (Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch in conjunction with
Taewon Publishing Company, 1971), 13. There are of course numerous other famous castaways from the
16th to 20th centuries outside of Japan. Important anthologies include Great Shipwrecks and Castaways:
Authentic Accounts ofDisasters at Sea (Charles Neider, ed.) (New York: Dorset Press, 1980) and Edward
E. Leslie, Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: True Stories of Castaways and other Survivors
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1988).
77
space within which the discourses of Self and Other, and their contingent notions of
race, national character, and ethnicity, capture the imaginations of colonizer and
colonized alike. The economic historian, Hayami Akira, refers to this moment, "as a
kind of global cataclysm that significantly changed the histories of all its participants."17
Ronald Toby's work on the "Indianness" ofIberians for sixteenth century Japanese
suggests as much. 18 That the other's Other issued forth from India/Tenjiku was the
result of two visions of the world merging and producing multiple visions of the world
over the course of the next several centuries, by the mid-nineteenth century this
"globalized space" (or conversely, "spatialized globe") developed a certain hegemonic
authority. In fact, in hy6ryuki from the 1790s onward tend to reflect a certain
historical determinism of expansion within a finite space. Hamada Hikoz6 (a.k.a.
Joseph Heco), in trying to make sense of his own experiences of drift to the United
States, writes in his Hy6ryuki ij\'!;iJ1E~cof 1863:
In Europe about 378 years ago, at a place called Jinowa [Genoa] (now in
the territory of France), there lived a man named Columbus, who loved
to make sea voyages. While making several trips to India, where he
carried on trade, he heard that there was a country called Japan farther to
the East and he set his heart of traveling there. Thinking to himself that
the earth was round, he decided that if he sailed west from Europe,
instead of crossing the mountains of China, he could reach Japan. He
explained his ideas to the king of Hispania [Spain], who listened to them
with sympathy and provided him with three ships. [Columbus], much
excited, sailed west for many days and arrived, as he expected, at a large
country. It was America, however, not Japan, which he had set his
17 Akira Hayami, "Introduction: The Emergence of 'Economic Society' ," in The Economic History of
Japan, 1600-1990, Volume One: Emergence of Economic Society in Japan, 1600-1859 (Akira Hayami, et
a\., eds.) (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 1999),2.
\8 Toby (1994),323-351.
78
sights on. Since Columbus unexpectedly discovered America while
looking for Japan, and since people from America then came over to
Japan to open its ports, we can say that this was destined and that
Columbus finally achieved his goal. 19
Greg Dening, who highlights the thirty-year period between Samuel Wallis's
arrival in Tahiti in 1767 and the establishment of the first successful missionary project
in 1797, speaks of this watery space as a theatrum mundi. A theatrical world, "in
which the nations of Europe and the Americas saw themselves acting out their scientific
and humanistic selves." 20 Dening sees the Pacific as a theatrical world, but also quite
literally as a world theater, that is, he argues that the ocean itself was a stage upon
which the world gazes. The accounts of Pinto and other Europeans circulated and
were translated around Europe and in some cases copies even appeared in Nagasaki and
Edo to be translated into Japanese. This exchange also went the other way. For
example, Hayashi Shihei's Sangoku tsuran zusetsu =OO,@Ji~~3t.was translated into
French, German, and Dutch, Julius von Kalproth's being the first in 1832. And while
not all the audience could see all that was unfolding in this drama, castaways who
traversed this stage were leading players and spoke in a chorus whose function was to
explain to audiences from all corners of the ocean and beyond this drama of Pacific
conquest. Dening's conceptualization and terminology, while useful in understanding
19 Translation by Peter Duus in The Japanese Discovery ofAmerica: A briefHistory with Documents
(New York: Bedford Books, 1997) 83-84. Also see, Arakawa Hidetoshi, Ikoku hyoryuki shU (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa K6bunkan, 1962),228.
20 Greg Dening, "The Theatricality of observing and being observed: Eighteenth-Century Europe
'Discovers' the l&th Century Pacific," in Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting
on the Encounters Between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (Stuart B. Schwartz,
ed.) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994),452.
79
the profoundly performative aspects of identity for the castaway, also has its limits.
For example, he tends to portray Pacific cross-cultural encounters in a unidirectional
manner initiated primarily by Europeans and European-Americans. "It was a time of
intensive theater of the civilized to the native," he writes, "but of even more intense
theater of the civilized to one another.,,21
In the fourth month of 1803, ten Japanese sailors originally from the province of
Mutsu arrived in Saint Petersburg with aspirations of meeting the emperor, Alexander
1.22 Their journey to the political seat of the Russian empire had begun ten years earlier,
when their ill-fated ship, the Wakamiya- maru ;JS',;§jL, met with a storm and came
ashore on one of the Andreianovskie islands in the Aleutian archipelago.23 After a
harrowing fifty-day trip by horse from Irkutsk, during which time they saw three more
of the original sixteen crewmates succumb to death or illness, the goal of these
castaways (hy6kyaku, ?~~) was to receive from the emperor himself permission to
return home. Four of these ten castaways would eventually be returned to Japan on the
21 Ibid, 452.
22 All months given will correlate to Japanese lunar calendar unless English month names are used. This
first statement is confirmed in the documentation on the Wakamiya-maru that is to follow.
23 Because Edo period castaway accounts frequently used kana or ateji to name spaces in the North
Pacific, and because these terms were yet to be standardized in any formal manner, it is difficult to
identify names for places. In the Kankai ibun, the most thorough account of these castaways, the island
on which they landed is named, "Ondereetsuke." See, Otsuki Gentaku and Shimura Hiroyuki, Kankai
ibun: honbun to kenkyu (Sugimoto Tsutomu, et ai, eds.) (Tokyo: Yasaka ShobO, 1986),4. According to
the official debriefing records recorded by the Nagasaki Bugya, the island was named,
"Onteretsukeoosutoro." See, "Ikoku e hyaryu shi sora Mutsu no kuni no yonnin kuchigaki," in Nihon
hyoryu hyochaku shiryo (Arakawa Hidetoshi, ed.) (Tokyo: Chijin Shokan, 1962),388. English spellings
for Russian terms are based on the work of George Alexander Lensen, The Russian Push Toward Japan:
Russo-Japanese Relations, 1697-1875 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), for the site of
disembarkation for the Wakamiya-maru crew see page 129.
80
Russian ship, Nadezhda, but only after a circumbendibus journey that continued
westward to Denmark, England, the Canary Islands, Brazil, round the Tierra del Fuego,
to the Marquesas Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula, before finally reaching the offices
of the Nagasaki Bugy6 in the ninth month of 1804. In short, these four castaways were
perhaps the earliest Japanese to provide an account of global conditions based upon an
actual circumnavigation of the globe.
We may tum to several textual and visual forms to glean the details of their drift
and return. These include both documents "officially" produced by bakufu (through
the offices of the Nagasaki Bugy6 ("magistrate") or domain officials appointed for the
purpose of recording the castaways' tales, as well as "unofficial sources" produced by a
more diverse body of writers who heard their stories either directly or indirectly.24
Like many other Japanese castaways during the Edo period that came both before and
after the Wakamiya-maru, these sailors would invariably have their accounts first
written down in kuchigaki (i=I ii) form as an official and bureaucratic report.25 It is
24 Most recently Kurachi Katsunao, in an attempt to categorize castaway accounts, has suggested
dividing into three general categories; koshiki kiroku ("official records"), hyoryumin jishin ga arawashita
kiroku ("records based upon [the accounts of] the castaways themselves"), and daisansha ga arawashita
kiroku ("records [heard second hand and] produced by a third-person.") See, Kurachi Katsunao, Hyoryu
kiroku to hyoryu taiken (Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2005),78-83. Haruna Akira, perhaps the most
prolific scholar of Edo period castaway accounts, has earlier classified castaway accounts in two separate
ways. In 1990, Haruna proposed two broad categories of castaways. One he called the "Robinson
Crusoe type," of sailors arriving on a deserted island [sicl, and the other he referred to as the "Odysseus
type," in which sailors arrive on foreign shores. In the same publication, he also pointed to three
categories of castaway accounts: 1) hyoryu kuchigaki (debriefing reports of repatriated castaways), 2)
hensanbutsu hyoryuki (edited accounts of castaways), 3) iroribe danwa (fireside stories). See "Hy6ryG"
and "Hy6ryGki," in Kokushi daijiten (Kokushi Diajiten HenshG Iinkai, ed.) (Tokyo: Yoshikawa
K6bunkan, 1990), 1033-1034.
25 Depending on which port the castaways were repatriated to, these kuchigaki documents were usually
written by the Nagasaki or Matsumae Bugy6. In the case of Japanese drifting to Korea, the TsGshima
Domain would frequently write the first reports. In the case of castaways drifting to Ryukyu, Satsuma
8]
these first-order castaway narratives that served as the basis for significantly lengthier
and more elaborate hy6ryuki, written after the repatriated sailors had already undergone
several debriefings. These rudimentary castaway reports document an interrogation
process that was formalized by the late seventeenth century.26 The records themselves
also reflect specific formal attributes. For example, the kuchigaki account was marked
by a collective first-person confessional voice (watakushi domo) in the case of multiple
castaways, or a singular first-person voice in the case of a sole survivor. While
relatively brief, a kuchigaki document usually began with reference to the date and year
of when the castaways first left port. Following this, the ship owner's name and home,
the captain's name (oki sent6), a list of the crew, their hometowns and temple affiliation,
the cargo carried, and the ship's route at the time of distress were usually mentioned,
f . hi d 27o ten III t s or er. The testimony would then detail the conditions of their distress,
such as the loss of rudder and/or mast, shortage of food or water, disease, pollution,
feelings of abandonment and suicide, etc. If the castaways happened to be rescued or
washed ashore in a foreign place the text would continue with a description ofthose
officials would be responsible for carrying out the initial debriefing and paperwork. If sailors returned to
their home provinces, frequently local officials would also produce kuchigaki accounts.
26 The earliest hyoryu kuchigaki that I have been able to find dates from 1668. This is not the report of a
Japanese castaway's testimony, but instead that of fouteen Koreans who drifted to Hirado earlier in the
same year. The account specifically states that they were not Christians, thus suggesting the perceived
threat of Christianity for the Bakufu. By the 1680s the term kuchigaki was used in the case of Japanese
castaways, however there are also texts from this time that use slight variations of the term such as
kojogaki (i=I J::.~) and k6j6 no oboe (i=I J::.z'ft). See, NHHS, 108, 132,138-139.
27 The term "owner" is a translation of jijJ~fiJ: while the term "captain" is the translation of #~B'fiJ: or
*jijJ~fiJ:. For an explanation of the difference see, Kanezashi Sh6z6, Nihon kaiji kanshU shi (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa K6bunkan, 1967),67-68.
82
places as well as people visited, frequently commenting on food, customs, houses,
settlements, hairstyles, etc. The latter half of these documents would often narrate the
events that led to the castaways' eventual repatriation?S Finally, these documents
generally ended with the names of castaways, followed by an oath attesting to the
veracity of the testimony and the names of the interrogators. These oaths varied
slightly and did not always appear at the end of every document, however they appear
frequently enough to briefly elaborate. For example, the document titled, "Minazuki
mura Yazobei ikoku he hyochaku shidai kuchigaki" from 1844, concludes with the
statement, "There are not even slight discrepancies in the above cited testimony. Fin. ,,29
Likewise, we see that the "Dainenji Nii mura Yoshizaemon To koku he hyochaku ikken
kuchigaki," written in 1827, finishes with a similar statement.30 This testimonial
quality of kuchigaki used to initially transcribe the experiences of repatriated castaways
suggests the more bureaucratic purposes of this form, however, as we shall soon see,
claims of veracity are also an important part of longer accounts not written by officials,
but by intellectuals responsible for recording more elaborate versions of the castaways'
stories.
c8 The best source for kuchigaki reports is to be found in the Hayashi Fukusai, TsCtk6 ichiran, Hayakawa
Junsabur6, ed. (Tokyo: Kokusho Kank6kai, 1912-1914),8 vols. (hereafter TKIR followed by kan, vol.,
and page number. See also, Hayashi Fukusai, TsCtk6 ichiran zokushCt (Yanai Kenji, ed.) (Osaka:
Seibund6,1968-1973),5 vol. The only collection of only kuchigaki that I am aware of is Ka No hyoryCttan
(jukkoku) (Kanazawa: Ishikawa-ken Toshokan Ky6kai, 1972).
C"Thephrase in question reads, 1:;fi*::::."131:.-{~:@, Pbt§Jl~=1~fl[-{~0 .81:.0 J See,Ka-N6
hyoryCttan (Tanaka Kuninari, ed.) (Kanazawa: Ishikawa Ken Toshokan Ky6kai, 1972),55.
3D The phrasing of this second example is, 1:;fi"13 1:.{~:@ I) t§Jl~ =~fl[-{~J Ibid., 21.
83
Just as kuchigaki texts exhibited a remarkable formal consistency in the way the
story was put together, the content and details mentioned in kuchigaki texts are also
remarkably consistent. In the case of the four sailors from the Wakamiya-maru who
returned to Japan after a circumnavigation of the globe, we may identifY numerous
narratival commonalties shared with other kuchigaki hy6ryuki. Upon repatriation in
Nagasaki, their account was first recorded by the offices of the Nagasaki Bugy6 in a
document titled, "Ikoku e hyoryu shisoro Mutsu no kuni no yonnin kuchigaki," signed
by the castaways on the 29th day of the 3rd month, 1805.31 Furthermore, not only is the
inciting incident of these accounts (storm, mast cutting, etc.) standardized to some
degree, so is the formalized ritual of return that castaways were subjected to by
officials.32 Aside from the interrogation and recording of testimony, these rituals
included dressing and grooming the castaways in a "Japanese" style, isolating them and
questioning them separately in order to determine any discrepancies in their stories,
feeding them foods considered to be Japanese (in particular rice), visiting a shrine or
temple in order to thank the gods for their safe return or to placate spirits of those less
fortunate not to return, and having them at times submit to jumie, a process by which
31 TKIR, 318:8,157-166.
3" The notion of a "ritual of return" is inspired by the work of Victor Turner, who in a very different
context, writes of the alternation of society between "fixed" worlds and "floating worlds." He continues,
"human beings have had to create- by structural means-spaces and times in the calendar or, in the
cultural cycles of their most cherished groups which cannot be captured in the classificatory nets of their
quotidian, routinized spheres of action. These liminal areas of time and space- rituals, carnivals,
dramas, and latterly films-are open to the play of thought, feeling, and will; in them are generated new
models, often fantastic, some of which may have sufficient power and plausibility to replace eventually
the force-backed political and jural models that control the centers of society's ongoing life." See Victor
Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), vii.
84
Japanese trod upon images representing the Virgin Mary, Christ, or other symbols of
the Christian faith, and thereby repudiating any connections to Christianity, specifically
Catholicism.33
The kuchigaki form, as the name itself implies, was meant to be an unmediated
report of an actual experience directly from the castaway's mouth, however the
consistent and formalized structure to which these texts comply tend to betray any sense
of unmediated truth. In other words, the consistency of form instead suggests that both
the castaways and the bakufu or domain officials who recorded such accounts were
compelled to present the story in a very specific narrative mode. As a rule the
documents are generally matter-of-fact, lacking great detail or overt editorial
intervention, and short enough to be read, and more importantly copied, in one sitting.
At the same time, despite the name given to these records, the style in which they are
inscribed reveals significant differences from any actual oral mode of communication,
instead depending on a well established written form today referred to s6r6bun or
"epistolary" styIe.
The kuchigaki form shared many similarities with more minor forms such as
oboegaki (castaway accounts "remembered"), the ginmi, and kikigaki (castaway
accounts "heard") that also were occasionally written. The oboegaki was generally
part of a kuchigaki or more elaborate form of hy6ryuki. Any specific formal aspects
associated with this term are indeterminate since this appellation is used for texts
33 TKIR, 318: 8, 158.
85
ranging from the testimony of someone witnessing a hy6chaku incident (that is, foreign
castaways arriving to Japan) to simply a list of objects with which the castaways
returned.34 Kikigaki was also generally a term for smaller sections within larger texts
and framed neither by the speaking subject watakushi domo nor the first-person mode
of narration.35 As with oboegaki, it is difficult to define the formal limits oftexts
designated kikigaki. Examples include a question-answer session with foreign sailors
and short accounts of repatriated castaways, however a text such as Hy6min kikigaki i!!!-
.B::lifJilfof 1856 is significantly longer.36 Lastly, the term (go) ginmi (1&iJ)u~1!t (an
"examination" or "exploration") is occasionally used to refer to shorter texts similar in
nature to kuchigaki. 37
In his study of the records of the first Japanese embassy sent the to United States,
Masao Miyoshi has written extensively concerning the relationship between the status
of the first person perspective and early foreign travel writing.
The "I" tended not to detach itself from the other "I's" and thus stayed
immersed in the world. There was neither the joy nor the misery of the
lonely self; instead, with the ambiguity of the subject allowing his action
and being to be collective, man in Japan retained the security of
community, however temporally and spatially circumscribed he may
have been by the tribal mythology. If Maruyama Masao is right, as I
34 Ka No, 62-66.; "Hyaryiinin yonnin no mono kondo mochimodori sara shina no oboegaki," NHHS,
394-395.
35 See for example, "Nakanohama Shayara sanmei kikigaki," where the subject begins with, "Manjira
hitori," in EHS vol. 5,185-202.
36 See "Kojin metsuke Fukuyama Hoka kikigaki," in EHSB, vol. 1,395-410; "Kichiren gawa ryoshuku
dena kikigaki," in EHSB, vol. 1,585-587.
37 See for example, "Nagasaki bugyasho ginmisho," in EHS, vol. 5,109-184.
86
believe he is, in diagnosing the conspicuous absence of the speculative
habit (shis6) in the whole Japanese tradition, it is a price the culture has
been willing to pay.38
Acknowledging that the basis for his provocative claim lies in the historiography
of Maruyama Masao and the notion of the Meiji Restoration being a truly radical
epistemological break, Miyoshi's own ideas depend on a problematic division of
Japanese history into distinct periods in which the pre-1868 Japan is a completely
isolated cultural body until modernity with all its trappings is introduced. In doing this,
he dismisses accounts that do use the first person, attributing them to the arrogance or
eccentricity of their authors.39 While certain late Edo accounts do reflect the collective
narration of several castaways, others are based on the testimony of only one voice, and
furthermore articulate in the clearest of ways the "joy" and "misery" of the "lonely
self.,,40 Needless to say, it is hard to dismiss these accounts as anomalies of arrogance
or eccentricity. Miyoshi's own speculative habits seem to cloud any serious analysis of
hy6ryuki as stories of an individual.
38 Masao Miyoshi,As We Saw Them (New York: Kodansha International, 1994), 123-124.
39 Ibid., 115.
40 The American poet Robert Creeley suggests a strong link between a speaking literary voice and
accounts of maritime travel, when he writes, "The first imagined sign for selfin such language as had
record was a boat, and that made adamant if harsh sense-as Noah's Ark did. The great flood of chaos
had only one apparent agency for its signifying order, and that was oneself, that verifying agency without
equal, because it was the one and only one for each of us ... It is the pleasure and authority of writing that
it invents a life to live in the first place." Robert Creeley Autobiography (New York: Hanuman Books,
1990),9-10. While this ahistoric proposal has its problems, in the case of Edo period castaway accounts,
it does appear that the awareness of a changing Pacific (on the part of intellectuals familiar with Dutch
texts) as well as a burgeoning curiosity of the outside world among a larger and more general audience
did provide hy6ryCtki authors with a new tool-the authoritative voice of a witness of the outside world-
by which to frame their stories a believable retellings, and in turn rendering Miyoshi's claims
oversimplified at best.
87
The proliferation of forms for recording the accounts of castaways suggests the
inherent limits of the kuchigaki text. The parameters of the kuchigaki did not always
prove sufficient for relating the notably exceptional experiences of castaways and the
information with which they returned. In short, the documents comprised a form that
resulted from "institutional imperatives which both coerce and are in turned coerced by
the writer.,,41 In fact, in the case of the repatriated sailors from the Wakamiya-maru
there is also a second kuchigaki text relating the details of this incident dated "4th month,
1805." This second kuchigaki text was produced and signed by Hida Bungo no kami
and Narise Inaba no kami. A short editorial note informs us as to the reason why this
second kuchigaki was written.
Upon consideration this kuchigaki has been ordered by the Nagasaki
bugy6 to investigate in detail this country [Russia] and its colonies (~OO,
zokkoku), as well as their environmental conditions and manners (7J~0)00
& 0 ~ 00~:>i- 0) J!\,±J!\,{.§~). This should add to our speculation on
conditions abroad, and [as a document] it should be saved for the time
being (~i!iffT, shibaraku zon su), since someday if natives (±A, donin)
are castaway to our land, it shall certainly prove helpful in dealing with
them.42
The production of a second kuchigaki text with the explicit objective of
recording the conditions in Russia and lands under her jurisdiction suggests the limits of
the bureaucratic genre of kuchigaki and a burgeoning desire for a textual form
appropriate for relating the conditions and manners in foreign lands based on
eyewitness accounts. The "paper trail" initiated with the repatriation of the
41 Norman Holmes Pearson, "Literary forms and types; or, a defense of Polonius," cited in Heather
Dubrow, Genre (The Critical Idiom Series, No. 42) (New York: Methuen and Company, 1982),82.
42 NHHS, 395.
88
Wakamiya-maru crew does not end with this second account either. Their story was
also related in numerous texts, the most elaborate being the sixteen-volume Kankai ibun
~1ijH~1lfl (1807). This text is representative of a second order of textual production
common to repatriated castaways whose experiences fell into one of two categories.
The first case in which we see these larger expanded accounts is when the nature of the
castaways' experience was so exceptional as to warrant further explication beyond the
kuchigaki form, for example the accounts concerning a group of castaways who
remained twenty years on the uninhabited island of Tori-shima.43 The second case in
which longer narratives of drift were produced was when the experiences of the
castaways served as an important source of foreign knowledge, as in the case of the
returning crew of the Wakamiya-maru. We might consider early accounts such as
Dattan hy6ryuki (written in 1646) which serves one of the earliest reports on conditions
in Qing China as an example of this type, however most of these larger, more elaborate
accounts came to focus on descriptions of western colonized spaces and people.44 By
the 1790s, as concern for the encroachment of western ships in the Pacific mounted,
these accounts served as a primary medium by which to re-map notions of the Other
and to project a vision of Self that coalesced around the notion Japan, objectives not so
conducive to the kuchigaki form. Frequently, these second-order texts were written
with particular polemic arguments in mind concerning how the Bakufu should deal with
43 See Ensha sen mujint6 monogatari and mujint6 hy6chaku Hachij6jima urategata hoka, in EHSSl,
308-356.
44 See Dattan hyoryuki in EHSSl, 95-130.
89
direct encounters between first Russians, and later, English and the American ships
plying the Pacific waters in the early nineteenth century. In both cases, the potential
meanings and interpretations produced through the singular experience of drift, could
not be completely recouped through the form of a single kuchigaki. While the
narratival elements common to the castaway experience were ostensibly grounded in
the veracity of a "true story," it was primarily formal limits (as opposed to content) by
which the surplus of meaning generated by such events served as a catalyst for a
proliferation of new forms of hy6ryuki. This new form of hy6ryuki popular between
the 1790s and the l850s was primarily limited to relating the accounts of castaways
who witnessed a significantly colonized Pacific and experienced encounters with
peoples falling outside the familiar discourse of otherness grounded in an earlier ka-i
order. (See Appendix A).
While stories of Korean fisherman, Chinese traders, and Ryukyuan officials who
all maintained a place within an established worldview gave way to new others such as
indigenous peoples of the northern Pacific Rim, Russian clergy and merchants,
American whalers, and Spanish governors, the need for a new narrative form beyond
the scope of the relatively brief kuchigaki became apparent. The act of reiterating and
inscribing these more radically foreign people and places through the medium of
hy6ryuki became an educational, and at times entertaining endeavor. These accounts,
which began to proliferate in the last decade of the eighteenth century, offered the
reader not only a sense of novelty, but also a chance for the author to imbue acts of
accidental and contingent drift with meaning. In other words, the random meetings at
90
sea or on foreign shores served as important performative, cross-cultural encounters, by
which to relate a new world beyond an East Asian context. As such, the narratives are
framed as truthful re-tellings, but also infused with dramatic suspense, tension, and fear.
Analyzing the formal, textual, and literariness of these texts, we shall not only
historicize an important textual practice specific to the late Edo period, but uncover a
medium through which a new nationalist discourse in the context of increasingly
colonized Pacific emerges.
91
IN DEFENSE OF LITERATURE
Returning to the castaways of the Wakamiya-maru, we may turn to the sixteen-
volume Kankai ibun rnr~~ ~, a text mediated by unwritten questions of Otsuki
Shigekata, a Mutsu domain physician and scholar of Dutch Learning, and the Confucian
domain scholar Shimura Hiroyuki who served as scribe.45 In the case of the Kankai
ibun, the drama begins in the desolate outskirts of empire-a "contact zone" of
hybridity and becoming-before the narrative progressively takes the reader eastward
through tundra of the Siberian Plain.46 Having reached the Russian capital, the
45 First produced in shahon form in the summer of 1807 (based on date of the end of the jobun) , the
Kankai ibun was circulated and copied throughout the Edo period. The passages cited here are based on
the manuscript stored in the National Diet Library which contains on the first page a "secret" stamp (:fb)
surrounded by the characters r'i":J tMmmL The narratival voice is established from p. 6 recto to p. 7
verso in the first volume (R:1Yufl# ~). Doshisha University Library has made available another Edo
period copy of the text available on-line at: http://elib.doshisha.ac.jp/denshika/kankai/kankaLhtml. The
number of texts and images motivated by these repatriated sailors is vast. For shorter versions relating
the experiences of these four castaways also appeared during the Edo period in abbreviated form,
including an entry under IX 11::5G I¥ r£F. tUJ J in Tsuko ich iran , vol. 318 and "Ikoku e hyoryu shi soro
Mutsu no kuni no mono yon nin kuchigaki," in Arakawa Hidetoshi, ed., Ikoku hyoryuki shU (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1962),89-101. Katsuji versions of the Kankai ibun can be found in Sugimoto
Tsutomu and Iwai Noriyuki, Kankai ibun: honbun to kenkyCi (Yasaka Shobo, 1986) and (Ishii Kendo
Korekushon) Edo hyoryuki soshCi, dairokkan (Yamashita Tsunewo, ed.) (Tokyo: Nihon Hyoronsha, 1993).
Otsuki Shigekata is better known today as Otsuki Gentaku. See, Otsuki Gentaku no kenkyu (Yogakushi
Kenkyukai, ed.) (Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 1991).
46 Of the original sixteen crew aboard the Wakamiya-maru, four castaways returned to Nagasaki in ninth
month of 1804 (Bunka gannen) as supercargo aboard the Nadyezhda. Repatriated by Governor Nikolaj
Petrovich Rezanov, under orders from the emperor of Russia himself, they partook in Russia's first
successful circumnavigation of the globe, at the command of Captian Ivan Fedorovich Krusenstern. The
account begins in the winter of 1793 when their ship met with strong winds off the coast of Ishinomaki
Port just north of SendaL Following a seven-month drift at sea, the sixteen castaways aboard the craft
eventually came ashore. Because it is one of the earliest detailed accounts of Russia and the first Japanese
92
anticipation of the characters is most palpable on the morning of the 16th of the fifth
month, the day they are told they would finally be granted an audience with the emperor.
The text, unlike the preliminary kuchigaki, turns to details as the castaways prepare for
their meeting, and we are made aware of the fact that their return is contingent upon a
performance.
We dressed in newly tailored Japanese clothes that we had previously
handed over and kept with [the Russian authorities] and were told that
we may depart [for our interview] at any moment ({iiJh t PJJllit±l \§' $ f1ft ~
Q). On that day, Rezanov departed before us. We were each ordered to
shave and fix our hair in the sakayaki style.47
It is a ritualized transformation in which the body is marked through a semiotics
of both clothing and hair. But whose semiotic code is it? Considering the
complicated issues of authorship related to the Kankai ibun, it is difficult to determine
just how the ten castaways would have interpreted this event, or if they would have
even interpreted it in a similar manner. We might argue that castaways were
"ordered" (i/J1f--c) to abide by a Russian-invented exoticism ofthe Other which in this
case took the form of an imagined "Japaneseness." From this perspective their
account of global circumnavigation, a handful of scholars in Japan have researched this text including;
Ayuzawa Shintar6, Hyorya (Tokyo: Shibund6, 1956),69-78,141-148,154-158; Arakawa Hidetoshi,
"Sekai isshH shita Michinoku no Tsudayu," in Nihonjin hyoryaki (Tokyo: K6tokusha, 1964),68-78;
Kobayashi Shigefumi, Nipponjin ikoku hyoryaki (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 2000), 182-210. Scholarship in
English is quite limited, however Kazuo Ninomiya has provided a selective summary of Ayuzawa's work
cited above, as has Kathrine Plummer for Arakawa's work. See, Kazuo Z. Ninomiya, "A View of the
Outside World during Tokugawa Japan: An Analysis of Reports of Travel by Castaways, 1636 to 1856,"
(University of Washington, unpublished dissertation) and Kathrine Plummer, The Shogun's Reluctant
Ambassadors: Japanese Sea Drifters in the North Pacific (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1991).
See also, George Alexander Lensen, The Russian Push toward Japan: Russo-Japanese Relations, 1697-
1875 (New York, Octagon Books, 1971). For notions of the "contact zone" see, Mary Louise Pratt,
Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992),1-11.
47 Kankai ibun, 284.
93
performance would have been informed by a particular western hierarchy that divided
spaces of the late eighteenth century globe into one of three categories; nation-states,
the colonized, and those places still up for grabs. On the other hand, we might draw
on the work of Ronald Toby and others who have written about the significance of
hairstyles within an East Asian context, and read the actors' performances as being
framed by a logic of difference among Qing China, Japan, Ryukyu, Korea, and other
close neighbors.48 Finally we might also consider a much more local practice of
inscribing bodies. As sailors hailing from the port of Ishinomaki in the province of
Mutsu, the castaways must have also been familiar with the frontier space of Ezo in
which staged identity performances-ones that involved dress, hairstyles, among other
codified markers- were happening frequently.49 In staged interactions among the
baku/u, Matsumae domainal officials, Wa:jin, and indigenous peoples of this frontier
region, we can discover a much more localized semiotics of identity on the frontier in
which the sakayaki haircut and Japanese clothing signified the relative civility of a
Japan-centered civilization-barbarism worldview (Nihongata ka-i chitsujo s*~.~tk
J¥:).50 Thus for the castaways and their interrogators who were responsible for the
production of this story, they may have instead related and viewed this ceremony
48 See Ronald Toby, "'Keto jin' no tojo wo megutte: Kinsei Nihon no taigai ninshiki tashakan no
issokumen," in Kyokai no Nihonshi (Murai Shosuke, Sato Makoto, Yoshida Nobuyuki, eds.) (Tokyo:
Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1997),254-291. For points on the semiotic role of hair within East Asia, see
260-284.
49 Haruna also talks about the haircut as part of Chinese repatriation practices for Japanese castaways
"Hy6ryfimin s6kan seid6 no keisei ni tusitei" (p. 17) and David Howell has written about the role of
haircuts in cross-cultural (and colonial) contact between Ainu and Japan.
50 This term is used by Arano.
94
through the lens of a domestic anthro-cosmology dependent upon specific categories of
ethnas51 which defined this Nihangata ka-i chitsuja.
Instead of concealing a certain semiotic dissonance between foreign codes of
representation and what the castaways (and readers alike) bring to these moments of
interaction, the narratives more often than not make visible the various and sometimes
contradictory codes of identity performance, appealing to what Uchiyama Jun'ichi and
others have referred to as, an "Edo curiosity."s2 Nonetheless, the meeting with the
Emperor is a performance staged, and one in which the confusion is dramatized. After
an elaborate description of the palace and rooms leading to the chambers where the
emperor was to receive the castaways, we again come to another passage that again
foregrounds this semiotic and performative dissonance.
Amidst preparing for this and that, Rezenov directed our attentions to the
emperor as he entered, followed by the empress dowager, the empress,
and the prince. The emperor himself led his mother by the hand. [In
smaller inter-linear commentary we read, "This was the left hand. It is
said (. .. ta te) that in these cases the left hand is always used, and that in
this country the left hand is given greater importance."] The emperor's
visage was respectful and dignified, but remembered as being pointlessly
threatening (??m{Ljs:ft <'~I*:H*? ?) Everyone sat and we lowered our
heads, preparing to lie prostrate, when an official beside us explained
that in this country it is proper protocol to stand up and make eye contact.
Since they thought that we were slouching (IfZ.@i) [by getting on our
51 Ronald Toby, "Kinsei Nihonjin no etonosu ninshiki," in Yamauchi Masayuki & Yoshida Motoo, ed.,
Nihon imeeji no k6saku: Ajia Taiheiy6 no toposu (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1997), 122-132.
5" Uchiyama Junichi, Edo no k6kishin: bijutsu to kagaku no deai (Tokyo: K6dansha, 1996). In the
context of castaway narratives, Kobayashi Shigefumi attributes the popularity of these narratives to
fulfilling a "fundamental curiosity" of a rumored and partially imagined outside world. See Kobayashi
Shigefumi Nipponjin ikoku hy6ryuki (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 2000),182-184. See also, Ronald Toby &
Kuroda Hideo, Gy6retsu to misemono (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1994). The apparent irony is that
while this curiosity may be identified, the castaway account and other objects of mise mono displays were
at the same time often considered exceedingly "rare," as chin butsu or the subject of chin dan.
95
knees], we always stood at attention with our heads bowed only slightly,
but then the empress dowager took a few steps forward and approached
us. She proceeded to point out with her own finger the people lined up
around the room. Here we have the current majesty, and there we have
the emperor's brother, and there we have the empress, and so on,
informing us of who each person was.53
The story effectively oscillates between the readers' sense of surprise and
expectation. On the one hand, the emperor is "respectful and dignified" (6 no saba
uyauyashiki igen ari) to these castaways, but on the other he is "threatening." We then
see how the cultural specificity of bowing is misread by the Russian official as a sign of
disrespect, leading the castaways to do what must have been nearly unimaginable for a
Edo audience-only slightly tilting their heads to a figure who is later described as the
subjugator of Napoleon and the most powerful figure in Europe. Even the empress
dowager's actions are seen as decidedly strange and unexpected. After a decade
among Russians and their colonial subjects the castaways had ample opportunity to
observe, interpret, and process Russian notions of Self and Other. While numerous
instances in the text reveal this constant struggle on the castaways' part, this passage
and other more detailed extrapolations not included in the kuchigaki form, also cater to
readers' sense of curiosity and fascination. More importantly, this experience also
allowed readers to imagine, perhaps for the first time, codes of Japanese ethnic identity
vis-a~vis various others, including Russian, Russian colonial subjects, and the more
abstract category of "the West" which frequently comes to be employed in these
castaway narratives from the 1790s onward.
53 Kankai ibun, 285.
96
As the Kankai ibun demonstrates, there is an essential textual and performative
element to these more detailed texts. At the same time they are profoundly historical
documents, made possible only through complex constellation of conditions that
include Russian imperial expansion, increased domestic maritime trade within Japan, a
growing discourse of Japanese identity and a growing sense, at least among Japanese
officials and elite, of certain colonial parameters developing in the Pacific. Ishii
Kend6, one of the first to comprehensively compile castaway accounts, argues that only
Tenjiku monogatari ::R~~Efr, Funaosa nikki !¥r:iPt s ~c, and Gishichi from Tosa's
Hy6ryf1 nikki 1~1TrE s ~cdeserved any literary merit. Both Ikeda Hiroshi and Kawai
Hikomitsu have followed suit in their respective studies, simply rearticulating Ishii's
opinion.54 However this perspective is quite misleading, since it represents the vast
majority of hy6ryf1ki as somehow simply derivative of a purely practical concern,
lacking any textual, narratival, performative, and literary facet. Needless to say, the
vast majority of these texts reveal ideological concerns guiding both form or content
and stand as representative of a particular cultural practice that was important for
interpreting and engaging with the larger world.
While many national history (kokushi 1:'i89:'.) scholars have insisted on a
completely isolated Japan during the Edo period, literary scholars have likewise
54 Ishii Kenda, one of the earliest scholars of castaway accounts, attributes "literary value" (bungakuteki
na kachi to only three texts; Tenjiku monogatari. Funaosa nikki, and hyoryu nikki. Later scholars,
including Ikeda Hiroshi and Kawai Hikomitsu. have repeated this limited view. However, Kawai has
included both Bandan and Tokei monogatari. among other castaway accounts under the category of
"Scholarly Castaway Accounts" (gakujutsuteki na hyoryuki). See Kawai Hikomitsll Nihonjin hyoryuki
(Tokyo: Shakai Shisasha, 1967),239. See also NSSS5, 504, 624.
97
maintained a powerful meta-narrative of literary development. The literature of the
Edo period, particularly prose, is often downplayed as simple, shallow, and too often
guided by didactic concerns worthy of Confucian values. Just as Perry's opening of a
dark and feudal nation to enlightenment and civilization resonated well with postwar
Pacific alliances, the notion that it took Meiji period Japanese translations of western
novels to spawn Japanese prose fiction worthy of attention contributes to a perceived
hierarchical relationship of gracious forerunner and fortunate benefactor.55 We might
expect scholars of Edo prose to be particularly sensitive to such postwar biases, and it is
no coincidence that resistance to this idea has come primarily from them. Matsuda
Osamu for example, in his book-length attempt to recover a sense of the literary for Edo
readers, argues that readers in an age of mass-produced literature in katsuji (printed)
form lack an appreciation for the many literary genres that circulated primarily in
handwritten form in an earlier era. 56 The fact that the canonical texts from the early-
modern literature recognized today are invariably texts that were printed and published
in the Edo period, tends to confirm Matsuda's point. Although Matsuda does not
address castaway narratives specifically, the fact that so many of them were only
circulated in shahon or handwritten form may explain in part why such literary aspects
55 Just one example of this apparent bias is found in Janet A. Walker, "Reflections on the Entrance of
Fiction into the Meiji Literary Canon" in Helen Hardacre & Adam L. Kern, New Directions in the Study
ofMeiji Japan (Leiden: Brill, 1997),42-44. She writes, "Fiction in the period before contact with
Western literature never had the prestige... It may have taken an awareness of the greatness of
nineteenth-century European novel-an awareness communicated by translations made from the 1870s
onward, as well as by Tsubouchi Shoyo's active urging of Japanese writers to write novels rivaling those
of European countries- to convince the first shapers of a classical canon in the 1890s [Sic] to include
Japanese classical fiction in their histories of Japanese literature." (p. 42)
56 Matsuda Osamu, Edo itan bungaku nooto (Tokyo: Seidosha, 1993),22.
98
of these texts have remained unrecognized throughout the twentieth century.
Ironically, Edo period hy6ryuki have served as the basis for numerous novels in the
twentieth Century. A short list would include, Ibuse Masuji's Jon Manjir6 hy6ryuki57
and Inoue Yasushi' s Oroshiya koku suimutan.58
Because of the "Kansei igaku no kin" (Kansei prohibitions against heretical
teachings) implemented by Matsudaira Sadanobu in1790, and subsequent edicts
cracking down on the book industry, the production and publishing of castaway
narratives would have been considered risky and prone to censorship.59 While there
does not seem to be any specific proscriptions against hy6ryuki per se, and while several
castaway accounts were published during the Edo period,60 the arraignment of Hayashi
57 This text, written during the war, received the sixth Naoki Award for Non-Fiction in 1937 and was
included in the 1941 Sazanami gunki ["Rippling War Stories"] Ibuse Masuji, Sazanami gunki: tsuki Jon
Manjiro hyoryCtki. (Tokyo: Kawade Shobo, 1941). This text, along with Yoshioka Nagayoshi's historical
work, HyoryCt sen monogatari no kenkyCt of 1944 addressed in the first chapter in the context of
sakokuron, suggests the overt political meanings extractable from Edo period castaway accounts even
during the Pacific War.
58 Inoue was awarded the first Nihon bungaku taisho in 1969 for this novel that was later turned into a
popular high budget film in 1992 by director Sato Junya.
59 Peter Kornicki, The Book in Japan: A Cultural History for the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century.
(Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001),339-341; Haruo Shirane, Early Modern Japanese
Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 655-656.
60 Published accounts from the Edo period include: Anonymous, Kanei hyoryCtki J'[j}dJl'!;mE1li..'.
(1704~1716) in Yamada Seisaku, et. ai, eds. , (Kisho Fukusei) Kanei hyoryCtki (Tokyo: Yoneyamad6,
1939-1940); Ikoku monogatari ~OO¥Jl'!;¥JlE1li..'. (1644) in Arakawa Hidetoshi (ed.) Ikoku hyoryCtki shU
(Tokyo: Kisho Kenkyujo, 1962), 1-18.; Kimura Riemon, ChOsen monogatari Ji!Jlff(o~ll! (1750) in ChOsen
monogatari (Kyoto: Kyoto Daigaku Kokubungaku Kai, 1970); ShihOken, Nanpyoki i¥flN.l\1li..'. (1798) in
EHSS2, 285-403; Aoki Teien, Nankai kibun i¥f¥iUcr.!1 (1820?, see Kobayashi, p. 203) in NSSS5, 623-
652; Shunyo Gy6jin Inoue Boku, Aboku chikushi iJE~ttit (Gakuhando, 1846); Maekawa Bunzo &
Sakai Teiki, Kaigai ibun i'f:/i>H~r.!1 (1854) in Arakawa Hidetoshi, ed. Ikoku hyoryCtki zokushCt (Tokyo:
Tanin Shokan, 1964), Don Tsushi, Amerika hyoryCttan (Toto: Bus6d6, 1852); the previous text was then
later re-published the following year with a new title and illustrations as Don Tsushi, [Manjiro] HyoryCtki
~¥JlE1li..'. (1853) in Arakawa Hidetoshi, ed., Kinsei hyoryCtki shU (Tokyo: H6sei Dagaku Shuppan Kyoku,
1969),187-204; Hamada Hikozo, [Hikozo] HyoryCtkaJl'!;mE1li..'. (1863) in NSSS5, 693-720. There are other
castaway accounts that appear in larger published collections and miscellanies published in the Edo
99
Shihei in 1792 for publishing the Kaikoku heidan ym;OOAggahe previous year and for
including "misleading maps in the Sangoku tsuran zusetsu," may have urged hy6ryuki
authors, whose topic like Shihei's, was ostensibly the world outside of Japan, to opt for
a handwritten or shahon format.61 While Shihei's work was scholarly, if not polemical,
more popular forms of literature were also subject to Sadanobu's crackdown. The
lower-brow gesaku jjWpliterature that flourished among especially increasingly literate
urban audiences also was subject to control through these Kansei proscriptions. Santo
Kyoden, like Hayashi Shihei, was also made an example of for other writers
considering social critique through popular literature.62 Ironically, Matsudaira himself
wrote a satiric gesaku piece titled Daimy6 takagi that was only discovered in the
twentieth century.63
period such as Kasshi yawa. Based on comparisons of Edo period versions of many of these texts,
such as Chosen monogatari (cf. version in University of Leiden Serrurier Collection, #188), as well as
[Manjiro] Hyoryuki (University of Hawai'i and Doshisha collections) appear to have gone through plural
printings during the Edo period. Nagakuni Junya has argued that numerous printed versions of
Manjir6's account appeared in the final years of the Edo period. See Nagakuni Junya, Jon Man
enkerese, (Kochi: Kochi Shinbunsha, 1982),208-210. Needless to say, the vast majority of hyoryuki
were produced in shahon form, shared, and copied. In some cases, such as Funaosa nikki and Bandan,
Kankai ibun, and Tenjiku Tokubei monogatari, more than thirty Edo period copies exist, outnumbering
the number of some of the previously mentioned printed texts, such as Nankai kibun and Aboku chikuhi.
In the private archive of the Yoshitoku Ningyoya in Asakusa, Tokyo there is a kawaraban from the late
Edo period graphically representing Manjiro with some very basic facts of his life explained. In
discussions with William Steele I have learned that several other Bakumatsu and Meiji period kawaraban
representing castaways (particularly Manjiro) exist.
61 For references to Hayashi Shihei's arrest, see Kornicki, 341. See also, Yamagishi Tokubei & Sano
Masami (eds.), Shinpen Hayashi Shihei zenshu. vol. 2 Chiri (Tokyo: Daiichi Shobo, 1979), 1-13.
62 Haruo Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900 (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2002), 656.
63 Iwasaki Haruko, "Portrait of a Daimyo: Comical Fiction by Matsudaira Sadanobu," in Monumenta
Nipponica, Vol. 38, No. 1. (Spring, 1983), 1-19; and English translation of Matsudaira Sadanobu's work
in, "Daimyo Katagi," in Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 38, No.1. (Spring, 1983),20-48.
100
The metaphor of drift has long been a part of the Japanese literary canon.64
The sly Prince Kuramochi of the Taketori monogatari ttm(!I:&J~i3- feigns aimless drift at
sea in order to emphasize the tribulations endured in seeking out the jeweled branch
from Horai (P'eng-lai) which Kaguyahime asks for in exchange for her hand in
marriage.65 While only the first character (hy6/tadayou, 1~) comprising the compound
term of hy6ryu is used in the text, the description relates specific elements of a story
that come to be retold frequently in the Edo period.
Rowing into waves and aimlessly drifting, we drew distant from our
country. At times we were certain to be swallowed up by the wave
swept seas. At times the winds blew us to unknown lands, where things
that appeared like devils came and we killed them. At times, we were
lost at sea, not knowing from where we had come and to where we
might go. At times, with our provisions depleted we ate the roots of
grass. At times, indescribably unrefined creatures would come and try
to eat us. At times, we survived on shellfish from the sea. In a place
where there is no one to assist a traveler, we caught various illnesses
and had not the slightest idea of what to do. Surrendering to the
direction that the boat would take us, we drifted across the seas. In the
hour of the dragon on the 500th day, from out of the sea, we could
barely see a mountain.66
64 While the issue of when a national literary canon developed in Japan is disputed (Janet Walker sees it
happening in the 1890s), it is clear that kokugaku scholars such as Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801) had a
profound sense of "Japanese literature" in the Edo period and identified certain texts that stood as
Japanese literry ideals. He also had a profound interest in collecting castaway accounts, and several
accounts such as Tokei monogatari and Funaosa nikki were written by later kokugaku scholars.
65 See Nihon koten bungaku taikei, [NKBT] vol. 9: Taketori monogatari, Ise monogatari, Yamato
monogatari (Sakakura Atsuyoshi, et aI., eds.)(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1962), and Helen Craig
McCullough, ed., Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).
66 NKBT9,37-38. It is interesting to note how certain tropes that appear in this very early text, reappear
in Edo period historical documents dealing with hy6ryu. Just one example is an account relating an
accident and drift to an uninhabited island in 1787 to be found in the ~1M§c. See Arakawa Hidetoshi,
Hy6ryu hy6chaku shiry6 shu (Tokyo: Chijin shokan, 1962),370-372.
101
Likewise, in the "Ukifune" l"¥-frt ("Drifting Boat") chapter of Genji
monogatari i)](.Et~~,!j-, a distressed and relatively powerless woman torn between the
attentions of competing men, likens herself to a drifting boat and calls on poetic images
of drift, before taking her own life.67 The poetics of drift (uki, l"¥-) and flow (nagare,
rifE) have in fact served as staple imagery since the earliest anthologies of traditional
waka fQ~ poetry and later haiku poetics, often also invoking certain Buddhist
connotations.68
While hy6ryitki relate a significantly different "floating world" from the
demimonde (ukiyo l"¥-~-tlt) that is more often invoked through, and serves as the
backdrop for so much Edo popular literature, authors of both hy6ryit and urban
literature presented the most up-to-date understanding of marginalized worlds in a
colloquial language that was comprehensible to the burgeoning readership of post-
K . . 69ansel SOCIety. Gesaku texts such as Fitryit shid6ken den !!1.rifEi0)i'H:li, while
considered one of the finest examples of dangibon gesaku fiction, is also a castaway
narrative in which the protagonist ventures to foreign countries and in the process,
defines the qualities that separate the emerging notion of Japanese national identity
67 NKBTl8,237.
68 Tota Kaneko, Hyohaku no haijintachi (Tokyo: Nihon Hoso Shuppan Kyokai, 2000).
69 The Kansei reforms, instituted by Matsudaira Sadanobu seem to have had a profound effect on literacy
according to Donald Keene. Not only did these reforms strictly regulate the type of literature produced,
but they also emphasized the spread of basic education. By 1808 there were over 656 libraries in Edo
alone. See Donald Keene, World Within Walls: Japanese Literature in the Pre-Modern Era, 1600-1867
(New York: Grove Press, 1976) 409. Peter Kornicki's later research suggests the number of lending
libraries was even greater. See also, Robert L. Backus, "The Kansei Prohibition of Heterodoxy and Its
Effects on Education," in Harvard Journal ofAsiatic Studies, Vol. 39, No.1. (Jun., 1979),55-106.
102
from that of other peoples?O As we shall see, several late Edo hyoryuki in fact exhibit
a certain playfulness and vulgarity that can only be compared to contemporary gesaku
works.
As has already been mentioned, both the usage of the term hyoryu and bakufu
policy governing the repatriation of castaways (along with the necessary documentation
of kuchigaki) appear to have developed in the context of Asian diplomatic relations,
particularly between Japan and Korea sometime in the early seventeenth century. But
although the origins of castaway protocol and rudimentary documentation in the form of
kuchigaki may have originated within an East Asian sphere of diplomacy, the
proliferation of more elaborate, and often multi-volume accounts (what Haruna refers to
as hensan sareta hyoryuki) generally date from the later Edo period and relate
experiences in countries primarily outside a traditional Asian diplomatic order. In
short, an increased presence of first Russian, followed by English trading and American
whaling ships, in the waters off the coast of Japan, spawned the need for numerous
second-order hyoryuki forms.
These second-order castaway accounts, written after the castaway was initially
debriefed, often included one of several terms in the title, such as; hyoryuki, bunryaku,
ibun, kibun, hyoki, monogatari, nikki, hyoryutan, kidan, danwa, shinwa, and kiji. Of
these terms, most seem to reflect an emphasis on the hearing of a story (IVJ~, *21i11, ~
IVJ), the telling of a story (!jo/J~;g:, i~Hik, ~ik~g;, *JT~.$Jf, {~{J1E~., {~tJ1E~ik), or the writing of the
70 According to Nakamura Yukihiko, after the Kansei reforms many gesaku writers took up more
serious pursuits such as the study of science and Western Learning. See Keene, World Within Walls,
409.
103
story U~y*§c, ~§c, i=I §c, §c_:), and thus demonstrates roots located in the first order
forms of castaway accounts represented by kuchigaki, kikigaki, and oboegaki. This
fragmentation of form reflected in the diversity of terms used to describe these second-
order accounts makes it difficult to characterize them in overarching terms. Compared
to kuchigaki, they are generally longer, sometimes, but not always, deviating from a
s6r6bun style common to official bakufu or han documents, and often include elaborate
illustrations, transcribed poetry exchanges, maps, and dictionaries. Authorship of the
texts was almost never attributable to the castaway themselves; instead being the result
of private interviews with the castaways by bakufu or domain elite, frequently over the
course of several meetings. A common characteristic among these narratives, and
again echoing their kuchigaki origins, is that they were almost always framed as truthful
documents based on the confessional voice of a castaway who figures as an eyewitness
to conditions abroad. Furthermore these texts were, with very few exceptions, almost
never written by the castaways themselves, instead being mediated through the writing
and knowledge of scholars whose identity was grounded on the land and, claims to the
contrary, were constantly translating the voice of the subject into a textual form and
lexicon comprehensible to readers. In reading these documents, we are often
confronted with contradictions and tensions that arise out of the poly-vocality of the
texts. Although we may expect a seamless narrative in which the writing author
remains a transparent hand behind the voice of the castaway subject, in fact a careful
reading suggests that the voice of the writer often betrays the seamlessness of the
castaway's story.
104
In the Colophon of his castaway novel, The Island ofthe Day Before, Umberto
Eco asks, "How to draw a novel from a story, so novelistic, when the end--or, for that
matter, the true beginning is missing?" He concludes,
If from this story I wanted to produce a novel, I would demonstrate
once again that it is impossible to write except by making a
palimpsest of a rediscovered manuscript-without ever succeeding
in eluding the Anxiety of Influence. Nor could I elude the
childish curiosity of the reader, who would want to know if
Roberto really wrote the pages on which I have dwelt far too long.
In all honesty, I would have to reply that it is not impossible that
someone else wrote them, someone who wanted only to pretend to
tell the truth. And thus I would lose all the effect of the novel:
where, yes, you pretend to tell true things, but you must not admit
. I h d' 71senous y t at you are preten mg.
With the transformation ofthe castaway into a performing national subject, the
exact position of the writer also undergoes a transformation, for the veracity of both the
subject and the subject's adventure depends upon the presentation of a seamless
narrative in which the mediating author must remain ostensibly invisible behind the
"text" ofthe castaway's unadulterated testimony. At the same time, confronted by the
vernacular of sailors from Owari or Sendai or Tosa, we might only expect readers in
Edo and other urban areas to be somewhat baffled without the helpful gloss of a
narrator. In short, very basic problems oflanguage-problems not unrelated to what
would later become the debate over genbun itehi-begin to manifest themselves in
more literary castaway accounts.72 But the authors ofthese accounts did not simply
71 Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before, William Weaver, trans. (London: Vintage, 1998),505 and
512-513, respectively.
72 If Sakoku ron has produced certain blinders for Japanese historians, it has provided an ever greater
disservice to the field of Early-modern Japanese literary studies. As has already been mentioned in the
105
resort to translating these testimonies into a more urbane tongue, instead often opting to
preserve elements of the castaway's original story. Thus the author's relationship to
the castaway's language is often ambivalent at best.
In the preface of Funaosa nikki (1822), the Mikawa han scholar and author
Ikeda Hirochika reminds the reader repeatedly that he has transcribed the words
"exactly as Jukichi [the castaway] has dictated them," and later comparing his choice of
words to that of a "packhorse driver.,m However in the very same pages we can read
numerous instances in which he then betrays this claim of transparency, for example
when he reveals that he has consulted other castaway narratives and scholarly texts,74
or that he has showed earlier drafts to associates. This confusion over language is
most evident toward the end of his introduction when-perhaps as a literary
convention-he lets down his veil of transparency and apologizes for his incomplete
attempt to clean up the vulgarities of Jukichi which in turn results in a distasteful hybrid
context of Janet Walker's understanding of Japanese prose fiction, scholars of Japanese literature, from
Karatani Kojin to Miyoshi Masao, to Dennis Washburn, all argue that the very notion of literature, and its
qualities such as a unitary speaking voice, a standardized narrative language, etc. are a post-Edo invention
adopted from Western notions of literature. This predominant view obviously occludes late Edo
castaway narratives, and has led to a treatment of Edo period literature as something cut off and removed
from current literary practice and models. It is interesting to note that certain western castaway accounts
such as Robinson Crusoe and Moby Dick (both based on actual events), as well as more fictional accounts
such as Gulliver's Travels, that come to define a particularly English literary tradition remain
unquestionably literary, Japanese accounts such as Funaosa nikki and Hokusa bunryaku (also based on
actual events), as well as Hiraga Gennai's FuryCi Shidoken den. remain outside the scope of most Early-
modern Japanese literary scholars.
73 NSSSS5, 505.
74 Ikeda does not neglect to mention that he has referred to the castaway narrative of two decades before,
the Kankai ibun written by Otsuki Gentaku, and a second text titled Bukkoku rekishO hen 1LOO~~*i.
Stephen Kohl has pointed out the article "Shaku Entsu 'Bukkoku rekisho hen' no eM Sei uchusetsu
hihan," in Dai 44 D6shisha Daigaku ri k6 gaku kenkyCijo kenkyCi happy6 kokokkai. in order to write
Jukichi's story.
106
language. A vernacular that is, "a mix of old words and words of recent times, written
at the whims of the heart and pen with both vulgarities and elegant language presented
as is." 75
Many other castaway authors also address the difficulties faced in rewriting the
language of sailors and fishermen into a more refined tenor. Ishiguro Senhiro, the
author of Tokei monogatari 's preface (1849), offers the reader a caveat when he
explains that because the text is the story of castaways, it is written in "the commoner's
tongue" (minkan rigo), although he also tells us he has, "done away with the frivolous
but kept the fruit" (ka wo sutete, mi wo tori).76 Again despite Ishiguro's claim that the
document before the reader is simply a transparent recording of the castaways'
testimony, we should consider that Ishiguro is the very same author of, "Tokei
monogatari jo kanazuke narabi insh6," a brief dictionary or lexicon ofJapanese terms
used throughout the Tokei monogatari. Demonstrating the author's kokugaku
affiliations, this fascinating document provides us with a dictionary for terms that
frequently appear in not only the Tokei monogatari but also other hy6ryftki. While
terms such as kako ("sailor"), isana toru ("to catch whales"), and other terms related to
castaways are to be found, Ishiguro also includes elements of a more general grammar
such as shima and tefu that were part of the emerging kokugaku classical canon of
Japanese literature. Looking at a few of the definitions contained in this fascinating
addendum to the Tokei monogatari, we can see that Ishiguro is less interested in
75 NSSSS5,506.
76 NSSSS5, 5.
107
explaining the esoteric jargon of the sea, and more interested in the equally esoteric
language of kokugaku discourse of Tokugawa nativism.
lsana toru-Found in the Manyoshu, this term is written with the
characters for "brave" and "fish" and read "kujira." lsana toru umi
[Whaling waters] is a makura kotoba and so the text will not be complete
without its complimenting phrase.
Tefu-An elegant form (miyabi no kotoba) of "to iu. '.' Since "chi" is a
substitute for "toi" in the Manyoshu, " in archaic texts it is read chi fu.
But since chi and te share a similar pronunciation it came to be read as
tefu.
108
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109
His dictionary appears as an attempt to invest this castaway narrative with a
certain cultural capital borrowed from a developing "National Literature." In defining
seventy-six terms and phrases, Ishiguro manages to cite Genji monogatari, Kokin
wakashu, Manyoshu, and other classical texts over eighty times, and as with other
castaway narratives, undermines his claims that the story is the castaway's alone.
Nonetheless it also reflects an important aspect of what Ishiguro and other scholars
involved in the Tokei monogatari project hoped to emphasize, that is the text's literary
value and its compatibility with a canon of national literary texts.
The distinction between vulgar and elegant language is a differentiation on the
order of social class, but there is yet another linguistic dichotomy that is emphasized in
nearly every castaway narrative that concerns confrontations with the West. The
linguistic variance of these second order texts takes place on the level of distinct
national languages as well. We can find many examples where the author points
toward a conception of language that is bound by essential cultural and geopolitical
difference and whose autonomy is rooted in a particularly terrestrial perspective. In
most cases the terms to distinguish this category oflanguage are similar. For example,
we see kokoku no kotoba ~ 00 0) i3~ (Funaosa nikki), mota no kuni no kotoba :;$:0) 00 0)
~jj] (Tokei monogatari), waga kuni no koto b7J'~ 0) =- ~ (Bandan), waga kuni no ji tit
~O)*(Kankai ibun), honcho no kotoba :;$:Jj1)j0)~jj] (Toyo hyokyaku danki), konokuni no
gengo Jlto) 00 0) i3~:g (Toka kibun), etc. This notion of a national language is almost
110
always accompanied by the foreign counterpart such as ikoku no go J!<OOO)~:g:, bankoku
no kotoba ~OOO)~jjJ, Granda noji ~ilJJlO)*, and kano kuni no kotoba 1&0)~0)~iI].
The clear distinction between native and foreign language is problematized
however if we consider terms such as ranbiki which was used to designate a
desalinating device frequently made by castaways. Kobayashi Shigefumi notes that
the linguistic origins of the term are most likely the Portuguese, "alambique.,,77 In his
study of castaways he points to seven separate castaway accidents in which Japanese
sailors depend on these devices for water. He concludes that despite most cases (five
of seven) in which the castaways claimed to have learned the construction and use of a
ranbiki through either their own dreams or ingenuity, more likely it was common
knowledge among both maritime communities and alcohol distilleries. In particular,
he questions the claim by the castaway JUkichi in Funaosa nikki who states that the
design came to him in a dream.78 The obscuration ofthe foreign origins ofranbiki
presents us with another example ofjust how the worldly wisdom of trans-Pacific
castaways, unbound by national geographies, are reterritorialized in terms of the nation.
The clear distinction between native and foreign languages also assumes that
proto-national subjects, despite class and regional differences, would be able to
understand each other through a shared tongue. Thus, it is surprising to find passages
such as the following from Nakahama Manjiro's account as recorded in Hy6kyaku danki
77 Kobayashi Shigefumi Nipponjin ikoku hyoryCtki (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 2000), 69.
78 Kobayashi, 71.
111
{~~~.%*in which two Japanese meeting at sea cannot even understand each other due to
linguistic difference.
From here we passed east whaling in the waters south of Japan, about
eighty ri from land we came upon a Japanese fishing vessel. I put on a
Japanese styIe hachimaki headband and called out to them, but it was
difficult communicating. I asked them what direction Tosa was, and
when asked where they were from, they said someplace called Sen-day.79
Here again the tensions that arise from the discourse of national identity are
made evident as the hachimaki encodes the body as particularly Japanese, but at the
same time communication between "countrymen" is rendered difficult. It may be that
Manjiro did not recognize "Sen-day" and major port city of Sendai, but it seems more
likely that the author includes this otherwise apocryphal story as a comic break, or
perhaps a veiled statement of Tosa nationalism.8o In looking at several other Manjiro
accounts, this case of Japanese sailors having difficulty communicating appears to be
exceptional. 81 Other authors of castaway narratives may in fact have tried to rework
or cut completely these particular moments in order to present their protagonist as a
stabilized subject grounded in a national identity. Certainly, other cases in which
79 Hyokyaku danki in Ikoku hyoryCtki shCt, 140.
80 Roberts, depending on local documentation, has argued that the province of Tosa exhibited particularly
strong regional identity. It is my humble opinion that, while this debate over how "national" in
character early-modern identity formations actually were depends on the documentation being interpreted.
For example, if limiting one's field of research to han produced documents regarding local taxes, of
course a term like kokueki OO~ will be used to mean "domain profits," just as a term such as moto no
kuni no kotoba *O)~O)~Oj in the context of castaway accounts, will be used to mean "national
language." See Luke S. Roberts, Mercantilism in a Japanese domain: the merchant origins ofeconomic
nationalism in 18th-century Tosa (New Yark: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
81 HyoryCt danki, which was based upon the earlier Hyokyaku danki, is perhaps the only exception. In this
case, the inability to understand the Sendai sailors is even clearer. ~~ i'fi {*""'.!::: t@ C i'fi 2' T See Ikoku
hyoryukishCt.168-169.
112
castaways from different parts of the archipelago meet either aboard a ship or in one of
several informal communities of castaways abroad that developed in the late-Edo period,
there does not appear to be particular trouble communicating among each other.
These two sets of linguistic dichotomies-between the speech of the castaway
and the writing of the author on one level and the further distinction between national
language and foreign languages on an other-is one manner in which the authors
negotiate the reterritorialization of drifters into national figures. However, it is also
the source of contradictions that stem from the transformation of the castaway into a
literary hero.
These contradictions are not only apparent in instances of linguistic
incompatibility, but also in the very basic formal structure or layout of the texts. As
early as 1804 with the completion of the Kankai ibun, we see that the author (in this
case Otsuki Gentaku) employs a technique that comes to be employed by several later
castaway authors. In order to demarcate the testimony of the castaway from the
commentary of the author, Otsuki and others resort to using niji sage or "two-space
indentation.,,82 This presents the illusion that the reader might be able to immediately
differentiate between two distinct voices. Furthermore, it reflects an inversion
between the primacy of untrained testimony over a secondary knowledge or critical
commentary that allows us to read the castaway account as an adventure narrative of
homecoming, but one directed by a not so invisible hand recasting the castaway in
82 See Kankai ibun honbun to kenkyu (Sugimoto & Iwai, eds.) (Tokyo: Yazaka Shobo, 1986), 180-181
for example. I am grateful to Professor Hirano Mitsuru of Meiji University who has informed me of the
general use of two-spaced indention in Edo period texts.
113
terms of a national subject at the whims of national deities and a set of maritime
practices specific to them.
With a story whose setting includes foreign sailors, ships, and ports we might
naturally expect the need for editorial explanation, therefore it is somewhat surprising
that the content of this barely buried commentary is frequently not explication of the
Other, but instead that of the Self or emerging Japanese subject rooted in the terra firma
of the Nation. For example, from one of the many examples of this technique that
appears in Funaosa nikki we read the following:
Foreign ships are familiar with the geography of the innumerable
countries. They use compasses and astronomy to determine many things
but the sailors of our land, unfamiliar with these techniques, instead rely
completely on kamikuji divination prayers to the gods at Ise. This
kamikuji practice involves placing 8 go of rice into a wood masu cup,
cutting paper into one sun squares one which one writes the possible
answers to the question. The squares are then crumpled up into balls and
placed atop the rice as the Grand Shrine is summoned. If a bundle of rice
stalks is placed above this one of the pieces of rolled up paper will jump
up and stick to the rice stalks. Looking at what is written on that paper,
we can know the answer to our question. This practice is second to none,
and thus the sea captains of Japan should only concern themselves with
the gods of Ise. Those like Jfrkichi who serve aboard ships surely respect
h f d· . . 83t e powers 0 a lvme natIon.
What begins as seemingly neutral commentary on difference, is quickly
refracted through a religious discourse that reifies this difference as a unique cultural
aspect of the Nation. The reference to kamikuji is not limited to JUkichi's account, and
was in fact a common practice among sailors. While the kami and Buddhas to whom
83 Translations of Funaosa nikki are adapted from the unpublished manuscript of Professor Stephen Kohl,
who has been most gracious in not only going over the text with me, but also guiding me in my research
for several years. The publication of his translation and research of Funaosa nikki as a book will be a
great service to the field of Edo period literature. See NSSSS5, 507.
114
the prayers were directed were occasionally identified with the sailor's home shrine,
more often than not, they were deities central to a late-Edo revival of Shinkoku
thought.84
The transformation of a diverse set of navigational practices shared among the
fluid communities of sailors and fishermen into a standardized, sanctified, and stable
practice serves as one function of Funaosa nikki, through references to specifically
"Japanese" divinities and metaphysical praxis. In fact, in numerous late Edo hy6ryuki
elements of Shinkoku thought are ubiquitous. Similarly, Ikeda Hirochika has this to
say about the appearance of birds in his account:
On the fifteenth the high winds continued even though it was a festival
day. This was a special day for worshipping the Grand Shrine at Ise
and also the Hachiman Shrines, so everyone [aboard the drifting ship]
purified themselves and prayed. When they had done this,
unexpectedly, they were able to see two blue birds. Believing these to
be manifestations of the deities of the Grand Shrine, all turned and
prayed reverently in the direction of the birds. The birds stayed in the
vicinity of the ship from mid morning to mid afternoon. They fluttered
around and during this time the wind and waves died down just as had
happened earlier with white birds. After this, white and blue birds
appeared again on the tenth and fifteenth day of each month. 85
84 The development of Shinkoku thought (shis6) in Edo period hy6ryuki is the central argument of
Kobayashi Shigefumi's exceptional study of the subject. He points to nineteen texts that make direct
reference to "Shinkoku," "K6koku," or "Teikoku." There are certainly numerous texts not included in his
list such as Hy6min kuchigaki and lkoku monogatari. He demonstrates conclusively that castaways did
in fact have a fairly strong sense of national boundaries and customs, at least in the inherently
international context of drift. He then argues that the incorporation of Shinkoku thought began as
something written into the texts by the intellectual elite responsible for writing them, but after 1800 the
sailors themselves seem to adopt these beliefs as Shinkoku ideology combines with the emergence of a
late Edo sakokuron. See, Kobayashi Shigefumi, Nipponjin ikoku hy6ryuki (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 2000),
290-302.
85 NSSSS5. 509.
115
The maritime historian Amird Aczel points out that pre-modern mariners shared
among themselves a body of knowledge that was capable of reading the currents and
winds, the shape, color, and depth of the sea, and the habits of birds and sea animals.86
For Japanese sailors sailing longer distant routes, for example from Maizuru to
Hakodate and back to Osaka, this shared knowledge most certainly extended throughout
the littoral regions of the archipelago. In the passage cited above we again see the
kokugaku author rewriting this maritime knowledge into a discourse of shrines that is
informed by a metaphysical nationalism of shinkoku ideology.
We have seen how authors attempted to reconstruct the testimonies of drifters
into texts that prescribe the language, religious practice, and dress to that of a national
subject. We might also point to other examples that do the same with diet, hairstyle,
ships, and other elements of national custom. This would allow us to further detail just
how the pen ofthe author rewrites the story of the drifter in terms of national identity,
but by now it should be clear that the poly-vocal nature of these texts presents a space in
which a history from the perspective ofthe sea is contested and ultimately rearticulated
in terms of terrestrial familiarity, if not an outright reconfiguration of the drifting
subject as national subject. 87
86 Amird Aczel, The Riddle a/the Compass (New Yark: Harcourt, Inc., 2001),18.
87 Echoing Tzvetan Todorov (Human Diversity, Ch. 3), Eagleton writes, "There is a political correlative
of the unity of the individual and universal, known as the nation-state. The prime political form of
modernity is itself an uneasy negotiation between individual and universal. To be plucked from the
causalities of time and raised to the status of necessity, nations require the universalizing medium of the
state. The hyphen in the term 'nation-state' thus signifies a link between culture and politics, the ethnic
and the engineered." This tension between the political and the cultural are at the heart of the late Edo
castaway narrative, but does not manifest itself fully until the invention of an outright kokumin-kokka in
116
In certain texts, such as Hy6min kikigaki tJl'U:I,:;OOi!=, we can see less of a concern
for the linguistic and spiritual realms, but a level of historical consciousness and
awareness of radical change that is in tum, associated with the phenomenon of hy6ryu.88
Written by Murakami Norimasa, Kayao Keifuku, and Inaguma Gench6 in 1856, the
Hy6min kikigaki relates the story of the Eikyu maru 7l<V\1L, whose crew, like so many
other late Edo castaways, were rescued at see by American whalers.89 The document
begins:
The four sides of our country are enveloped by the sea, thus from the
beginning we have had to depend on maritime navigation. Yet there
has been a revolution from the ways of old, and since in modem times
vessels on the coast have started to come ashore in many different
places [have been manned by crews of various places], naturally
sailing skills have deteriorated and it has come to be that if one even
begins to move they either end up drifting to far off foreign lands or
are buried in the bellies of fishes on the ocean's bottom. Although it
was unheard of in days of old, from the Tenmei years [1781-1789], in
particular with the sailor Daikokuya Kodayu of Shiroko in Ise,
Tsudayu and Gihei of Ishimaki Port in Sendai, and more recently,
Nakahama Manjiro of Tosa and others are a few examples to be found
of those who, with unthinkable luck, receive assistance from barbarian
ships and return home. These writings and the orally transmitted
stories [concerning these sailors] have been widely dispersed
the Meiji era. Needless to say, I would argue that these castaway narratives do foresee and partake in
the construction of a proto-kokumin form of reception, in terms of being a hybrid text fusing an authentic
language of a commoner's experience and an authoritative language of intellectuals who ultimately
decided their narrative methods. See, Terry Eagleton, The Idea o/Culture (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers Ltd., 2000), 57; and Tzvetan Todorov, On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism, and
Exoticism in French Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993),
88 See opening of Hy8min kikigaki in Kondo Tsuneji, ed., Mikawa bunken sht1sei kinseihenj8
(Toyohashi-shi, Aiichi-ken: Aichi-ken Hohan Chihoshi HenshQ Iinkai, 1963).
89 According the Tawara chOshi, cht1 kan (Tawara eM kyoiku iinkai, eds) (Tawara eM, Aichi: Tawara
eM Hakubutsukan, 1980),817 Murakami was a firearms specialist in the same school as Kawano
KyQtaro who was involved in writing Tokei monogatari. In 1841 he began training with Takashima
Shuho, and later became a teacher of his school.
117
throughout society, but even with the general outline of overseas
customs, the good and bad of people, and the appropriateness of
teachings having been classified, a novelty comes with each passing
day because of the worldwide revolution and the products of [various]
geographies, etc. so that we cannot get any sense of recent customs
from the reports of old.
From the very opening we see that the authors consciously locate their text
within broader historical "contexts." In doing this, they first suggest a specific
epistemological break by claiming that "recent times" (ili:-tlt) differ significantly from
the "days of old" (r±]*) and that the change that has been brought about, at least in part
by the introduction of a foreign presence (here read as "Western.") According to the
document, this world historical "break" takes place in the Tenmei era with the increased
contact between castaways from the Japanese archipelago and specifically Westerners
in the Pacific region. The other castaway accounts mentioned are exclusively reports
of contact with Russia and America. This consciousness of a specific sub-genre in
castaway literature beginning with Daikokuya K6dayu is a prevailing theme among
late-Edo hyoryuki writers. For example, in Tokei monogatari too, Ishigur6 states in his
introduction, "Also, concerning the memory ofthe [individual] castaways, there were
discrepancies. At this time we would refer to Ise's K6dayu, Mutsu's Tsudayu,
Owari's JUkichi, Awa's Hatsutar6, and others for explanation and compare, and then
further interrogate the castaways based on this.,,9o
What is also noteworthy about the quote from the Hyomin kikigaki is the
relationship between "revolution" (~:$) and "novelty" Oi~Jf~). The authors here first
90 NSSSS5,6.
118
use the term henkaku to describe both a domestic event, only to later use the same term
to explain a much larger global phenomenon (¥f,ilJiJtJ'\!.O)2£¥). The connections between
the domestic and the international are seen in terms of an onslaught of "novelty" from
abroad threatening the stability of domestic knowledge production, rendering the
"reports of old" obsolete and presenting the current account in the readers hands as a
more authoritative, but also novel text.
The author of Bandan *~~ engages similar tactics in his self-written
introduction, albeit in a somewhat idiosyncratic manner. We see that just like Hy6min
kikigaki, a link is drawn between the global politics of empire and competing
knowledges of the world as a justification for the text he presents the reader.
It has been twelve years since he became castaway, however he relates
the various customs and facts of foreign countries with his stories and
drawings that are vivid and trustworthy. Particularly concerning
products and devices, he can offer very detailed dimensions. However,
there are more than a few discrepancies between his account and the
knowledge of Western scholars. But all things have their youth and age
and even the most ancient of things must undergo revolution (IEI¥).
Even though he actually visited the places he speaks of and bases his
accounts on what he saw and heard, some will refuse to believe and
instead say that he is wrong and that the Western scholars must be
right. .. Currently, the many countries in the five continents throughout
the world fight like a cloud and a concealed tiger, some are considered
empires (*), and some are considered kingdoms (:=E), and all the
countries, strong and weak, are lined up and there is no peace.
However our country alone in the middle of the great ocean is
independent and does not engage with others. For two hundred years
virtuous enlightenment has reigned and the people have happily enjoyed
great peace and don't even imagine the turmoil of other countries.91
91 NSSSS5,241.
119
In a somewhat Confucian manner, Koga turns to China's past in order to find
precedent for the very new. Drawing on a legend from the Six Dynasties period, he
compares his encounter with the castaway Jir6kichi to a castaway who drifted to a
utopian peach grove in which the people remained isolated from the turmoil of political
revolution. In setting up this parallel, he ultimately compares Japan-a "country alone
in the middle of the great ocean," with that mythical peach grove and its people who,
"escaped the tumultuous world, by simply shutting the door to their cave in a clump of
mud for five hundred years while political disturbances carne and went, beginning with
the Han Of), and later the Wei (~) and the Jin C~) periods, they were unaware of
dynastic transitions as they lived in retreat from the world.92
Having seen how several authors of these second order hy6ryuki manage to go
beyond the expressive limits of the kuchigaki form to address notions of language and
geopolitical shifts in a Pacific theater, let us now take a closer look at one particular
incident of drift. The case of the Ch6ja-maru, the subject of Koga Kinichir6's Bandan
above, begins in 1839.93 After drifting for six months across the Pacific the surviving
seven-crew members of the Ch6ja maru sailing out of Nishi Iwase in Etchu province
92 See Appendix C for full translation of Koga's kanbun introduction.
93 In the post war period, Takase Shigeo, Kitamaebune ChOja maru no hy6ryCt (Tokyo: Kiyomizu Shoin,
1974); Takase Shigeo, "Hy6ryuki Bandan ni kan sum k6satsu," in Shirin 40: 1(Ky6to Daigaku Shigaku
Kenkyukai, 1957),45-57; and Muroga Nobuo & Yamori Kazuhiko, Bandan-hy6ryCt no kiroku ichi
(Tokyo: Heibonsha T6y6 Bunko, 1965) have all provided research into this account. Ikeda Hiroshi has
provided a katsuji edition of both Tokei monogatari and Bandan in NSSS5, 3-304. In English,
Katherine Plummer has addressed this incident in A Japanese Glimpse at the Outside World J839-J843:
The Travels ofJirokichi in Hawaii, Siberia, and Alaska (Kingston, Ontario: Limestone Press, 1991).
Most recently, Makabe Jin has published his study of three generations of the Koga family, including a
chapter on Bandan. See Makabe Jin, Tokugawa K6ki no gakumon to seiji: ShOheizaka gakumonjo jusha
to Bakumatsu gaik6 heny6 (Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2007), 414-424.
120
were picked up by the American whale ship, James Lover.94 Nearly five years would
pass before they were returned to Edo, only to be interrogated by officials and scholars
for an additional six years. In the end, only four sailors were able to return to their
villages. As with other returned castaways, their experiences in the Sandwich Islands,
Kamchatka, Okhotsk, and Sitka were transcribed in a variety of forms including
kuchigaki (interview transcripts), oboegaki (memos), monogatari (literary narratives),
sashie (painting), kanbun prose texts and kanshi (Chinese poetry). The content of
these numerous texts ranges from matter-of-fact reporting on political, scientific, and
geographic developments abroad to highly elaborated adventure romances, and even
what we might provisionally call "popular underground fiction" (gesaku itan bungaku).
A consideration of the various textual productions centering on the Ch6ja maru
demonstrates the various vested interests on the part of several authors in such stories of
drift. The "iterabity" of the event of drift and the tale of repatriation reveals contested
assumptions of the world and Japan's position in it. But more so, it projects new
visions of human relations, both domestically and internationally. As with the
Shinsh6-maru (Kodayu), Wakamiya-maru (Tsudayu), Tokuj6-maru (Jukichi), Eijit-maru
(Hatsutaro), Eiriki-maru (Hikozo), Nakahama Manjiro and other post-I 800 castaway
incidences involving contact and interaction with Western peoples, the drifting incident
of the Ch6ja-maru presented authors, and in turn readers, with an opportunity to address
94 There is some confusion as to the actual name of the whaling ship in both the original documents and
subsequent scholarship. While Tokei monogatari and Bandan both refer to the ship as Zenroppa Ikeda
Hiroshi, Muroga and Yamori, and Takase all conclude that this is the James Dover out of Nantucket.
Katherine Plummer claims that it is the James Loper. The Kendall Institute of New Bedford, which
houses the largest whaling archive in the United States, contains a logbook from the whale ship, James
Lover, for the years in question.
121
the world historical situation of expanding capital, imperialism, and colonialism and to
explain emerging assumptions of nation, race, and human and environmental relations.
Although there are examples of Japanese castaway narratives after 1800 that do
not directly engage the encroaching western presence, the shift in emphasis on castaway
accounts that deal with the West is illustrated in the case ofYaz6bei. Although hailing
from the same domain as the Ch6ja maru crew and returning to Japan approximately
the same time, he never received the attention that Jir6kichi and the others on the Ch6ja
maru received. Unfortunately we can only turn to his kuchigaki and the accounts of
the more famous castaway Hatsutar6 with whom he returned (via China) in order to
glean the details of his experience.95 Enduring equally, if not more, harrowing
experiences compared to his fellow castaways on the Ch6ja maru or Eiju maru, we may
assume that the relative lack of information concerning Yaz6bei is due to the fact that
his ordeal was limited to China, whereas the Ch6ja-maru crew, not to mention
Hatsutar6's own drift to Mexico and back, spoke of more exotic worlds.96 Unlike
Yaz6bei, the returned crew of the Ch6ja maru became the source for numerous
accounts that elaborated on the preliminary kuchigaki. Various authors, some
remaining anonymous, began to rewrite the Ch6ja-maru story, and it appears as Tokei
monogatari, Bandan, Hy6ryunin Jir6kichi monogatari, Sandoichi hy6ryuki, Tokei kanki,
and Gotokei no kenj6 yurai narabi y6h6 no oboe. Although it is difficult, if not
95 Yazobei Ka-No, 126-55.
96 Hatsutaro was a castaway aboard the Eijil-maru whose story of drift and return is found in Kaigai ibun,
as well as many shahan documents such as, Meriken hyoryflki (Waseda University Collection) and
Hyoryfl shimatsu ki (Waseda University Collection).
122
impossible to determine in what order these texts were produced, it is safe to say that all
ofthese manuscripts had first copies completed by 1849. It is intriguing to consider
why the respective authors were compelled to repeat the story in a variety of forms at
roughly the same time, and how this textual proliferation relates to a wider genre of
castaway narratives that specifically confront the situation of expanding global conquest
on the part of western national enterprises.
The most obvious differences among these texts are not a marked difference in
content, but instead the immense differences in terms of form and language. Soon
after the remaining four castaways were returned to their villages at the end of 1848,
they presented a clock to the domain lord Maeda Nariyasu. In the early months of
1849 the castaways had an personal audience with Maeda at which time, End6 Takanori,
a domain scholar, was asked to compile the Gotokei no kenj6 yurai narabi y6h6 no oboe.
Although this text summarizes the castaways' experiences, the focus is certainly the
story of the clock itself. During the same month, Kaneya Takehide 3li::§-1t~~
composed a kanbun version of the castaways' story titled Tokei kanki. At the very end
of this document, the only copy of which seems to exist in the Maedake Sonkei Kaku
Bunko archive, there is a note that states that this text was appended to the Tokei
monogatari in January, 1916, suggesting that it was originally produced independently
of the much longer Tokei monogatari. Although the document credits the domain
scholar Ichikawa Sanran with the calligraphy for the text, the similarities between the
handwriting in the text itself and tlns final note appended in the Taish6 period are
remarkably similar and may in fact have been done by the same hand.
123
Unlike the Gotokei no kenj6 yurai narabi y6h6 no oboe and Tokei kanki, which
are both relatively short, the Bandan, Tokei monogatari, Hy6ryunin Jir6kichi
monogatari ¥~ijfEA6z~~srmit.f,andSandoichi [Sandwich] hy6ryuki ntt±f*HM~ijfEic are
all much more detailed accounts. According to the manuscript in the possession of
Tokyo University's Historiographical Institute, Bandan was completed in 1849 and this
is confirmed by the date at the end of the kanbun preface penned by Koga Kinichiro.
However, Ikeda Hiroshi has suggested that the text was first written in 1845- 1846, with
the extended kanshi poem and preface added only later in 1849. Although the date of
the Koga's original text is unverifiable, it is clear that this text was circulated, copied,
and widely read soon after a draft was produced. There are over twenty copies of this
text ranging from three to six volumes that were meticulously written out by hand and
supplemented by roughly one hundred illustrations and maps.97 Perhaps a testament to
the relative abundance of Bandan copies, late-Edo versions of this text were even sent
to Hawaii and St. Petersburg in the early Meiji era.98 The author, Kinichiro was the
grandson of the distinguished scholar ('JDr~(O)= t.w:±) Koga Seiri and the son of Koga
Doan who, in his famous treatise Kaib6 okusoku i4!f~~iifl.U, argued for the opening of the
diplomatic relations with Western countries and a reformulation of defensive policies in
97 This is undoubtedly a conservative estimate based upon the partial listing found in the Kokusho
somokuroku (17 texts cited) and versions of the text I have personally seen that are not listed in the
aforementioned text. See Kokusho somokuroku, vol. 6 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1969),706.
98 Upon looking at a copy found in the Bishop Museum Library in Honolulu, I have found a note
explaining that it was given as a gift from the royal family of Japan to the royal family of Hawai'i. In
conversations with Toshiyuki Akizuki, I have learned that a copy was similarly presented to the Academy
in Leningrad.
124
the north. Doan, along with Otsuki Gentaku and Katsuragawa Hoshu all demonstrated
a lifelong interest in castaways, and were all involved with the interrogation Daikokuya
Kodayu and Isokichi who were the first Japanese castaways to be repatriated from
Russia. 99 Like the Koga family, the Otsuki family's interest in castaway accounts
crossed over two generations, for Gentaku's son, Otsuki Kiyomune, wrote Luson
hy6ryuki in 1845, just a few years before Kinichiro wrote Bandan. 100 Because of
legacy of Kinichiro's father, Takase Shigeo has suggested that Koga Kinichiro was
compelled write a very pro-western version of the castaway's account. 101 Ikeda
Hiroshi claims that Koga's rendition of the story is not trustworthy because his intimate
engagement in polemic debates regarding bakufu relations with the West. 102 The
opinions ofthese two scholars however, seem to overlook the other aspects of the text
that very directly speak to the encroaching threat of British and American presence in
the Ogasawara islands and even a British plan to send warships to Japan. 103
99 Koga Doan and Otsuki Gentaku co-wrote Oroshiya koku monto in 1817. While the
"question/answer" (monto) in the title suggests an actual interview with the castaways, in fact upon
reading we soon realize that the authors address five topics (koto) through the analysis of various
castaway accounts and other sources concerning Russia. The five topics are; prostitution in Russia,
criminal law in Russia, the absence of the death penalty in Russia, the true intentions of Russia's request
to begin trade, the necessity for increasing trade with countries other than Holland. DKSS3, 397-410.
100 Better known as Otsuki Bankei, his name appears as Kiyomune on the last page of the manuscript
copy in the Meiji University Central Library (#29209) See also, EHSS4, 237-260.
101 Takase Shigeo, Kitamae bune ChOja-maru no hyoryu (Kanazawa: Seisui Shoin, 1974),22.
102 NSSSS5,239-240.
103 One example is the claim that England now claims one-sixth of the world's lands, and that within one
hundred years the entire world will be of the English race (Eizoku). See, NSSSS5, 265.
125
Also notable in Bandan is the inclusion of a long series of kanshi (poetry written
in Chinese) which, we are told in Koga's diary, were composed by Koga and several
other scholars attached to the Sh6heizaka, including men named Ishikawa, Yamada,
Senju, Goto, and Ikeda.104 Composed over the course of several nights while drinking
with Jirokichi, there are eleven poems of eight six character lines each and with titles
such as "People of the United States," "The Sandwich Islands," "Englishmen,"
"Kamchatka," "The Ship," "Sitka Bay," "The Steam Ship," and "Stay in Ezo." Just as
Ishiguro Senhiro attempted to relate the events ofthis maritime accident and subsequent
drift in a particular literary idiom identified by kokugaku sholars (as is reflected in his
lexicon addressed earlier), Koga recognizes other literary and aesthetic possibilities for
his own version ofthe Ch6ja-maru story. The inclusion of Kanshi poetry in Bandan
recasts the castaway into a legitimate Confucian aesthetic form, and demonstrates a
conscious attempt on the part ofthe author to elevate the subject matter of drift to a
legitimate literary endeavor.
104 I am most grateful to Professor Makabe lin of Hokkaido University for pointing this document out to
me. I am also indebted to him for the photocopies of Koga' s diary.
126
Illustration 2.2. From Kind6 nisshi shi6 no ichi (Shido Bunko, Keio University), read right to left.
The temptation to wax poetic over the tribulations of castaway sailors and
fishermen, is not limited to Bandan either. Numerous late-Edo hy6ryuki contain
similar poetic interludes, and in some cases the poetry dominates the prose, for example
the version of the castaway Hatsutaro' s adventures to Mexico found in the Aboku
chikushi written and published in 1843 in Edo. The author Shunyo Gyojin, or Inoue
Moku was a physician of the Awa domain, who like Koga Kinichiro, met with a
127
castaway and composed poems based on his informant's stories. lOS The best example
in which traditional Japanese poetry is employed in a significant manner is the
Shanghai K6ki of Toda Sanbei published in 1868.106
While Bandan is a very detailed accounting of the castaway Jirokichi, Tokei
monogatari is unsurpassed among late-Edo hy6ryuki in terms of length and breadth.
Under the head editorship of Endo Takanori, the work involved a veritable who's who
of Kaga domain geographers, painters, weapons specialists, astronomers, and
physicians who first submitted the document in 1849, with later revisions made in 1850.
Ikeda Hiroshi, in comparing Bandan with Tokei monogatari, claims that the latter is
both "scientific" and "objective" in its search for the truth, while the former is imbued
with the author's own flourishes. 107 This claim however completely misrepresents the
two texts. Just a cursory examination of Tokei mongatari reveals narrative techniques
that are anything but "objective" and "scientific." For example, while Bandan narrates
the first encounter between the whaler that rescued them at sea and the Ch6ja maru in
the most straightforward ofterms, the authors of Tokei monogatari instead infuse the
story with narrative strategies that only seem to serve as dramatic intensifiers. For
example, on the occasion of the first appearance of the James Lover (the ship that would
rescue them), we read,
105 See Shunyo Gy6jin, Aboku chikushi (Edo: Gakuhand6, 1843) in the D6shisha University Rare Books
Collection.
106 See Toda Sanbei, Shanghai k6ki in Arakawa Hidetoshi, Kinsei hy6ryukishU (Tokyo: H6sei Daigaku
Shuppankyoku, 1969),437-468.
107 NSSSS5,239.
128
Because it was a three-mast ship it most certainly was a foreign ship. It
was said that the ship approached quickly in order to help us, but others
said that the hearts of foreigners are most unpredictable and they could
kill us. But even with these fears we argued that having a drink of
water before being murdered was preferable.108
This is simply one brief example, however it is characteristic of the general tone
of the narrative that never seems too rushed or cursory in relating details that bring a
certain literary suspense to the encounter. Furthermore, Tokei monogatari includes
over two hundred artistically painted illustrations that are interspersed throughout the
texts. The sketches of Bandan pale in comparison to Tokei monogatari 's detailed
Images. At least twelve participants credited with the text's production were
recognized as accomplished painters of the Kaga Domain, thus suggesting that from the
beginning, this project was conceived of as both a textual and visual endeavor.
Following the order ofthe page series from the original (below), we can see a dynamic
rhythm and coordination established between text and image.
108 NSSSS5,22.
129
,n: .. ttc.
j .~. Jl-~
/{ ,. t,.'~' ) Idj ;.!~1>;' Ij'; ... it. -, I~. :1-
"
-'" !i,
" .
J.< l~
\., II
-~ .
~
2:.
~
•
r
1.---------__+- --,
Illustration 2.3. Page Series from Tokei monogatari (begins from upper right, moving right to left)
130
Following the tail-end of an extended indented passage explaining the change in
the course of plans for the ship when it was still in port at Toni mura, we read that on
the 23rd day, the crew had worked hard fighting a "Great Western" and were now in
need of sleep. On the 29th , the winds picked up again and the ship was pelted in sleet.
They dropped anchor and fought hard to stay in sight ofland. From the first day of the
12th month, (as we move to the page to our left) the winds shift, now from the east, so
they roll up the sail and attempt to stay close to shore, when the winds shift again.
With the temperamental winds corning from both the east and west, the mast breaks and
the crew gathers together oars and poles to construct a makeshift mast. The pacing of
the narrative is then suddenly slowed as the crew turns to kamikuji divination to
determine their position at sea. Following a reminder to refer to the second illustration
in the text (the left-hand image of the following page serving as a further teaser for the
image to corne), the results of the divination-three hundred ri, in a North-Northwest
direction-are stated before an extended comment on the practice of kamikuji.
Interestingly, this note explains the act of kamikuji as a method among sailors for
determining distance and direction from land, emphasizing the need for "always praying
to the kami and Buddhas with a faithful heart" (v'---:5;h tf§JL'I::'t$f~:a:-fff~ 1--). Turning
the page, we corne to the conclusion of this interlinear note, as the narrative pacing is
again compressed. Here we read that the ship drifted until they met with another storm
on the night of the 17th of the same month. With this new storm, Rokubei and
Shichibei try to plug a hole that has developed where the railing meets the edge of the
decking, when suddenly a large wave "laughs." This is followed again by an editorial
131
interlinear comment, explaining the use of the word "laugh/~lJ''' (again, like kamikuji,
this usage is limited to a sailor-specific vernacular). Sailors on deck are then nearly
washed away, and details of this accident, along with shorter interlinear comments
explaining parts of the ship are presented. As the reader learns that the ship is
suddenly in danger of sinking and that the lifeboats (tenma) have been washed away,
we turn the page to see Illustration Two (an image that recounts the previous kamikuji
scene). Turning the page again, the right side is a continuation of the image, while the
right side continues with the narrative. Having reached "the limits of human
preparedness," Hachizaemon pulls out a small (kaichu) butsudan scoll painting of
Amida, while Rokubei asks for prayers to be said. We are then reminded to view
Illustration Three, as the text goes back into interlinear editorial mode, explaining that
the Amida scroll in question returned to Japan with the sailors after being called upon
many times throughout their adventure. Turning the page again, we see the left-hand
side of the opened text is yet another teaser into Illustration Three on the following page.
The tension aboard the ship intensifies as we learn that the ship has taken on
approximately four feet of water in the hold, and that the crew is forced to pump water
constantly until the following day. The multiple layers of narration taking place
through narrative, editorial commentary, and hyper-real imagery come together to
produce a seamless progression of the tale, alternating between text and image. The
page breaks that potentially interrupt this movement from right to left, seem to be
coordinated to instead produce the effect of a certain momentum and anticipation as we
read. Sandwiching the main illustrations between more abstract visual introductions
132
and conclusions, suggests the flow of a scroll painting, however, the effect in book form
is quite different. This aesthetic appropriation of imagery also allows for comparison
between the two paintings. The two scenes share the same setting on deck of the ship
with the crew sitting in roughly a circle. With this parallelism between the two
illustrations established, the before-after differences in the paintings reveal a dramatic
turn in the narrative from hope to desperation. The condition ofthe ship, the sailors'
hair and clothes, and the sea in the background all combine to project a consistent
contrast and suggest an inner turmoil for the castaways, effectively tying the
psychological state of the sailors to the worsening conditions of drift. Both images, as
with the narrative, center on religious practices that come to be represented as
particularly Japanese and function throughout the narrative to portray Japan as a
divinely sanctioned nation.
While both Ikeda Hiroshi and Takase Shigeo have pointed out the importance of
Tokei monogatari as a comprehensive source of information concerning Hawai'i and
the North Pacific in the 1840s, the artistic and literary aspects have been completely
ignored. Particularly, if we consider the accompanying dictionary, "Tokei monogatari j 0
kanazuke narabi insho," in the Maeda Sonkei Kaku bunko (discussed earlier), the
original project was conceived of as a conscious attempt to write the tale as a example
of a "national literature" and informed by clear aesthetic and literary qualities open to
authors of hy6ryuki.
While Bandan's author, Koga Kinichiro, was third-generation Confucian scholar
attached to the official Tokugawa academy of Sh6heizaka, and Tokei monogatari's
133
numerous authors were established elite among Kaga domain intellectuals, the authors
of Hy6ryitnin Jirokichi monogatari and Sandoichi monogatari remain anonymous. 109
The anonymity of these and other late-Edo castaway accounts suggest certain risks
involved in disseminating knowledge of the outside, particularly after deaths of Takano
Ch6ei iWi !l1y*~and Watanabe Kazan lliiZ2 ~h1J. lID In particular, Hy6ryitnin Jirokichi
monogatari not only pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable in terms of content, by
writing about the controlled subject of western knowledge, it also adopts a controversial,
if not entertaining form similar to gesaku literature. The bodily references found in
this version of the story stand in sharp contrast to the focus on elegant language on the
part of Ishiguro. For example, when Rokuzabur6 (childhood name of Rokubei in
Tokei monogatari), first discovers the whaler that rescues them, we are given the added
detail that it was while he was on deck defecating (*~f:'I±l),lll Likewise, the
109 For Koga's role in the ShOheizaka, see Makabe (2007). Among the staff writing Tokei monogatari,
Endo Takanori, who was in charge of the project, was skilled in mathematics, surveying, astronomy,
natural sciences, world geography; Ishiguro Senhiro was identified as a Kokugakusha; Endo Kisaburo, a
painter using crushed pigment; Kurokawa Ryoanshuku and Kurokawa Genryotei were both physicians,
the former having studied under Seibold; Kawano Kyutaro was a mathematician, geographer, calligrapher,
and student of Dutch Studies, medicine, and military arts, having begun with study of equestrian
techniques (Taihei ryCt), and continuing with military strategy, gunnery and swordsmanship (Takashima
ryCt, Sanka ryCt, Nakajo ryCt, and Kanda ryCt.) The elder Kurokawa, along with Kawano studied astronomy,
medicine, and Dutch Studies under Honda Toshiakira. See Takase, 38-46.
110 The two were placed under house arrest in the famous Bansha no goku ~t±O)J~ incident of 1839
for leading the ShOshikai ~~~, a group of Edo-based scholars of Western Learning who criticized both
the Uchi harai rei of 1825 that called for repelling any unauthorized foreign ships making landfall in
Japan and the bakufu action of firing upon the Morrison. The Morrison, we might recall, arrived off the
coast of Edo in 1837 with the intention of repatriating six castaways. (See epigraph of the Introduction),
This incident led to the common belief that the "Sakoku Policies" of the 1630s were enforced throughout
the Edo period.
111 This version of the story exists as a hand-written manuscript in theTakaoka-shi Chao Toshokan and is
found in Takase Shigeo, Kitamae ChOja-maru no hyoryu (Kanazawa: Kiyomizu Shoin, 1974),217-245.
134
language used to describe the size of a whale penis (T /'*') and the numerous occasions
in which foreigner's tongue is reduced to a singsong babble are absent from other
versions of the story, and reflect a more popular form of entertaining literature.
The next day while flying like an arrow, a whale was spotted. With
four men apiece, the boats were lowered. Two or three whales
three feet in width and 25 to 30 feet in length were taken. Raising
the whales they sang, Iibaibai iidanbara. The wax [that they get
from these whales] is called keyanyou and is a pale blue. Their
bodies are narrow, and a large whale's cock is a full 7 feet in length.
They take the skin and the fat of the whale, and they discard the
meat in the ocean. By the end of the 9th month we had taken
thirteen leviathans. I 12
This marked difference in narrative form, when compared with Tokei
monogatari, Bandan, and other versions of the story, suggest two very different types of
late-Edo castaway narrative. Namely, one written form is marked by a seemingly
factual and scientific tone, while a second type whose purposes were to entertain by
exploiting the imagination and fantasies of the reader also appeared. It is perhaps best
to see these texts on a continuum ranging from elegant at one end, and vulgar at the
other extreme, instead of as either one or the other category. This continuum also
manifests itself in terms of truth and fiction however, as we have already seen, the
narrative's development from kuchigaki form to more elaborate retellings carried with it
a dependency on an overarching narrative frame oftruth incorporated in the prefaces
and introductions.
Just as Defoe had his Alexander Selkirk in writing Robinson Crusoe, and
Melville had his Essex in writing Moby Dick, the authors of late Edo castaway
112 Ibid.. 225.
135
narratives also were relegated to producing only a "double" of an original, a palimpsest
of a story already told. The numerous versions of the Ch6ja maru and other maritime
incidents leading to drift, read against each other, reveals the emergence of innovative
literary forms. In the gap of the palimpsest, the act oftextual "doubling" or "reiteration"
not only opens up a space in which to rewrite and politicize the content of the
experience, but also spawns specific assumptions of language, narrative, and voice that
were very new to late-Edo literary circles. By employing new formal literary elements
and also appropriating older strategies of writing that were contemporaneously being
"rediscovered" in the classics by kokugakusha, the texts are marked by an attempt to
translate the realities of colonial spaces in which the castaways circulated. But as the
texts relate a certain "history," they are also bound by a different logic-the logic of the
literary-that demands a resolution of "enigmas." Traces ofthese enigmas-
confusions of contradictory accounts, conflicts with earlier knowledge, and anomalies
of a discursive subjectivity-abound in the texts: but through the invention of an
authoritative narrative voice, the authors of castaway narratives relate a story that is
remarkably literary.
It is here that the category of fiction, so often associated with the literary, fails
us. While elements of the fantastic occupy the realm of the literary and fictional,
scholarship of the castaway narrative has been limited to historians in search of truth
and facts. In the case of hy6ryuki, it is not simply a suspension of disbeliefthat is
called for, but instead a mode of realism that is initiated with the claims oftruth on the
part of the speaking subject, claims on the part ofthe author who insists he has recorded
136
accurately the testimony of the castaway, and a framing of the entire narrative as an
investigation into facts that distinguishes these texts as literary. At odds with the
binary opposition of "fiction" and "non-fiction," Gerard Genette has proposed an
alternative understanding of texts as either "fiction" or "diction" that is also applicable
to our investigation ofhy6ryuki. He writes, "The literature of fiction is literature that
imposes itself essentially through the imaginary character of its objects. The literature
of diction is literature that imposes itself essentially through its own formal
characteristics--once again, without excluding amalgams and blends."ll3 It is on a
formal level that we can come to recognize a particular way in which late-Edo
intellectuals and storytellers alike came to engage the world through castaway
narratives. Attention to this "diction" or the way the story is told, as opposed to the
veracity or fiction contained in the account, opens up new possibilities in analyzing the
ways by which a particular cultural form, such as hy6ryuki, both affect and are affected
by larger political and cultural assemblages.
113 Gerard Genette, Fiction & Diction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993),21.
137
A LITERATURE OF DEFENSE
The authors of Hy6min kikigaki, Bandan, and Tokei monogatari all directly
mention Hokusa bunryaku in the introductions to their texts. In fact, other authors of
castaway narratives such as Kankai ibun, Funaosa nikki, Manjir6 hy6ryuki, Hy6kyaku
danki, Kaigai ibun, T6k6 kibun, etc. also point specifically to Hokusa bunryaku or its
most famous subject, Daikokuya Kodayu, as a reference in attempting to write their
own narratives. As we have already seen, Katsuragawa Hoshu's Hokusa bunryaku,
and to a lesser extent Otsuki Gentaku's Kankai ibun, which both document the return of
Japan's first castaways from Russia, were significant texts that became formal models
for later hy6ryuki writers (See Appendix B).
The Hokusa bunryaku relates a ten-year struggle for survival in the North
Pacific after the Shinsh6-maru out of Kameyama Ryo Shiroko in Ise went adrift in 1782.
After roughly a half a year of drift, the surviving castaways came aground on Amchika
Island in the Aleutian archipelago where they stayed until the summer of 1787. 114
Building a boat, they sailed to the Kamchatka Peninsula, where several more crew died
over the winter. Upon arriving at Okhotsk the following summer, the remaining six
proceeded to Yakutsk, before continuing on foot to Irkutsk where half the remaining
114 NSSSS5, 726; See also, Plummer(l991), 45; Kisaki Ryohei, Kodayu to Rakusuman: Bakumatsu
Nichi-Ro kohOshi no ichi sokumen (Tokyo: Tosui Shobo, 1992),26.
138
crew settled down and did not return to Japan. Kodayu eventually went on the St.
Petersburg in order to personally request permission to return home from none other
that Catherine the Great. Much like the repatriated crew of the Wakamiya-maru, who
followed the Shinsh6-maru ten years later (in fact the Wakamiya-maru was leaving the
port of Ishinomaki within two months ofKodayu, Isokichi, and Koichi's repatriation at
Nemuro in the 9th month of 1792), the Hokusa bunryaku traces their gradual movement
west to the capital, before three of the castaways are eventually repatriated. Unlike,
the later group of castaways from the Wakamiya-maru, they would not circumnavigate
the globe, but were instead repatriated in the northern frontier zone of Ezo-chi, from
where they were eventually taken to Edo to be debriefed by numerous officials and
scholars. Among them was the author ofHokusa bunryaku, Katsuragawa Hoshu, who
had worked several years already with Otsuki Gentaku, who in turn would write Kankai
ibun in 1804.115 The event of Kodayu, Isokichi, and Koichi's return-the first
repatriation of Japanese castaways from Russia-initiated perhaps the greatest amount
of textual production regarding a single incident of drift during the Edo period. 116
Although Kodayu and Isokichi were kept in confinement for the rest of their
lives upon return to Japan, the popularity of the story spread throughout the
115 I am grateful to Hirano Mitsuru of Meiji University who kindly showed me a manuscript written in
1786 by the two titled, Chikyu bankoku zusetsu in the Aida Bunko archive at Meiji University Central
Library. This is just one example that demonstrates both Hoshfi and Otsuki's interests in castaways and
foreign geographies before their meetings with respective castaway informants from the Shinsho-maru
and Wakamiya-maru. It also reveals just how informed both were of a particular scientific and
descriptive mode of writing found in Dutch texts.
116 Yamashita Tsuneo has collected four hefty volumes of related documentation in his Edo hyoryuki
sosha bekkan: Daikokuya Kodayu shiryo sha, vol. 1-4 (Yamashita Tsunewo, ed.) (Tokyo: Nihon
Hyoronsha, 2003).
139
archipelago. 117 Other texts cite directly from Hokusa bunryaku, even if the citations are
not always acknowledged. For example, in Hokusa bunryaku we read, "Throughout
the world there are four great continents (IJQ*#~¥j+l) and the many countries that make up
these continents, are no less than 1100. Among those, only seven countries, including
our own august court, are called empires. (m%:3:fffT Q ~fi:'= -t~(= --C, :~.)j!)j;J:t-(=m
Nearly 40 years later, the author of Kishu sen Beikoku hy6ryuki would echo
verbatim the words of Hokusa bunryaku. Upon meeting castaways from Tosa
(Manjir6 among them) who had already been in Hawai'i for sometime, and being
informed by them that similar to Japan, only a light layer of clothing OflH'f-;j:jc) is
needed and that food is abundant, a comparison of the sun in Hawai'i and Japan,
117 As to whether Kodayu and Isokichi were confined in Edo (the traditional view), Yoshimura Akira has
suggested that they chose to spend the rest of their lives in the relative comfort of Edo where they where
they were provided with comfortable quarters and taken care of by officials. See, Yoshimura Akira,
Daikokuya Kr3dayCt, vol. 2, (Tokyo; Mainichi Shinbunsha, 2003), 211. As for the immediate popularity
of this story, we may point to the ill-fated Koichi, who did not survive long enough to provide testimony
aside his two shipmates, but had his moment of posthumous fame when, in eighth month of 1794, his
hometown of Minami Wakamatsu-mura in Ise Province was flooded with uncountable visitors from other
provinces (1t!!:P'JO who had come to see a his possessions from Russia displayed at the Keidai Ichijr3in at
the Meifutr3enzan. This is recorded on p. 3 recto in a document titled Enkr3an gr3shCt and is in the
collection of the Kami no hakubutsukan (Museum of Paper) in Tokyo. The event was followed by an
extended tour of the show to various sites including Nagoya. The Enkoan goshCt provides us with visual
images and textual descriptions of not only the items on display, but also the large crowds that came to
view this event as well. See also, Yamamoto Hiroko, "'Enkoan goshu rokuhen' eiin to honkoku," in
Nagoya shi hakubutsukan kenkyu kiyr3 dai ju-ikkan (Nagoya: Nagoya Shi Hakubutsukan, 1987), 1-16.
Reports of massive crowds at the first display in Minami Wakamatsu are from, "Nihon hajime no 'Roshia
Fea' Koichi no ihin wo tenji shite daiseiko," in Saiken Nihonshi (Edo lll:l) 2 kan:30 go (tsukan 63 go)
(Aug. 2002),8.
118 Cited in Kobayashi (2000),298.
140
quickly turns to a diatribe on the material superiority of Japan on the part of the
speaking voice of Kishu sen Beikoku hyoryuki. l19
It is impossible to say that the sun is the same in our Japan (ft7J\ S*)
and this Oahu. The fame and influence of our divine country and the
fact that we are the most developed nation (ft7J\tl'flOO 0)~4S, '.J:MtJJX.g
~, i:!tJ'\!.m-t= L --C), bountiful in the harvest of the five grains (.1ilfJt:.
ftl), inspired in our military defenses and military arts (:ITtfim:ITt~ O);fiU,*),
and quality of our various manufactured goods, is certainly known to
several foreign countries. The many foreign countries respect the
divine authority of our Nation and are always humbly begging to open
trade relations with us. (~0075*~, ft7J\OO*O)tl'fl~1i:fm'2?'~o, tL1i:w L
--c re~.@~ 1i: 1:: b ~=~ .g) Based on these conditions, the superiority
over foreign countries is obvious. This is regularly heard in the no-
less-than 1100 countries of the world. Among those only seven are
Empires, and among these Japan ranks number one, and in actuality
reigns over the rest of the world. (ft~~f=~'2:&li~, i:!tJ'\!.O)N, ::CO)?(I.
.g k )rL10)'T B f= T Gi"o ::c 0) N, w% 1i:ffF.g f'i, bT7J' t= -t -7' 00 f= ill1 '2?'T
~ ~ <0 S *f'i::cO)m-f=1:E V) --c~f'i75*~'=JRt.:::. V) 0 )120
While acknowledgments and inter-textual referencing between Hokusa
bunryaku and later castaway narratives are so common, the text perhaps exerted its
greatest influence formally. The Japanese castaway narrative quickly took on a new
form after the return of Kodayu and Isokichi, and Hokusa bunryaku was seen to be the
model. Embraced by most other multi-volume late-Edo hyoryuki authors, the general
layout by Katsuragawa was the first several volumes (in this case, three) presenting an
overview of the entire ordeal, from intended route in Japan before being castaway, to
travels through foreign spaces, to their ultimate return. With the narrative more-or-Iess
established, the majority of the remaining volumes (in this case, seven) would then be
119 Ibid., 299-300.
120 Ibid., 300.
141
organized by subheadings, such as "Priests and Sects" {~gsIt~~iErt1t, "Taxes" flif>t,
"Hospitals" fr3~1C, "Orphanages" ~M1C, "Money safes and Banks" -&:~~JJJsIt/'( /' j),
"Theaters and staged performances" jlj~sItlj['Ij, "Brothels" frl§'$;:, "Food and Drink" !X
it, "Alcohol" iffi, "Vinegar" !!ft, "Tobacco" mJ1j[, "Musical Instruments" ~~, "Sleds"
~, "Billiards" e" 1) .y 1) , "Chess" ~fJt, trees, grasses, birds, livestock, metals, boats,
paper, insects, etc. This is a partial list found in the Hokusa bunryaku and when
comparing similar sub-headings in later accounts, nearly all can be traced back to
Katsuragawa's text. For example, similar to the Hokusa bunryaku, both Tokei
monogatari and [Hikozo] Hy6ryuki address the topic of chess. Comparing the three
passages, we see significant difference to suggest that neither of these later authors
copied directly from Katsuragawa's passage, but we can imagine how the appearance of
such a topic of discourse in the Hokusa bunryaku may have provoked later authors to
k h . . -C' b' 121as t elr castaway llllormants a out It. The particular description that often follows
these sub-headings can be several pages in length, elaborating on the ostensible subject,
but also revealing a more detailed account of the castaway's experience. Similar to
encyclopedic gazetteers such as the Wa-Kan sansai zue fr:J1:i =:::t ~Mi;, these sections of
hy6ryuki almost read like miscellanies or zuihitsu l\i1['$texts. 122 Each sub-heading
121 NSSSS5, 219-222, 715, 797-798. The description of the game in Hokusa bunryaku is primarily
focused on material aspects of the game and board itself (dimension of the board, pieces are made of
ivory, etc.) The explanation of how each piece moves is over-simplified ("The kooni [knight] moves
forward two and over one,just like the keiba [in shOgi]. Hikozo's understanding of the game is more
accurate and does not include size of board, etc.). Tokei monogatari actually provides the most
thorough and accurate description. Interestingly, several full games using shogi notation are included,
suggesting that at least some of the crew were quite familiar with the game.
122 Terajima Ryoan, Wa-Kan sansai zue (Shimada Isao, et aI., eds.) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1986).
142
provides the author an opportunity to explore similarities and differences with
conditions in Japan, to compare and contrast details gleaned from other texts, and offer
certain editorial evaluations ofthe information. More importantly, these passages
provide some of the richest moments for the author to interpret and rewrite the
castaway's own narrative. 123 This formal aspect of late Edo period castaway accounts
that splits the story between the castaway's testimony in the first half and a more
fragmented, but detailed, latter half serves as a method conducive for inscribing an
inherently poly-vocal narrative and resolves tensions we might otherwise expect to arise
between a speaking castaway and a scholarly scribe. The final two volumes of the
Hokusa bunryaku are comprised of an extensive dictionary of foreign words, as well as
numerous illustrations and maps. As we shall see in the following chapter, dictionaries
are an important part of this form.
Inter-textual references and citation among these narratives, shared formal
characteristics, and active anthologization of hy6ryuki are all factors indicating that by
the first decade of the nineteenth century castaway authors themselves were conscious
of a hy6ryuki textual lineage, and understood their own textual production as engaging
in a larger aesthetic tradition oftexts that began with K6dayu and company. However,
123 For example, it is in one of these sections that we learn about details of a visit to the hospital in
Irkustsk and the poem/song composed by none other than Catherine the Great's cousin Sophia, for
K6dayu while he was in St. Petersburg. Not only is the significant class difference between the two
duly noted, but we are told that people sing it around town, suggesting that even a Jowly Japanese sailor
can become legendary in foreign contexts. The song itself is given in a phonetic Russian with the
Japanese meaning added. I can not verify the Russian meaning, but if we are trust the Japanese
translator, K6dayfi and company's struggles emotionally effected an heir to the Russian throne, who,
when thinking about their fate can "only cry." See NSSSSS, 803.
143
this is not to suggest that the authors of these texts did not also engage other spheres of
literary and cultural production. As we have seen in the cases of Tokei monogatari
and Funaosa nikki, both written by Kokugaku scholars, some hy6ryuki reflected terms
and phrases directly borrowed from a much larger, recognized "nativist" literary canon.
Many more texts, anonymously written or guided by schools of thought other than
kokugaku scholarship also employed poetic conceits and language of other established
literary practices such as waka poetry (certainly overlapping kokugaku interests).
Perhaps the most common example of this are the many references to the late-ninth
century poem written by the Ise Priestess of the Inner Precincts of Ise Shrine that is
recorded in Ise monogatari and other classical poetry collections.
Did you visit me, or I you?
We cmillot know.
Was it dream or reality?
Were we asleep or awake?
kimi ya koshil ware ya yukikemul omojuezulyume ka utsutsukal nete ka samete ka124
In particular, the line yumeka utsutsuka ~7J'~i.1' (literally, "Dream? Reality?)
is invoked and riffed upon in numerous accounts including, T6k6 kibun JIHJt*,clYJ,
Nankai kibun and Nagase murabito hy6ryudan fi:iJlH )j~?1rf.~~.125 Likewise, in a
popular published account ofNakahama Manjiro's experiences published as simply
124 Nihon koten bungaku zenshf1: Taketori monogatari, lse monogatari, Yamato monogatari, Heichf1
monogatari (Katagiri Y6ichi, et aI., eds.) (Tokyo: Sh6gakkan, 1972), 192.
125 NSSSS5, 625 and 672, respectively.
144
Hyoryuki, begins by appropriating perhaps the most obvious of literary openings,
"Mukashi, mukashi izure no ontoki ni ya araken ... ,,126
Matsudaira Sadanobu (1758-1829), Council Elder (roju) and advisor to shogun
Tokugawa Ienari, oversaw the interrogation of Daikokuya K6dayu and Isokichi in Edo
and the order by Tokugawa Ienari that Katsuragawa H6shu (1751-1809) write the
Hokusa bunryaku. 127 A man obsessed with reining in potentially subversive domestic
cultural production, he was perhaps even more concerned with threats from the outside,
particularly Russian expansion in the North Pacific.128 Matsudaira Sadanobu, for his
part was instrumental in deciding whether to accept the castaways from the Shinsho-
maru, or instead turn the Russian ship away at Nemuro. Turning to his Roshiyajin
toriatsukai tedome ~1§B:[)\l&tl!c¥1¥?, a document that lays out his reasoning process in
deciding to accept the returned Shinsho-maru castaways in Laxman's charge on the
coast of Ezo-chi, we read, "Since they have come for the purpose of returning
castaways their intentions are proper. Furthermore, with imperial orders from the
[Russian] Court to return them only to the proper public offices in Edo, I know it is not
necessary to repel them because they came to Nemuro. Likewise, making them wait in
126 This opening combines a more oral beginning of mukashi, mukashi ("Long, long ago ... ") with the
introductions of Genji monogatari, Ise monogatari, and other Heian period (8th _12th centuries) tales.
Simply titled Hyoryiiki on the cover, many refer to this text as "Manjir6 Hy6ryfiki," in order to
distinguish it from other texts titled Hy6ryiiki (ie., "Hikoz6 Hy6ryfiki." The title on the title page reads
1* S *±{iI:~~JijJ¥~'Ont~J See EHSS5, 219.
127 Kobayashi (200), 192. For a biography in English see; Herman Ooms, Charismatic Bureaucrat: A
political biography ofMatsudaira Sadanobu, 1758-I829. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
128 Timon Screech has argued effectively that Sadanobu was the key political figure and thinker affecting
the cultural discourse of 1790s. See, Timon Screech, The Shogun's Painted Culture: Fear and Creativity
in the Japanese States, 1760-1829, (London: Reaktion Books, 2000), especially Chapter One.
145
Nemuro for orders is unreasonable." Ultimately Sadanobu decided to have them come
to Edo because of there intentions were determined to be proper.129 Upon their arrival
in Edo on the 1i h day of the 8th month, the Edo Minami Machi Bugyo took charge of
the castaways and carried out the interrogation. Having retired from his seat as roju
less than a month earlier, Matsudaira Sadanobu personally took responsibility for
Laxman. 130 One month after their arrival in Edo, they were called to Edo Castle to
have an audience with Ienari. In attendance were Matsudaira Sadanobu and
Katsuragawa Hoshu (among others), the former overseeing the event and the latter
recording the question-answer session that took place between the castaways and the
other participants,I31 While Katsuragawa Hoshu' s Hyomin goran ki ~~aiWfJ'ji1jcis not a
castaway narrative per se, it demonstrates yet another form that came to be employed in
d· ,. 132recor mg castaways experIences. The randomness and arbitrariness of the
questions prevents a story from emerging, and furthermore this document lacks an over-
arching narrative of progression through foreign spaces in a struggle to return home.
Sadanobu also oversaw the collection of the first known Edo period anthology of
castaway accounts on the part of Morishima Churyo, the younger brother of
129 DKSSl, 155.
130 Kisaki Ryohei, KOdayu to Rakusuman (Tokyo: Tosui Shabo, 1992), 190.
131 Ibid.. 191.
132 DKSS3, 3-23.
146
Katsuragawa Hoshu. 133 His Kaigai ibun r4iJ;Yi-JH:lfJcompleted in 1789, contained fifty-
five separate incidents of drift from the 1570s to the present and ran an impressive
twenty-seven volumes. In 1794 the Zoku kaigai ibun MC$Yi-~rMJwas produced by
Otsuki Genkan (Gentaku's eldest son), and yet another supplement to this work was
produced in 1808.134
In early 1793, the bakufu took control of coastal defenses and Sadanobu spent a
month establishing lookout posts in Izu and Sagami for the purposes of defending Edo
Bay.135 Thus, Matsudaira Sadanobu was not only instrumental in the handling of the
Laxman Affair from the political end, he was also at the heart of a circle of intellectuals
in Edo that included Otsuki, Katsuragawa, and Morishima, who were responsible for
managing, editing, and collecting castaway stories. From this time, we see not only
the emergence of a new formal category of hy6ryuki, but also a political interest in such
133 Morishima Chury6 was also a prolific writer of world geography texts, induding K6m6 zatsuwa ff,I:f:
*'lB15 and Bankoku shinwa 7:1 00 *JTB15 .
134 Not to be confused with the individual hy6ryuki with the same name. See, Kobayashi (2000), 186-187.
There are several other castaway narrative anthologies from the late Edo period, Morishima's being
perhaps the earliest. The initial work on the Tsuk6 ichiran, the official bakufu records of diplomacy and
foreign affairs, and source of numerous castaway accounts, was begun three years after Morishima
produced his anthology. Otsuki Gentaku produced his own collection of nearly on hundred accounts
called the Kaigai bunken zatsuki, but his son Genkan was said to have discarded many of these before he
produced the Zoku kaigai ibun. I n the Waseda Collection we find yet another castaway anthology in
shahon form produced by the Otsuki family, Otsuki Gentaku's Kaigai ibun k6. In 1797, S6han
(probably from Tosa???) produced his Mujint6 danwa, a collection of castaway narratives relating to the
Ogasawara and Torii shima islands. There is also a collection of eight documents titled Hy6ryu zatsuki
in the national Diet Library, Tokyo. The 77-volume Kaihy6 ibun in the D6shisha Collection was,
according to Iwasaki Naoko, probably the work of Matsuura Takakura. Because this collection does not
have any accounts of Manjir6, we can probably assume that it was compiled sometime during the late
1840s. It may not be complete in its present form. See,
http;//elib .doshisha.ac .jp/japanese/digital/kaihyo_kaidai .html
There is also the Ikoku hy6chaku senwa in the archive of Kaiy6 Univeristy in Tokyo. See,
http://lib.s.kaiyodai .ac.jp/library/bunkan/tb-gaku/hyoryu/IHY 0 1/ihyo-index .html
135 Kisaki (1992), 109.
147
accounts, as a means of regulating border-crossings in the north. While accidents of
drift were not new, certain geopolitical concerns, particularly in the North Pacific were.
The stories that K6dayu and Isokichi, and later the Wakamiya-maru, brought back from
Russia painted an expansive and powerful empire intent on trading with Japan and
exploiting resources in Ezo-chi. The fact that Russians had established a Japanese
language school from the 1730s, staffed by other Japanese castaways not permitted to
return to Japan, demonstrated for the bakufu that Russia not only desired advancement
into the North Pacific for purposes of exploitation, but that they had been preparing for
it for 60 years. Counter intelligence was necessary to better understand this lurking
threat, and the castaway narrative served this purpose, becoming part of the bakufu
. 11' 136mte Igence apparatus. But the new type of castaway narrative that re-inscribed
western presence in the Pacific also provided a textual space from which to recast the
geopolitical conditions into stories of national heroes.
Matsudaira Sadanobu's interest in the figure of the castaway was not simply a
practical means to a political end, namely the defense of the nation. He also invested
the act of drift with aesthetic possibilities. While Sadanobu's concerns for defense
136 Ronald Toby employs the term "intelligence apparatus" in his detailed discussion of mid-seventeenth
century diplomacy in East Asia. See Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan:
Asia in the Development o/the Tokugawa Bakuju, (Stanford: University of California Press, 1991); As we
have already seen, the emergence of the kuchigaki form and the origins of these late Edo accounts were
part of a larger system of intelligence gathering system maintained at the bugyo level. It is important to
remember that castaway narratives (in the form of kuchigaki) began as part of this official State
intelligence gathering process, and therefore the deployment of these texts in late Edo period was nothing
too new. What was new was the source of threats. In Toby's study cited above, the primary overseas
threat is not Russia, but Qing China. What else was new, was the form these texts took. While
engagements with China and other East Asian nations were grounded in an established protocol, the
appearance of first Russians, and later other European and American ships off the coast of Japan, called
for the invention of a new protocol based on shifting condition in the Pacific.
148
were real, he also demonstrated a recognition of the ideological and mythic potential
contained within this new subjectivity of the castaway. In his miscellany titled,
Kagetsu s6shi 1t~ :&'iifA, we read,
Hy6ryu-
Those who manage to arrive upon an island of uncivilized people (J:: LA-
li:. ~ !E'J), [make due by] eating the fruit of strange trees, catching unknown
birds to make clothing of their skins and preserving the dried flesh to eat.
With a mind of utmost endurance and not going over the edge (1L,'O)t~2t
V) Ii:. <, 1tfit ') L 1i:.1:J:6IJ.), they avoid the deceptions of the foreigners they
encounter so that their lives might be spared and they may return. If so,
then certainly within that ship will be a hero (~tt) who survives. 137
For Matsudaira to use the term eiyu ("hero") to describe such a subject, we
might think he had confused the destitute sailor for a Heike warrior immortalized in
Noh theater. In using the term to describe repatriated sailors and fisherman, he suggests
that these lowly castaways and their stories are worthy of representation. But while all
heroes stand as the embodiment of certain ideals and/or ideologies, there is also a
marked difference between castaways and other heroes. For Sadanobu, the heroics of
hy6ryu lay first and foremost in the survival of the castaway. In this sense, the
castaway here is not heroic for anything he necessarily does, but instead for what he
endures. The experience of hy6ryu is marked from the beginning by a certain level of
contingency and passivity that defines Sadanobu's accidental witnesses to the world.
137 Matsudaira Sadanobu, Kagetsu s8shi in Nihon zuihitsu taisei, Part 3, Volume 1 (Tokyo: Nihon
Zuihitsu Taisei Henshilbu, 1976),424. Also cited by Ikeda in the introduction to NSSS5, 1 and
Kobayashi Shigefumi, Nippon ikoku hy8ryuki (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 2000), 6.
149
The nature of Sadanobu's castaway heroes thus called for an intermediary author to
endow such stories with particular narrative strategies, in order craft something beyond
the kuchigaki form.
A poem inscribed by Sadanobu himself on Tani Bunch6's portrait of Laxman
reads,
The arrival of this ship-
What cannot be forgotten even in the space of dreams,
Has become a treasure of the world
In his study of K6dayu' s repatriation, Kisaki Ry6hei reads this poem as
Sadanobu's resignation (Ji%,c}) to bakufu imperatives of defense. 139 However, we
might read it not as a decisive statement of resignation crouched in a "repel or engage"
logic, but instead as testament to the multiplicity of concerns-geopolitical, intellectual,
and artistic-that the arrival of repatriated castaways on foreign ships offered. While
Sadanobu seems to be addressing his meetings with Laxman more than his meetings
with the castaways in this short poem, he does so through an association with the dream
state. As we have already seen, the metaphoric function of the dream to explain
moments of the uncanny, for example in the many invocations of the yume ka utsutsu ka
poem, are not uncommon. Likewise, at particular inciting moments in the narrative
when things seem precarious for the narrator, the castaway at times turns to dream to
explain the otherwise miraculous. For example, Rishichi, the narrator ofNagase
138 Kisaki, 110.
139 Ibid., 109.
150
murabito hy6ryudan written by Okuda Masatada in 1856, explains his encounter with
gods aboard the ship by referencing a dream state.
On the i h day of the 1i h month we were hit by a severe storm and
our boat was swamped by waves. On the 19th of the same month
we were again caught in a great tempest, making it the 9th time in
53 days of drift, with the storms of the 29th day of the 10th month,
the 13th day of the 11 th month, and this last storm falling on the 19th
day of the lih month being beyond the descriptive powers of
language ( i3 i,lH=. (7) A: iJ~ t~ ~ $-lint 0 <l: -{- ) ... At this time [19th of 1i h
month], Rishichi was holding watch on deck, and thought to lie
down due to many days of tiredness. Passing in and out of
consciousness (;';/'."T '! <l: -0 J.;- t::.. 0) that was neither dream nor
reality (Jt#f~ <, ~#f~ <), there was an old man (~A) who came
to me and shook me awake. This startled me into opening my eyes,
but when I did, I saw nothing and told myself it was just a dream
(Jt f=.~1f f't Iv ~) and went back to sleep. At that time, an old man
(~~) again awoke me and said, 'I am your village god Daimy6jin
Sumiyoshi Daimy6jin (;g:li~t$-Jl*ljFjt${±s*I~FH$-l:h).' 'You
most certainly have no place to sleep tonight!' he added as he
disappeared. Rishichi had no idea what had just happened, but he
thought that perhaps they had come aground on some island and
they just might be saved. Not knowing who to be grateful to, he
thought that he must pray, but just as he began to head toward the
center of the ship (A1J1j<7)FI'l9?) a large wave washed over the deck and
torn the fencing right off. It was frightful to think that if I had still
been at that place where I was sleeping, my life would have ended
in a flash. Grateful for the blessings of the gods, the hairs all over
my body stood on end and I felt a cold chill.14o
Likewise, in Funaosa nikld at a point when JUkichi was clearly in a delirious
state induced by malnourishment and death of nearly all his crew over the course of
sixteen months of drift, Jukichi claims to have met with of god-like figures coming
aboard the Tokuj6-maru immediately prior to being rescued. 141
140 NSSSS5,672.
141 NSSSS5,517.
151
Numerous hy6ryuki also frame the entire castaway narrative as a dream by
incorporating "dream" into the very title, such as the Yume monogatari, which relates
the Wakamiya-maru experience. Likewise, after completing the Hokusa bunryaku,
Katsuragawa Hoshu anonymously wrote Roshia koku suimu dan .WB[~~t&:~ in the
6th month of 1794, incorporating what was originally expunged from his more famous
Hokusa bunryaku. 142 Katsuragawa's use of the dream as a framing technique mayor
may not have influenced the author of Hy6ryu yume monogatari {~{JiE&:!Ito~fr and other
later castaway accounts that employ dreams in the narrative or title of their works,
nonetheless, several examples written after 1794 suggest it was one option open to
hy6ryuki authors. 143
Other than Hy6ryu yume monogatari, the Nanpy6ki 1¥I1!Wl~cpublished in 1798 by
Shih6 Ken shortly after Hoshu had written his Roshiya koku suimu dan is perhaps the
best example of how the dream could be used to frame the narrative. Referring to his
castaway as the "Traveler of the Southern Gourd" (1¥II!WlO)@A), the author states in his
introduction, "there is truth in the dream of the southern gourd traveler.,,144 However,
142 Ikuta Michiko, Daikokuya KodayCt no seppun. (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1997), 173-181.
143 This manuscript is found in the Iwase Bunko archive at the Nishio City Municipal Library in Aichi.
For references to Hy8ryCt yume monogatari, see Haruna Akira, HyoryCt: Joseju Hiko to nakamatachi
(Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1982),29. These texts should not be confused with Takano Ch6ei's Yume
monogatari which was seen as one reason why Ch6hei and his associate, Watanabe Kazan, were placed
under house arrest (eventually committing suicide) in the Bansha no goku incident ~t±o)5~of 1839.
144 EHSS2,288.
152
it is perhaps the last lines of his narrative (five volumes later) that demonstrates this
trope of the dream. 145
Until the beginning of the 11th month they were in this land
[Annan], and having passed three years in the haze of stars C:::::jp1:f.
0) J'itWi~ fEl--C), they were once again returned to our county. I
must say that this [Japan] is truly a divine land (f$OO), but even
having come to see the facts of this tale in such detail, to speak of
the virtues of this gourd we must go before the gate and listen to
the voices of the people. When this traveler ({E(O) jltA), having
taken a seed from a gourd, mounted a cloud and instantly flew
away, I remembered my dream just as I had seen it, and before the
Great Kannon, with paper and brush I prostrated myself and as
things became increasingly strange (7F}~H!Vt fJ It Q jX~ It fJ) I was
sincerely blessed by the Kannon (IDJXf:.*;t~0)1iflJJJD~~:'--C). Since I
heard this traveler's tale in the space of a short dream, without any
editing, I gave it the title Nanpy6ki and, exactly like my dream,
have outlined a dream narrative (~~~j!n. 146
Citing Nanpy6ki, Kobayashi Shigefumi argues that the frame of the dream does
not imply something fictional, but instead something meant to "serve dreams" (yume
yosotta) of the reader/ 47 although considering that it is not until the very end of the five
volumes that Shih6 most effectively establishes this idea, this may have simply been a
strategy to avoid censorship. In either case, whether it was to protect himself from
possible repercussions of printing or to fuel the imaginary flights of his reader, the
author embraces the fiction of a dream to convey an otherwise actual account of a
castaway.
]45 EHSS2,287-403.
146 EHSS2,403.
147 Kobayashi (2000),192. The Nanpyoki is one hyoryuki that was published during the Edo period, but
was prohibited the following year. See EHSS2, 286.
153
We have seen how the arrival of Russians spawned not only a political crisis,
but also a cultural one concerned with the very form castaway accounts should take.
The circle of figures responsible for recording both the Shinsh6- and Wakamiya-maru
castaways stories produced literally hundreds of texts, but later authors frequently
mention Katsuragawa Hoshu's Hokusa bunryaku and Otsuki Gentaku's Kankai ibun in
particular, and consciously imitate certain formal characteristics initiated by these two
texts. K6dayu's return also served as an occasion to collect accounts and produce
anthologies. To this end, intellectuals discovered accounts from the past, but more so,
they sought the latest news from abroad in the form of contemporary castaways. A
formally recognized category of hy6ryuki came to emerge. Structural commonalties
such as prefaces, dictionaries, inventories, colophons, maps, methods of editorial
commentary, complete narratives followed by detailed topical categories, illustrations,
etc. as well as shared themes, iconography, and tropes, regarding food, religion,
technology, language, all contributed to the recognition of this new textual practice.
Nonetheless, as literary artifacts, they are quite varied in their "literariness."
The iterability of these texts-the fact that they were often reiterated in a variety
of forms- allows us to trace an ideological metamorphosis of the castaway narrative.
With its origins in a bureaucratic kuchigaki form meant to establish and maintain
relations with neighboring countries such as Korea, Ryukyu, and China, by the 1790s
the category of hy6ryuki came to engage and maintain relations with more radically
different peoples of the world. As stories of drift to neighboring countries gave way to
narratives focused on the presence of westerners throughout the Pacific, the East Asian
154
model of civilization gave way to a worldview and epistemology that underwrote
colonialism and was the result of scientific, geographic, and ethnographic discourses
adopted by these later authors.
The invention of the castaway as a textual subject and the employment of
specific narrative strategies served to transform the story of drift across the smooth
space of the sea into a historically contingent form that also reterritorialized the drifting
subject in terms of a geocentric national discourse. While Matsudaira Sadanobu and
the bakufu did not call for a "literature of defense," territorial concerns in the north
coalesced with intellectual curiosities in not only Edo, Nagasaki, Miyako, but also in
smaller domains such as Tosa, Kanazawa, Sendai, and Matsumae. Furthermore, these
texts-whether they were written by peripheral domains or by intellectuals directly in
the service of the bakufu-tended to be formally similar and furthermore, both equally
articulated a strong sense of Japanese identity at the national level. The result was a de
facto literature of defense identified as hy6ryuki, that was the result of both State policy
regarding repatriated drifters and the inherent limits of the kuchigaki form on the one
hand, and its inability of that older textual form to satiate the current intellectual and
popular audiences and effectively comprehend and translate a rapidly changing world.
While Tokugawa period hy6ryuki remain scattered on a spectrum between bungaku
("literature") and shiry6 ("historical documents") today, both the textuality and
historicity of any given text is by now clear.
Several scholars of hy6ryuki employ terminology most often associated with
literature such as such denki no shujink6 or "romantic hero" (Muroga & Yamori) and
155
eiyu or "hero" (Matsudaira, Ikeda, Kobayashi) thus hinting at an embellished literary
narrative. However, as mentioned earlier it is not an embellishment as fiction, as
much as it is an embellishment of diction, or how the tale is told. The very act of
being cast away is associated with a patterned organization of events into a temporally
linear progression marked at one end by an inciting incident (usually a storm), and at
the other, by resolution (homecoming), thus fixed by a broad governing form. The
speaking subject, particularly in more lengthy accounts is not only realistic, but appears
as higWy individuated character whose longings, doubts, rationalization processes, and
interpretations of the outside world are developed over the course of his drift and return.
Moreover, the authors themselves, through inter-textual reference and adoption of
structures proposed by Katsuagawa Hoshu and Otsuki Gentaku in their own hy6ryuki,
came to recognize and engage a larger tradition of writing about historic moments of
drift. Aside from the specific language and tone adopted by the authors, techniques of
framing the narrative as truth or dream, the invocation of laughter, dramatic techniques
such as suspense, and the rhetoric of seduction, all contributed to the production of
stories that were more than simply educational, but also interesting and entertaining.
In discovering this new literature of defense, the hy6ryuki of late-Edo Japan served not
only to report tragic events at sea, but to translate and comprehend a nineteenth century
Pacific.
156
TRANSLATING WORLDS: ACCOUNTS OF A COLONIZED PACIFIC
Speaking of "traveling cultures," James Clifford has written that, "in much
traditional ethnography, the ethnographer has localized what is actually a
regional/national/global nexus, regulating to the margins the external relations and
displacements of a 'culture.",j In this important critique of traditional ethnographic
practice, Clifford also takes a fascinating methodological turn toward an
anthropology of subjects in movement. Turning to language, he suggests that the
assumed equation - "culture (singular) equals language (singular)"- maintains a
"nationalist culture," at the expense of untold subjectivities on the periphery? These
travelers, whether they be castaways, whalers, prostitutes, missionaries, or natural
scientists recording the flora and fauna of newly claimed territories, all operated in
various "contact zones" in the Pacific.3 And while "terms such as 'travel,' are
translations, built from imperfect equivalences," we should also acknowledge the
1 James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1997),24.
2 Ibid., 22.
3 Commenting on an "inter-cultural" text penned in 1613 by an Amerindian-Felipe Guaman Poma
de Ayala-and addressed to King Philip III of Spain, Mary Louise Pratt defines "contact zones" as,
"social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly
asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination-like colonialism, slavery, or their
aftermaths." Part Quechua and part "rough, ungrammatical Spanish," this letter, like many of the
texts we will consider in this chapter, was a polyglot text that attempted to translate worlds into
hybrid tongues. See, Mary Louise Pratt,Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New
York: Routledge, 1992),4.
157
important role that the act of translation itself plays in the experience of the
traveler.4 In other words, while there is an "imperfect equivalence" between the
terms of "travel" and "hyoryu," the accounts of both are written not for the readers
of the land visited, but instead for a home (whether this be national, provincial, or
local) audience. Relating the unfamiliar space, conditions, and people of the site
visited in an idiom familiar to a horne audience opens up a space from which to
consider the act of travel writing as a profound act of translation. This chapter
considers not only the translation of words and phrases, but also acts of translating
experiences- particularly those dealing with social hierarchies of colonial spaces,
gender, race, and ethnography. We shall see how world historical conditions in the
Pacific corne to be related to Japanese readers, not through one consistent language,
but instead a hybrid polyglot that was at times the scientific jargon of Dutch Studies
scholars and at others the laughter of ribald tales, to give just two more obvious
examples. Furthermore, to compound the hybrid nature of these translations, we
might acknowledge, too, the nature of the "informants," to borrow an
anthropological term, whose diversity of language also inflected the stories
castaways returned to tell. Whether they be missionaries in Canton relating the
metaphysical concepts of a Christian salvation, scientists "in the field" elaborating
the nuances of phrenology and racial difference, royalty of the Russian empire, or
even the slurred language of prostitutes hidden behind the sugarcane fields of
4 James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1997), II.
158
Hawaiian plantations, these interlocutors offered the castaways conflicting
explanations of the world outside.
Let us first consider the apparent fascination with the foreign tongue, as it
was made manifest with the incorporation of lexicons in hy6ryuki. While we have
already considered Ishiguro Chihiro's lexicon of kokugaku terms appended to the
Tokei monogatari titled, "Tokei monogatari jo kana tsuke narabi insh6," there are in
fact numerous examples of foreign lexicons and multilingual dictionaries to be
found in late-Edo castaway accounts. (See Appendix D) In at least one case-that
of the Oroshiya no kotoba '70 -/"y J § of 1821-a lexicon was even published
separately from the accompanying (unpublished) story of drift to be sold at a display
of foreign objects with which the castaway returned.s
5 Oroshiya no kotoba is to be found in both the Waseda and Meiji University libraries. There is also
another document that appears to have been published in woodblock form from this particular display
in 1821, that is the Roshiya koku irui kibutsu hiro raiyu sho ~ ggiJP. 001'<;tJi:i*~t1ta* i±I:J:. This
published document contains a summary of the Tokujo-maru account and provides an itemized
catalog of the objects on display. Republished as Oguri Jukichi, Roshiya koku irui kibutsu hiro raiyu
sho (jukusei) (Nagoya: Ryujinsei, 1935). Both documents, while printed, are also signed (in what
appears to be brush and ink) by Oguri JUkichi himself. The surname "Oguri" was bestowed upon him
only after his return.
159
Illustration 3.1. A page from Oroshiya no kotoba (In the Meiji University Central Library)
The practice of compiling lexicons of foreign languages picked up by
castaways began as early as 1644 with the publication of Ikoku monogatari J!<OO~itf
and Echizen bune hy6ryuki ~Mf.Vd1~YJiE§c, but looking more closely at factors such as
the relative length of these many dictionaries and the manner in which they are
organized, we may point to an important shift that takes place as concern with
western languages comes to predominate.6 With the possible exception of Bishu 6no
murafune hy6ryu ikken ftHlt*!I!fHf.Vd1~YJiE~f!:j::, all accounts previous to the writing of
Hokusa bunryaku listed above present foreign languages in the context of a Sino-
6 I am hesitant to use the term 'genre' in speaking about castaway accounts over the course of the
Edo period precisely because I would like to make generic distinctions between kuchigaki, oboegaki,
and the numerous more elaborated forms that develop later in the Edo period. See Chapter Two, for a
more detailed discussion. For Ikoku monogatari see Ikoku hyoryuki shu (Arakawa Hidetoshi, ed.)
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa K6bunkan, 1962), 13-15. For Echizenbune hyoryuki see, NSSSS5, 568-569.
160
centric linguistic sphere in which Chinese orthographies dominated written forms
throughout East and Southeast Asia. Even with Bishu Dno murafune hy6ryu ikken,
we find a short note stating that "Batan" visits the court at Nanjing, thus making it
clear that all of these earlier accounts address foreign languages in terms of their
relationship to Chinese.7 In the earliest accounts dealing with castaways returning
from Dattan in 1644 two separate foreign readings are provided along either side of
kanji characters, allowing the reader to compare the languages of Dattan and
"Peking," but all the while anchoring that comparison in an unproblematic semantic
meaning reflected in the Chinese character. By emphasizing this particular usage of
shared ideographs originally from China, the lexicon points towards the status of
Dattan and Peking within traditional ka-i order.8
Beginning with the Hokusa bunryaku in 1794, both castaway accounts and
the dictionaries contained within them, take on significant new features that reflect a
shift away from this Sino-centric model. From the late eighteenth century onward,
we begin to see these word lists growing in length, with the authors frequently
committing entire or nearly entire volumes to thematically organized lexicons.
These later hy6ryuki tend to subdivide word lists into particular categories such as,
tenmon (climate and astronomy), chiri (geography and topography),jirei (calendars,
7 "Batan," or occasionally "Hatan," is the island of Bataan in the waters of the Philippines, and is not
to be confused with the peninsula made famous during the Pacific War.
8 This ka-i order and its reinterpretations in both Japan and Korea are discussed at length in the first
and fourth chapters. See also, Etsuko Rae-Jin Kang, Diplomacy and Ideology in Japanese-Korean
Relations: From the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Century (New York: Saint Martin's Press, 1997), 153-
166,186-194.
161
seasons, and dating), kishin (devils and gods),jinrin (familial relations, social
positions), s6moku (plants and trees), ch6ju (birds and beasts), etc. It is notable that
the Hokusa bunryaku, Kankai ibun, Amerika shinwa, Tokei monogatari, T6ka kibun,
T6y6 hy6kyaku, and Kaigai ibun all demonstrate a remarkable consistency in how
vocabularies are organized. While some accounts exclude or include certain
subheadings, or in some cases combine categories, all of these later dictionaries
point toward a familiarity with the order first appearing in the Hokusa bunryaku.
This mode of organization also was maintained in popular multilingual dictionaries
in the bakamatsu and early Meiji eras, such as Fukuzawa Yukichi's Z6tei Ka-Ei
tsugo tj!jn~~:@~B-, first published in 1860.9
While earlier lexicons appearing in castaway narratives presented a seamless
correspondence between languages sharing a Chinese influenced orthography, many
later accounts focused on Russian, Spanish, and English languages also attempt to
relate the foreign in terms of a semantic equivalency with Japanese language. In
other words, we still frequently see a word-to-word formula for relating meaning
("dog" equals "inu"). While this works well for nominal forms that appear as
9 See Fukuzawa Yukichi, Z6tei Ka-Ei tsago, in Fukuzawa Yukichi zensha, vol. 1 (Keio Gijuku, ed.)
(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1969),67-274. By referring to the dictionary as a correspondence between
Ka ("China") and Ei ("English"), the title of this text retains hints of the Sino-centric origins of early
Edo castaway lexicons, but clearly Ka in this title suggests something else. We might also consider
the legacy of pairing Ka with other binary oppositions such as I when considering the peculiar title.
Fukuzawa includes phonetics of English words in bothjUrigana, as well as Chinese characters used
only phonetically (immediately below English words). This effectively makes his dictionary a tri-
lingual endeavor. This is not to suggest that Fukuzawa was reasserting the centrality of Chinese
civilization. In fact considering that entries appearing to the right of the foreign words are Japanese
kanji compounds with Japanese readings, if anything this particular use of ka in the title suggests an
order of civilization that may have once been "centered" in China, but was now the domain of
162
objects of daily life, a tension arises with some attempts of translation in later
accounts. In part, this tension may be attributed to the more developed and
expansive content found in the later dictionaries. Compared with several later
accounts, the earlier accounts are almost always relatively narrow in scope and the
subject matter tends to be limited to numbers, terms of daily sustenance (water, food,
medicine), and commodities and products of commercial exchange (money,
sandalwood, silk cloth).
Japanese control. Even this Japan-centered notion of civilization had recently been put into question
with the negotiation of port and trade treaties with various western nations.
163
",,~-'I''''\"''-I\' 01>--.... ii;:~~. ~ ?t--f~1;.;fl'3 ~;t·L6- jf;-
~ll-~"'_ ~-=---
~~~. Tt ~ . •Jlf't~.,~ "Jtf.;~ ·v ~ /tJ
to( ,{ ,~-"-.- ~'::lt...-
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-t-.# ll- 1t~ ~ ..... lf,. 1<,"' ~....-~. of #-#wgrl~. ~~~.;#p!f'!Ii.. ~ -.:Aa ~a lJt 'EJ
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1I"~ll.. ~).t('" ~; ll- k -b--~ ityjlJlkv~. t;~ ~tI~ 1-Kt~ it'll! 1It~ ~
Illustration 3.2. A page from Fukuzawa Yukichi's Z6tei Ka-Ei tsugo titled S6mokurui (Plants and
Trees) to
to Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshu, 188.
164
Illustration 3.3. A page from the dictionary contained in the Kankai ibun. Individual headings
include Chiri, Jinrin, and Shintai. These are all subheadings first appearing in the Hokusa bunryaku ll
In a provocative set of essays (in both English and Japanese), the translator
and translation theorist, Sabu Kohsol Koso Iwasaburo, has suggested the intimate
connections between translation and a Marxist oriented historiography. He writes,
Simply said, translation is like money that inscribes the events in the
exchanges between different values. The relationship of translation
to text is akin to that of money to commodity in the aspect that both
translation and money are ghosts of these substances... Translation
II From Tokyo Kaiy6 Daigaku electronic archive, http://lib.s.kaiyodai.ac.jp/library/bunkan/tb-
gaku/hyoryu/hyoryu.html.
165
has always been the main tool of shaping the nation, both before and
after its modern revolution-the Meiji Restoration.12
Kohso's argument relates Marx's passage on commodity fetishism to the
logic of equivalency implicit in translation by revealing how the assumption of
equivalency conceals the social relations that drive one to translate a text. Likewise,
Marx himself suggests a similarity of form between economic value and linguistic
meaning when he claims, "the characteristic which objects of utility have of being
values is as much men's social product as is their language.,,13 The logic of
equivalency between languages is assumed in new understandings of scientific
language, as well as many of the dictionaries we find in castaway narratives. But
counter to Kohso's argument, the later Edo period accounts that take as their subject
the increasingly colonized spaces of the Pacific begin to reveal fissures in the
ostensible equivalence between languages. We see one example of this in Funaosa
nikki when Jukichi elaborates on the difficulty of understanding the Russian
language. While providing one to one equivalencies between Russian and Japanese
words for rice, wheat, bread, halibut, and other nouns, he also relates the
"intranslatability" of certain words and concepts, thus exposing a gap between the
exchange value and use value of language. The inherent power relation that informs
a notion of translatability is suggested in a revealing comment on the occasional
difficulty of translation.
12 Sabu Kohso, "Two Modes of Translation, or a Crossing over the Pacific," in Imported: A Reading
Seminar (Rainer Ganahl, ed.) (New York: Semiotext(e), 1998),96-97.
13 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique ofPolitical Economy-Volume One (Ben Fowkes, trans.) (New
York: Vintage Books, 1977), 167.
166
To have another person suddenly point out a thing and ask, "How
about this?" is hard. Instead of that, it is better if you yourself point
out an object and ask, "How about this?" and have the other person
answer this or that, and then write down the various answers. 14
In a study of lexicography, Sidney 1. Landau has pointed out the
important difference between bilingual dictionaries of "equivalents" and
monolingual dictionaries of the "periphrastic mode.,,15 While the dictionaries cited
in Appendix D are of the former variety, we might also consider at least one
example of something similar to the latter. It is clear that Katsuragawa Hoshfi was
not content with his "dictionary of equivalence" to be found in the Hokusa bunryaku,
for he was also compelled to present readers with (although not monolingual) a
"periphrastic" dictionary as well. In doing so, he is able to relate the subtler
nuances of language that risk concealment in translations of equivalence. An
example we might consider is his definition of kujira or "whale." In his dictionary
found in the eleventh volume of his text we simply read, "kitoi! kujira." However,
under the heading of kujira in his periphrastic dictionary, we read:
Kito. Both large and small. Barbaric islanders (t6i) prepare them for
food. Oil is taken from them and when burned it leaves no mark on
the lamp. They are not eaten on the mainland of Russia (hon koku).
K6dayfi and his crew, during the winter of the year they arrived in
Amchitka, managed to collect seven whales at one time.16
14 NSSSS5, 531-532.
15 Sidney 1. Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft ofLexicography (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2001), 9.
16 NSSSS5, 809.
167
This passage, as well as the definition for isana toru ("catching whales")
provided in Ishiguro's periphrastic dictionary, both suggest some dissonance
between the Edo period reader's notion of kujira/isana and the meanings ascribed to
it in the particular texts. J7 In the case of the Hokusa bunryaku, we begin to see how
ethnic dietary differences are encoded in the relationship between the peripheral
barbarian (toi) and the imperial center (hon koku) , terms extrapolated from a
domestic understanding of center and periphery (particularly in Japan's (hon koku)
relationship with Ezo (toi). In fact, in both the dictionaries and the descriptive prose
of later Edo period castaway accounts we begin to see the difficulties in translation,
as hierarchic conditions and ideological concepts are translated into terms such as
dochaku- (native-), kuronbo (position of servitude generally associated with dark
skin), hakujin (white person), dojin (savage),yakunin (official), kijin (higher
ranking official), shimabito (islander), kOkoku (empire), teikoku (empire), zokusho
(colony) and other phrases that challenge any logic of equivalency. For now, let us
shift our attention away from the act of translating words, and instead consider how
experiences and conditions taking place in colonial spaces of the Pacific relate to
each other. For the remainder of the chapter we shall focus specifically on the port
17 Ishiguro's dictionary is discussed in Chapter 2. It is not the focus of this chapter since it is a
dictionary of Japanese terms that appear in the preface to Tokei monogatari. In short, it is a lexicon
attached to the Tokei monogatari and influenced by kokugaku etymological interests in recovering a
"native" language. It also stands as some of the clearest evidence of literary crossover in these texts.
The definition in question reads, "Isana toru-referring to the isana (.~~,) that appears in the
Many8shU, it is also called kujira (i'i\). It is used in the text [Tokei monogatari] to refer to the [longer]
phrase to which it is connected- "Isana toru umi"-a makura kotoba (poetic phrase). Ishiguro's
dictionary is in manuscript form in the Maeda Sonkeikaku Bunko in Tokyo. Both Katsuragawa
Hoshfi's periphrastic definition of kilo and Ishiguro's periphrastic definition of isana demonstrate a
surplus in meaning that resists being relegated to a logic of equivalency between languages.
168
brothel as a site in which notions of gender and masculinism are translated, before
tracing just how the categories of race and ethnicity come to be related to readers of
these late Edo texts.
In one of the many accounts relating the shipwreck and eventual repatriation
of Nakahama Manjiro-Japan's most famous Edo period castaway-we find a
record of his first impressions of Oahu Island. After making a passing comparison
to the river entrance leading to the markets of Osaka, his description continues: "At
this international commercial center, there are many wholesalers from various
countries, as well as tea houses and brothels," (~:tiOOO)~£?Jf(~--C, OO/.< O)r~~~~ <, X:fP;
~ . fr&~~ft (:" b kJ tJ ).18 While his account draws our attention to the close ties
between prostitution and transnational colonial commerce in early nineteenth
century Pacific ports, it is by no means the only reference to the space of the brothel
or the figure of the prostitute in Edo period castaway accounts.
18 This citation is taken from a relatively popular and well-circulated text probably published in 1853
by the Edo publisher S6r6ken. The author goes by the penname of Nibui Tsushi or perhaps Don
Tsushi (~@-T, "The Dull Translator") and while the gedai or cover title is Manjiro hyoryuki OJMjt?z&~
~rifE1Jc) the cover page title (mikaeshi) is simply Hyoryuki. Unlike most Edo period castaway
accounts, which were handwritten documents, this text was mass-produced in woodblock print form.
169
Illustration 3.4. Page from the woodblock printed Hyoryuki relating Nakahama Manjiro's first
glimpse of Oahu Island and its brothels. The author goes by the penname Don (or perhaps, Nibui)
Tsushi and most likely published the text in 1853. I am grateful to the library staff at the University
of Hawai'i, Manoa who allowed me to reproduce this text in its entirety.
These brothels that Manjiro witnessed, like others established throughout the
Pacific Rim, served as sites of diversion for fisherman, whalers, and trans-oceanic
traders that comprised the male-dominated maritime populations and communities.
While this development may reflect a certain characteristic masculinism historically
endemic to systems of commercial and colonial expansion, the encounters between
foreign women and Japanese castaways come to be narrated in a formalized, if not
literary manner that borrows extensively from a tradition of domestic travel
170
literature. Taking the colonial port brothel to be what Mary Louise Pratt calls a
"contact zone," we can see just how Japanese castaway accounts come to translate
their experiences in such international spaces into more familiar lexicons and codes
of humor.19 Considering accounts of seduction at sea, we may trace the shifting
relations between gender, national identity, and colonial formations in the Pacific
over the course of the nineteenth century. Depictions of these encounters between
foreign women and Japanese castaways are not simply "bare" or "unadorned"
historical records relating fact. Taking a cue from Natilie Zemon Davis's work on
letters of remission in sixteenth century France, we might point to a certain literary
crossover as the fears, desires, and humor relating gender difference and sexuality
come to be imbued with the stylistic and narrative qualities of a domestic urban
entertainment literature (gesaku)?O Gesturing toward the dizzying interplay among
local, national, and global-colonial spheres of gendered relations, we may begin to
see the nineteenth century Pacific not as a space over-determined by a hegemonic
"world system" or singular "masculinism," but instead as an emerging and
negotiated space mediated through translations "built from imperfect
equivalences."z1
19 Mary Louise Pratt,Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge,
1992),1-11.
20 Natalie Zeman Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth-century
France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987),4.
21 Clifford. Cited earlier.
171
Scholars of early modern European travel writing have addressed the notion
of masculinism in the context of travel. Ludmilla Kostova invokes this term in the
context of food and sex for nineteenth century British travel writers venturing to the
Balkans. She concisely concludes, "rm]erging with the other culture is permissible
only under special circumstances and seems to be a prerogative of adventurous men
above all.'>22 Placing the Robinson Crusoe story within the context of the
Enlightenment and one of its most dominant literary forms-the adventure-survival
narrative-Martin Green argues that Daniel Defoe and his many imitators offer us
nothing less than a, "proclamation of progressive values.'l23 In his first chapter on
Rousseau's interpretation of the Crusoe story in Emile, he also elaborates on a
notion of "masculinism" as one important facet of these "progressive values." He
continues,
This new masculinism was not the result of indifference to women.
Nor was it a calculated exploitation. It seems to be simply the dark or
shadow side of a gender myth - the founding myth of both adventure
and the Enlightenment, which summoned men to stand together
against all their enemies-feudal tyrants, false priests, tax farmers-
and spoke of lordship over women and children as their natural
reward. Men were to be the sturdy yeoman class of the human race,
each with his little kingdom of a home behind him, including his
consort and his subjects.z4
22 Ludmilla Kostova, "Meals in Foreign Parts: Food in Writing by Nineteenth-Century British
Travelers to the Balkans," in Journeys: The International Journal o/Travel and Travel Writing 4:1,
30.
23 Martin Green, The Robinson Crusoe Story (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1990), 197.
24 Green, 35.
172
Green's research on castaway narratives is limited to American and
European texts and, as such, tends to articulate this notion of "masculinism" in
terms of an Enlightenment that reflects certain universalized values.
However, at roughly the same time Defoe was "discovering" one set of
literary and ideological possibilities of the castaway narrative, similar forms of
travel writing that shared as their subject the adventures of distressed and
shipwrecked sailors also began to proliferate independently in Japan and other areas
of Asia. The invention of a specific Japanese textual category of castaway account
or hy6ryuki in the early seventeenth century has been considered in terms of
di plomatic repercussions that transpire in East Asia with the collapse of the Ming
Dynasty?5 Thus it would be false to suggest that western castaway accounts had
any direct influence on the production of Japanese hy6ryuki, nonetheless by the late
eighteenth century we begin to see increased contact between Europeans and
Japanese castaways and with it, the emergence of eyewitness accounts of western
colonial spaces in the Pacific by repatriated castaways. While Japanese castaways
increasingly returned with stories of drift and subsequent repatriation via colonial
ports around the Pacific, their texts came to be inflected by an historical process of
global expansion and the forms of knowledge, technology, and industry that
accompanied it. Immanuel Wallerstein and others have discussed these increasingly
25 See in particular the fourth chapter of Arana Yasunori's, Kinsei Nihon to higashi Ajia (Tokyo:
Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1998), 117-157.
173
globalized conditions under the rubric of "the modern world-system.,,26 In these
terms, the production and dissemination of castaway stories in different parts of the
world represent what we might call a transnational literary form, albeit one that
related sometimes strikingly different responses to globalized colonial conditions.
As has already been demonstrated, with the return of Daikokuya Kodayfi and
Isokichi from Russia in 1792, we see a dramatic shift from earlier forms of hyoryCiki
to texts that clearly document the rapidly changing terrain of the Pacific brought
about by Western colonial expansion. References to prostitution abroad by
Japanese castaways can be found in earlier accounts, however not until Katsuragawa
Hoshfi devoted a substantial section of the Hokusa bunraku to the topic of Kodayfi's
encounters with prostitutes in Russia, does it appear as an inter-textual theme?7 The
26 Attempting to place castaway narratives in a historical context other than the oftentimes
hermetically sealed national literary or historical models, we have few options other than considering
the global or Pacific spaces which they represent and from which they are born. While Euro-centric
in perspective, Wallerstein's notion of a modern world-system is helpful and appears to have exerted
some influence on more directly relevant research such as Martin Green's work on castaways and
more recent attempts to write global environmental histories of the early modern world. See, John F.
Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003). Wallerstein's macro-historical project is best represented by a
three volume series simply titled, The Modern World System. Unfortunately his understanding of
Japan's role in this "modern world-system" is never articulated, or only tangentially articulated as a
victim of Dutch hegemony over Indo-Sino-Japanese trade networks. See, Immanuel Wallerstein, The
Modern World System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy,
1600-1750 (New York: Academic Press, 1980), 107. One significant problem with Wallerstein's
approach is that it seems to strip away any possibility for agency, instead falling back upon the
supremacy of economic forces. For example, he writes, "Incorporation into the capitalist world-
economy was never at the initiative of those being incorporated. The process derived rather from the
need of the world-economy to expand its boundaries, a need which was itself the outcome of
pressures internal to the world-economy." See, The Second Era ofGreat Expansion of the Capitalist
World-Economy, 1730-1840s (San Diego: Academic Press, 1989), 129. In doing so, change on a
localized level appears as something simply imposed from the outside, and not something negotiated
through appropriation, invention, and resistance-a position taken in this project.
27 Despite being considered "the world's oldest profession ," except for one brief reference to the
word for asobime (prostitute) in the dictionary found in Annan koku hyfJryCt monogatari, I have yet to
174
seventh volume of this text relates K6dayu's experiences during his visit to the
metropolitan center of St. Petersburg, where he eventually received an audience
with Ekaterina Alexeyevna or Catherine the Great and permission to return home
with the aid of Adam Laxman. Comprised of ten separate subsections, this volume
documents various social institutions found in Russia, including schools,
apothecaries, hospitals, orphanages, banks, and theaters?8 The final and most
substantial section is simply titled Joroya (frl'r*) or "Brothels."29 Setting the tone for
numerous later accounts of foreign brothels by Japanese castaways, K6dayu's
sexual prowess is unabashedly emphasized as his detailed description of the brothel
moves us through the waiting room into a large dancing room and onto the multi-
roomed bedchambers of the prostitutes. It becomes apparent that his knowledge of
the brothel is based on something more than a cursory tour by a lower ranking maid
(koshimoto), as his eye turns to the gold threads decorating the bed linens, the
embroidery of the bed covers, and the number of pillows on the bed. His
description of the contents of this room abruptly ends as he comes to the lower
ranking maid's bed and concludes_byJetting the reader know that, "the fee is five
find any references to prostitution in castaway accounts pre-dating the Hokusa bunryaku. See Edo
hyoryuki sosha, vol. 2, 276.
28 The seventh volume (kan no nana) of the Hokusa bunryaku is in NSSSS5, 775-783.
29 Ibid, 782-783. Ayuzawa Shintar6 also briefly mentions this passage on K6dayu's visit to the
brothels of St. Petersburg in his, Hyoryu: Sakoku jidai no kaigai hatten (Tokyo: Geibund6, 1956),
186-192.
175
silver pieces with food and drink costing extra.,,30 It also becomes clear that this is
not his last visit to this bordello. We read:
Afterwards, when returning from the palace, K6dayu happened to
pass in front of this house when suddenly the young maid
(koshimoto) saw him. While saying, "please, please come join us,"
the other prostitutes (yujodomo) inside also came out and he was
entertained by them in various ways (samazama ni motenashi). They
then asked him to spend the evening and they recommended drink
and food. When it came time to find a companion, five high-ranking
ladies were chosen (sate aite wo sadamubeshi tote nataka kyujo
gonin wo erami dasu). Being such a rare customer (mezurashiki
marodo nareba), the women began to fight among themselves over
the chance to sleep with him and it was decided to settle the matter
by drawing lots (darekare to aite wo arasohishi yue kuji ni shite). A
prostitute called Elizavetta chose the lucky straw, however, in the
end all five of the prostitutes crowded around him throughout the
night.3l
From the inviting calls of the young woman he met on his first visit, to the
fight that ensues among the higher ranking prostitutes, an interesting inversion takes
place in which K6dayu himself becomes the object of desire. Implicit in this
passage is the Japanese male's superiority over his Russian counterparts (after all,
he is such a "rare customer"), and his ability to occupy the attention, if not the beds,
.- of fi-ve-differentwomen. 1'heaGcountGonGludes-bymentioning-that-Kodayu -
received numerous expensive presents from Elizavetta before his departure to Japan,
suggesting that he was one customer whom she could not forget.
Because hyoryuki by definition involve the adventures of Japanese men
beyond the boundaries of Japan, it is understandable that most male-female
30 NSSSS5, 782-783.
31 Ibid. 783.
176
encounters in these texts focus on the Japanese male castaway and foreign women.32
Furthermore, the "inversion of desire" that we see in K6dayQ's visit is also common
in other accounts, sometimes being carried to the extreme. Among the hundreds of
Japanese castaway narratives that remain today from the Edo period, there are few
in which the main protagonist is female.33 However, this is not to say that the
female body remains completely absent from what is otherwise the story of men.
When women do appear in these narratives, they are frequently contextualized in
terms of a certain homo-sociality characteristic of this male-oriented world and
32 Annual oaths taken by sailors at coastal shrines frequently forbade, among other things, sleeping
with prostitutes and bringing women on board ships. Furthermore, while women obviously did go
on boats, taboos regarding women on the sea are quite common even in the earliest written records.
See for example, Tosa nikki in Nihon koten bungaku zenshCt: Tosa nikki, Kagero nikki. (Matsumura
Seiichi, et aI., eds.) (Tokyo: Sh6gakkan, 1973),29-68. For a study of women at sea in a western
context see, David Cordingly, Women Sailors and Sailors' Women: An Untold Maritime History
(New York: Random House, 2001). For a more literary expression of this male-dominated world of
the ship, particularly in the context of the American whaling industry, see the 94th chapter of Moby
Dick ("A Squeeze of the Hand") in Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Charles Feildelson,
ed.) (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co.,1964), 532-533.
33 Kobayashi Shigefumi briefly mentions a few examples of women involved in castaway accounts
in his Nipponjin ikoku hy6ryCtki (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 2000), 50-51. These include Takadaya Kahei's
mistress who was unfortunate enough to be caught on board the Kanze maru when it was taken by
Russians in revenge for Golovin's capture in 1812 and an account in the TaishCt hy6kyaku kiji (iJ'jH
~~1ji..'.*) of 1613 where we read about a woman on board a ship that drifted to Taiwan ({~~if;,~I1l)tiii
- ~). Under the Kijitsu hen section of the Koshinroku (11a~~) one It6 T6gai ({jtjjJJI[f!I)
comments that this woman was sacrificed to the gods as the boat approached Taiwan. See also, Ishii
Kend6 korekushon Edo hyoryCtki soshCt, dai ikkan (Tokyo: Nihon Hy6ronsha, 1992),91-92. Also see
pages 504-527 in this same volume for letters written by Japanese women abroad that Kobayashi
does not mention. Kobayashi does cite two other cases briefly mentioned in Nakahama Akira,
Nakahama Manjir6 no shOgai (Tokyo: Fujiib6, 1971), 10. The first is to a geisha named Osome from
Yanagibashi, Edo who, in 1859, was rescued by American sailors and brought to Hawai'i, educated
and eventually employed as a teacher in San Francisco. The second is a daughter of a Kagoshima
fisherman named Oharu, who apparently married an American and took American citizenship, before
returning to Japan to work as a translator for the minister of foreign affairs (Oguri K6zuke no suke
Tadamasa) in 1860. Finally, Kimura Ki mentions several accounts of Japanese women abroad before
the Meiji period in the first two chapters of his Kaigai ni katsuyaku shita Meiji no josei (Tokyo:
Shibund6, 1963), 1-51.
177
reflect a collective erotic imagination circulating among men. These playful
moments stand out in stark contrast to the otherwise grim travails of distressed
sailors, but even more so, these passages are foregrounded by the relative
infrequency with which the female body otherwise does reveal itself within the
male-oriented space of the ship. Sometimes in dreams or as spirits, at other times
taking a more corporeal form as colonial governess, missionary wife, or port
prostitute, when the female body is mentioned, it is oftentimes done so in a
sexualized manner. These representations frequently break from a mode of
narration that is matter-of-fact in its presentation and shifts to a significantly more
literary mode of articulation.
Indicative of this general scarcity of women, it is sometimes the case that
women are purposefully written into the narrative despite their absence. Such is the
case with the Funaosa nikki (~i}jjt S ~c) of 1822.34 Claiming to faithfully record the
testimony of the sailor JOkichi based on his years of drift throughout the Pacific, the
author Ikeda Hirochika at one point seems to betray his sense of editorial
transparency by arbitrarily writing a woman into the text. JOkichi begins to describe
dreams of two priest-like figures (not "women") that repeatedly board the distressed
Tokuj6 maru. Their presence on the ship is described mysteriously, and as they
claim to have brought a boat to rescue the castaway crew, JOkichi is no longer able
to distinguish between dream and reality (~~ t!fl. ~ t :b l-pT). As we have already
seen, this literary trope of confusing dream and waking states was not unique to this
34 NSSSS5, 503-550.
178
castaway narrative?5 However, unlike other literary forms that adopt this trope
(such as waka poetry), in this case the dreaminess and doubt in the narrator's voice
threatens to disrupt the veracity of JUkichi' s story, forcing our translator/scribe
(Ikeda) to intervene with the hope of recouping some semblance of believability.
Ikeda's intervention and digression from JUkichi's story appears clearly marked off
with "two spaced" indentations or niji sage.36 Suddenly taking an even more
fantastic turn, Ikeda delves into a fairly long metaphysical exegesis on the spirit of
Japanese ships (~a.:.E)?7 He then suggests that the apparitions that JOkichi sees are
perhaps the ship's spirit leaving the ship. As proof, he cites the interesting (yet,
completely unrelated) case of an earlier distressed ship-the Jizai maru tsukichi sen
of Owari .38 Ikeda's editorial commentary continues:
35 We might note that this poetic allusion as it originally appears in the Ise monogatari is a highly
sexualized exchange between lovers who meet only once. See, Nihon koten bungaku zenshu:
Taketori monogatari. Ise monogatari, Yamato monogatari. Heichu monogatari (Katagiri Y6ichi, et
aI., eds.) (Tokyo: Sh6gakkan, 1972), 192.
36 While Funaosa nikki was first produced in hand-written or shahon form, this practice of
indentation remains remarkably consistent in the various manuscripts I have seen. The illustration
used here is from a manuscript housed in the Meiji University library in Tokyo, Japan. I refer to this
as the "Motoori Ohira Text," since he has included at the beginning, his personal impressions after
reading it. The Hashigaki (Preface) is written by Ikeda Hirochika and is dated the 11 th month of
Bunsei 5 (~1822). Yoshida Nakayama Biseki has written the Batsu (Afterward) and dated it the 17th
day of the 4th month, Bunsei 6. The editors of the katsuji version of this text in Nihon shomin seikatsu
shiryo shusei includes Motoori's comments at the end of the text (after the Batsu) which suggests the
editors may have been working with a slightly later copy of this text. Nonetheless, considering the
dates of the Preface by Hirochika (identical to the Motoori Text), either an Edo period scribe or the
editors of the katsuji version must have mistakenly read the date on the Batsu to be 17th day of the 4th
month, Bunka 6 (1809!). This is four years before Jukichi's departure. See NSSSS5, 548.
37 Also written trci'jJfl.,junadama are considered the spirit of the ship. For a detailed description see,
Sud6 Toshiichi, ed., Fune (Tokyo: H6sei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 1975),317-347.
38 I have not yet found any documents other than Funaosa nikki that relate the events that took place
on this 'haunted' ship. My point here though has nothing to do with the accuracy of Ikeda's story,
but more his rationalization as editor and scribe of Funaosa nikki.
179
On its way back from Toba, having gone fairly far out to sea from
the harbor, a woman appeared from below deck. She was one of
those prostitutes (.Y) known as a hashirigane who must have come
aboard when the ship was in Toba, and having fallen asleep was apt
to forget about the departure time. To continue on like this would
have become an unusual problem (;1t{al±l~JLTQ*bj;n~:::1J:1PJtJGIi').
The whole crew appeared to have acted appropriately (ft-L L't V) (:::)
and thought it was suspicious that not one among them had seen her
[beforehand]. They decided that this woman should be properly
returned to Toba, and as they were setting their course they were
approached by a single fishing boat. Requesting that fisherman's
assistance, they lowered the woman into the boat and immediately
this fishing boat disappeared. While thinking that this situation was
becoming more and more strange they continued to sail on and after
making some progress, a breeze suddenly picked up. Turning into a
dangerous gale, the ship was in the end destroyed. This story too, is
certainly a case in which the ship's spirit transformed itself into a
woman and escaped. Considering this case, Jfikichi's dream can be
though to be [a manifestation] of the ship's spirit.39
Ikeda's comment, "to continue on like this," that is, with a hashirigane on
board, "would have become an unusual problem," reveals the unusual nature of
women aboard ships. Furthermore, because none of the crewmembers are
responsible for her appearance and their actions are said to have otherwise been
"appropriate," we might also assume the ethical ramifications for bringing
prostitutes on board. Represented as both a manifestation of theftma dama
embodied in rituals of ship construction,40 as well as simply a local prostitute, the
39 NSSSS5. 516.
40 Rituals of ship construction are never completely standardized or codified throughout the
archipelago during the Edo period, however according to Sakurada Katsutoku; they serve as a
ritualized sacrifice to the sea in exchange for safe and profitable travels. Frequently they involve the
placement of sacred gendered objects (including a lock of female hair and female dolls) in a small
compartment at the base of the mast. These are meant to embody the ship's spirit ([una dama). See
Fune, 330- 347. In a similar vein we see in Jir6kichi hy6ryujin monogatari, another reference to a
shrine virgin or miko san that comes aboard the ChOja maru in 1839. See, "Hy6ryujin Jir6kichi
180
female body here takes on a doubled (and contradictory) role as both object of
sexual desire to be controlled and as a divine body whose absence leads to the
destruction of the ship.
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IIIustration3.5. Page from the manuscript copy of Funaosa nikki detailing the nature of ship spirits
(junadama). Notice the use of "two-spaced" indentation (niji sage) to mark off the commentary of
the writer Ikeda Hirochika from the ostensible testimony of the castaway Jiikichi. I am grateful to
Mrs. Kobayashi of the Meiji Central Library, Tokyo for letting me examine and reproduce this text.
monogatari," in Takase Shigeo, Kitamae bune ChOja maru no hyoryCt (Tokyo: Seisui Shoin, 1974),
218. In this text too, the female body is explicitly described in terms of both their potent spiritual
power, and their more earthly libidinal powers.
181
In another case that took place nearly a half a century later, we again see the
mention of a prostitute, but this time it is no mere ghost story and the encounter
takes place on land. Having arrived in the busy waters just off Shanghai aboard the
Ogi maru, the castaway Mameda Sambei awoke one day in a particularly
adventurous mood. In his personal travel account titled Shanghai koki J:Jiltifr1i:1-ic
(1869), we read of how he spent the sunny morning discussing among his fellow
samurai the best way to spend the day of Choyo (]:JJJJi) in the first year of Meiji
(1868).41
Today being a holiday, I prepared to go ashore in the company of
three Karatsu men (Amemori, Yamaguchi, and Furukawa). We
walked around enjoying this and that and, if only for having a tale to
tell upon our return to Japan, we went to a brothel [giro, p}(J~l to get
a look. Unlike the brothels of our country, there are ten people per
house. It is said that in fact there are more than 10,000 prostitutes
[gijo, Pj(:tz:"] in Shanghai, with the more expensive ones costing
seventy dollars [V/v] and the cheaper ones costing two dollars.42
As with K6dayu's description of the St. Petersburg brothel, Sambei's
narrative also brings us into one of these houses. He provides a brief description of
how to select a woman, before leading us into one of the smaller rooms used for sex.
Shifting to more personal details concerning his choice for the day-a sixteen-year
41 ChOy6 falls on the 9th day of the 9th month and is one of the five sekku holidays in the Chinese and
old Japanese lunar calendars.
42 My reading and translations of Shanghai k6ki are based on the text as it appears in Kinsei hy6ryuki
shU, (Arakawa Hidetoshi, ed.) (Tokyo: Hosei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 1969),437-468. The entry for
9/9 begins on page 451. For references to the history of prostitution in Shanghai see, Christian
Henriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History, 1849-1949 (Noel Castelino, trans.)
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
182
old beauty by the name of Ashun-we sense the seductive nature of Sambei's prose
intensify as this young woman teasingly laughs at the vitality of our aged narrator.
His sexual conquest finally concludes with a moment of post-coital gloating among
his castaway friends, before a more literary, if not homo-social, climax is attained
through the exchange of humorous poetry riddled with wordplay and sexual
innuendo.
When departing, most Chinese people say "chin chin" and this is
fairly standard. When leaving that brothel of the Eastern Clouds, they
all accompanied us to the gated exit and I found the perfect words for
the moment:
Beyond sixty and still bedding the women in China,
At my morning departure, we say "chin chin."
(h+fEl--C/iJ'G 1~R c!:: /Q~UI Tnl'i/!j!)j0);b7J'n1~/T/T / c!:: i3 '))
Since the Karatsu samurai were an interesting bunch, upon hearing
this they replied,
These women working a high class joint-
Whether they turn it on or not in the evening,
It must be painful for this old man's lantern.
(1:00 O)/Rt~ <15dj:/ c!:: lJ:'~ Ib-t/ c!:: t T t ~ G~ /~O) i:J J: ') i:J Jv)
This caused great laughter (;.l~U~ --C:* ~ (~%tHT i:J~n --C), and we
returned to the ship together as a group.43
The remarkably vulgar content of these poems aside,44 they stand as brilliant
examples of otherwise good poetic form, structure, and metaphoric imagery. The
ease with which he marks his departure with a poem betrays the desperate
43 Kinsei hyoryuki shU, 452.
44 The first poem plays on the homophonic relation between the Chinese expression of farewell (chin
chin) and a fairly vulgar Japanese expression for "penis" (chin chin). Furthermore, the poetics of the
poem is also enhanced through the use of shin shin ("to sleep," or "to bed," but also an onomatopoeic
term to express the act of urination) and chin chin. The second poem suggests a metaphorical
relationship between the paper lanterns or chochin that the women must decide to light or not, and
the old man's scrotal sac.
183
conditions of a castaway and recalls a characteristic pose more familiar to readers of
popular Edo fiction (gesaku). But perhaps even more closely related to the literary
tradition of gesaku is the invocation of "great laughter" incited among Sambei and
his friends, and we might assume, extended to readers of his lascivious text. For
having read the comic poetic exchange in its entirety, are we not also invited to
participate in this "great laughter?" This use of owarai or "great laughter" is in no
way singular. In fact, it echoes throughout not only the pages of this text composed
in 1868, but also numerous other castaway accounts from the late Edo period.45
Returning again to the Hokusa bunryaku, we see even in this earliest account
of a foreign brothel an invocation of laughter throughout. Immediately preceding the
description of the Russian brothel, our castaway-K6dayu- is first asked by a
woman in the service of Catherine the Great whether he had been to a Russian
brothel. Upon replying that he had not, we are told that this attendant then
"whispered something to her husband," (otto ni nan yaran sasayaki)46 before
K6dayu is quickly taken away to a mysterious building. Asking what sort of place
he has been brought to, he receives no clear answer, only laughter (waratte kotaezu).
After musical performances and the pairing of men and women for dancing, he
again asks where he might be, only to again be confronted with laughter before
45 For a reading of late Edo laughter see, HD. Harootunian's "Late Tokugawa Culture and Thought,"
in The Emergence ofMeiji Japan (Marius B. Jansen, ed.) (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1997),60.
46 NSSSS5, 782.
184
confirming that in fact it was a brothe1.47 Here the whispering and laughter work to
construct a sense of mystery for the readers which produces a certain seductive
quality that will be seen in other castaway accounts dealing with the space of the
brothel.
As with the later Shanghai k6ki, these moments of "great laughter" in earlier
hy6ryuki are also frequently contextualized in conjunction with narratives of the
ribald. In Jir6kichi hy6ryujin monogatari written in 1848, we find examples of this
laughter invoked when the castaway Jirokichi describes sneaking into the woman's
steam bath in Kamchatka.48 Or again in Sitka where, introduced to the sport of
snow skiing, Jirokichi comments on the less talented novices saying, "but those who
were bad would run off course and the women would flash us their asses, and even
reveal their privates, which they couldn't cover it up! This was a great laugh," (tx.tt.
However, it is Jirokichi' s detailed description of a visit to a brothel (jor6ya
or mer6ya) in Hawai'i that titillates the reader with exaggerated danger and
suspense, even if the brothel visit itself is too horrific an experience for Jirokichi to
47 Ibid. 782.
48 The passage reads, "We crawled into the woman's bath [where we found] a steam bath six feet by
six feet, inside of which was a lower level and an upper level, then a third level and even a fourth
level, but above this, nothing steamier. The entrance was a double layered door which came together
as tight as an inry6 purse, like a warehouse door. The women on the top level actually beat the
women on the lower level. Putting hot water into something like a two-handled basin, they dipped a
bundle of ten bird feathers in it and while whacking their bodies, they gazed at us and broke out into
great laughter, pointing their fingers C:*:% L -c:}~:a:- ttl L). After having a few words with the women,
there was more great laughter and no letting up with the finger pointing. We also thought it was
hilarious C:*:%V' L -c X {~:}~:a:-ttl L ttl L )." See, Kitamae bune ChOja maru no hy6ryCt, 232.
49 Ibid, 235.
185
enjoy.50 On the trip to this brothel, Jirokichi and his companion Kinzo are first
confronted with a road full of lizards which they are expected to crush with their
feet. There response to this experience is "terror" (f1.#i\f,VS L (: $ {~",,-/,) and it
foreshadows the even more hellish scene that awaits them (and readers) upon the
arrival at their destination.
With their hair let down they covered themselves with their hands.
There were twenty women crawling out of the river naked and
rinsing off with muddy water. 1 asked who these women were and
they told us they were the whores (:f;c&G) [we had come to see.] When
taking a good look, [1 noticed] they were black and they were
missing there bottom two front teeth. Asking about why they don't
have front teeth, we were told that since they steal sugar from the
master's fields to eat, when they are born, the master has their bottom
two teeth removed.51
Like a group of grotesque mermaids, they emerge from the river, their
bodies racially coded and their dental mutilations explained in terms of a system of
colonial control on the plantation.52 Upon entering the "house of pleasure,"
Jirokichi describes a room full of foreign men and native women picking at the
50 Takayama Jun has a chapter on the sexual hospitality (seiteki kantai) of native Hawaiian women in
his book-length study of Japanese castaways who returned from Hawai'i in 1807. While this chapter
does not go into much detail concerning the castaways experiences with prostitutes, it does trace the
sexualization of native Hawaiian women by early Western explorers to the islands. See Takayama
Jun, Edo jidai Hawai hyoryuki: "/ban hyoryu kikoku roku" no kenshO (Tokyo: Sanichi Shobo, 1997),
145-150.
51 See Kitamae bune Ch6ja maru no hyoryu, 227.
52 Citing Edouard A. Stackpole, Katherine Plummer has suggested that the reference to the "black"
women might refer to, "an area of the island that was inhabited exclusively by blacks, called 'New
Guinea.'" However, it should be noted that the use of "black" (kuroi) to refer to skin color does not
necessarily indicate someone of African origins. This term was also frequently used to describe non-
Africans as well. See Katherine Plummer, A Japanese Glimpse at the Outside World J839-J843
(Fairbanks, AL: The Limestone Press, 1991), 141.
186
cooked flesh of beasts that they proceed to consume with their fingers, but which he
cannot bring himself to try.53 Over the course of this passage, we begin to sense
Jirokichi's growing sense of alarm and discomfort. But even as this passage directly
elucidates the asymmetric racial and gender relations within a particularly colonial
space, the story concludes with a return to the playfulness of exaggerated danger
and we again see the emergence of laughter as Jirokichi secretly hatches his plot to
escape:
Looking at the figures of these whores, it was very difficult to sit in
that seat. By pretending to take a piss, I would escape that hell (/Hf
~:::'1tt)H::.L -C~-=-f:::.ntt±l L) only to forget the road home. I ended up
wandering on a mountain road and was just hoping to make it to the
sea. It was very difficult going, when at last I made it to the
Cantonese House. The Cantonese, who are called bake, served me
watermelons with sugar. Heishiro was there and he asked me why I
came back so quickly. I explained to them my travails and even the
Cantonese were laughing (:JJ 2/ H= t~L}$${,*). The next day the
rest of the sailors returned and everyone was asking how I managed
to escape. We all celebrated our safe return with drinking.54
The reference from Funaosa nikki to the hashirigane remains an
example of a specific and quite localized type of prostitution (limited to the port of
Toba) and the citation from Hokusa bunryaku describes prostitution as it takes place
in St. Petersburg, far away from any Pacific port. On the other hand, Manjiro's
53 The description of this brothel in Jirokichi hyoryCijin monogatari is significantly from the
description we read in Bandan and Tokei monogatari. See, Nihon shomin seikatsu shiryo shCisei, dai
gokan, (Tanigawa Kenichi, et.a!., eds.) (Tokyo: Sanichi Shobo, 1985).
54 See Kitamae bune ChOja maru no hyoryCi, 228. As for the term musan (1!\Ji-=:), I take it to be a
reference to the Buddhist concept of 1!\Ji -=: ~~jjjiJl. In short, this is the first of the 48 promises of
Amidha boddhisatva to sentient beings. The promise states that in the Pure Land one will not find the
three bad levels of existence; hell, hungry ghosts, and beasts. I have found that this term, translated
here as "hell," appears in other comical texts for certain ironic or exaggerated effect. For example,
187
Hy6ryaki, Shanghai k6ki, and Jir6kichi hy6ry~jin monogatari provide concise
descriptions of prostitution as it was taking place within the colonized space of ports
that catered to the sexual desire of globe-trotting merchants. As such, they reflect
the more abstract relations of gender, race, and national identity that circulated
throughout the nineteenth century Pacific. It is important to note that while these
overtly sexualized spaces may have revealed significant differences to more
localized practice within Japan, the language and the form used to describe them is
remarkably familiar, insofar that it borrows directly from a more domesticated
literary tradition of brothel travel within Japan. The formalized use of laughter and
narrative suspense, particularly in conjunction with descriptions of sexual
encounters at the brothel, is the very foundation of more familiar gesaku and even
the earliest ch6nin (urban) literature such as Ikku Jippensha's T6kai d6cha
hizakurige *~J!! ep ~**:=§ (begun in 1802)55 or Ihara Saikaku's K6shoku ichidai
otoko Hf3-{i;~ (first published in 1682).56 The laughter that reverberates
see episode 32 in "Kinofu ha kefu no monogatari," in Nihon koten bungaku taikei 100: Edo
waraibanashi shU (Odaka Toshio, ed.) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1970),60-61.
55 These are just two of the more obvious examples of vulgar and libidinous fiction popular in the
Edo period. The similarity to the castaway accounts might be best demonstrated with a reminder of
one of Kitahachi's many "sexploits." In the second part of the fourth book of Hizakurige, one of the
heroes, under the pretense of going to urinate, manages to find a young woman more than willing to
provide him with a sexual escape. Upon being discovered in the middle of things by an even younger
neighbor boy, he realizes that this woman is completely crazy. Like our castaway Jirokichi, he
attempts to escape, only to be discovered by this woman's father. It is not until Kita's traveling
partner and comic sidekick, Yajirobei, intervenes to save him. Of course, this example too, ends with
"great laughter." See Hizakurige or Shanks' Mare (Thomas Satchell, trans.) (Rutland, Vermont:
Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1963), 151-153. Also see, Nihon meicho zenshU 22 kan-Hizakurige sonota,jo
(Tokyo: Nihon Meicho Zenshu Kankokai, 1927),188-189.
56 Nihon koten bungaku taikei, 47: Saikaku shU,jo (Tsutsumi Seiji, et aI., eds.) (Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1970),37-215.
188
throughout these texts may be considered part of what H.D. Harootunian has
referred to as the "culture of play" in late Edo literary and graphic culture.s7 Citing
Amino Yoshihiko, he claims that the importance of play or asobi in late Edo culture,
was nothing less than an expression of freedom from the more rigid social systems
that kept people in their place. Referring specifically to "excursion narratives and
tales of travel," Harootunian also suggests a more figurative reading when he writes,
"Yet the reference to movement evinced still another meaning associated with asobi,
which was to authorize crossing established geographical and social boundaries."s8
In this light, he reads the laughter in both Jippensha and Shikitei Samba as the,
"recognition of the familiar made to appear strange and even alien.',s9 In the case of
late Edo hy6ryuki we might conclude that it is just the opposite, that is, laughter in
these texts seems to mark the recognition of the strange and alien made to appear
familiar.
57 Harootunian, challenging the common assumption that culture simply reflects the political, social,
and material realities, instead suggests that gesaku fiction was able to project a particular form that
existed on the horizon of thought and which preceded the full integration of consumer and
commodification. For example he writes, "Urban expansion and cultural participation required new
definitions. New forms of cultural production accompanying the expansion of cities collectively
signified what we may call, from playful literature (gesaku), the 'culture of play.' By the end of the
eighteenth century this had exceeded the limits of its own formal constraints to reveal in vague
outline the possibility of constructing a social imagination vastly different from the one authorized by
the Tokugawa ...The social identity of the ruled was fixed in a closed, hierarchic chain, resembling
elements in a stable structure that reflected the order found in nature. Yet the material expansion of
Edo as the hub of a world not yet imagined made it possible to challenge these fixed identities
through the proliferation of different subject positions." See, "Late Tokugawa Culture and Thought,"
in The Emergence ofMeiji Japan (Marius Jansen, ed.) (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1997),56-57.
58 Harootunian, 58.
59 Ibid. 60.
189
Scholars of prostitution in Japan frequently point towards the transition from
the medieval (chusei) to early modern (kinsei) periods in the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries, as a move characterized by a system of greater control and
regulation (shush6 seido, :*P§lilJ1jit) over brothels.60 Most scholars of gender history
seem to consider this transition strictly within the context of a hermetically sealed
country defined by feudal practice and insulated by sakoku ("closed country")
policy.61 On the other hand, Watanabe Kenji has framed the development of
Japanese seaport brothels in terms of an economic development theory much more
in line with the early stages of capitalism and the modern world system.62 For at
least one Edo period writer these ostensibly irreconcilable positions were of little
concern. Writing in his Keizai y6roku *.It~~~,63 we find the early nationalist
thinker and Dutch Learning scholar, Sato Nobuhiro, proposing a unique solution to
the countries domestic market woes:
If there is shoreline in the vicinity of one's domain, the land should
be well surveyed and a port should be opened. If in fact, there is
already an older port that exists, it should be improved so as to make
it convenient for large ships to enter and leave. Those houses of
pleasure C.EJ.J,t;:¥RfF) should be made ostentatious and the number of
60 See Watanabe Kenji, Edo yuri j6suiki (Tokyo: K6dansha, 1994), 15.
61 Nihon josei shi. (Wakita Haruko, Hayashi Reiko, Nagahara Kazuko, eds.) (Tokyo: Yoshikawa
K6bunkan, 1987), 128-135.
62 Watanabe, 19-23.
63 According to the Kokusho s6mokuroku, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1965), 17, the Keizai
y6roku was first produced in manuscript form (shahon) in 1827, and still today there are several
handwritten copies from the Edo period stored in various libraries throughout Japan. This would
indicate that it was circulated, copied, and read for over thirty years before being mass-produced in
woodblock print form in 1859. See also, Nihon shis6 taikei (vol. 45) And6 ShOeki Sat6 Nobuhiro hen
(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1977),359-570.
190
prostitutes (fr~:;dl'Hzm) should certainly not be restricted, so as to
encourage commerce among sea-bound ships from countries far and
wide. (JZ.< ~OO/yiij:!tl-'dG:-y*:&itlAyA: L) However when the brothels
are rundown and there are no prostitutes, that port will naturally fail
to prosper. When the port is no longer a booming market, (!JWJ~Ui~it
2;' Q ~ ~ Ii) there is no reason why it might serve the national
interests (OO~).64
While the development of regulated, licensed, and taxed brothels in Japanese
port towns does seem to reflect a more common trend over the Edo period, Sate did
not live long enough to see his suggestion implemented and foreign clientele
overrunning his native brothels,65 Like Manjire's description of a Hawaiian port,
this statement by Sate also recognizes the nature of more international, if not
outright colonial-controlled space abroad,66 However, a connection between
domestic prostitution and the rapidly transforming ports throughout the Pacific does
not only exist in the mind of this slightly eccentric economist. Early Meiji
intellectual elites such as Fukuzawa Yukichi and Futabatei Shimei also argued for
the development of international prostitution in the name of national prosperity.67
64 SaW Nobuhiro's use of the word koku/kuni here refers to "country," and not "domain" or
"province" as it can sometimes be translated. This translation is based on Watanabe Kenji's citation
of the text in Edo yarijasuiki (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1994),44. See also, Sata Nobuhiro shU of Kinsei
shakai keizai gakusetsu taikei (Ogawa Shumei, ed.) (Tokyo: Seibundo Shinkosha, 1935),21-60.
65 While being exiled from Edo between 1832 and 1843, Sato appears to have regained his credibility
later in life as one of the most important (and favored) consultants to Raja Mizuno Tadakuni. See,
Harold Blitho, "The Tempo Crisis," in The Emergence ofMeiji Japan (Marius Jansen, ed.) (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1997),40-43.
66 This is not surprising, considering his remarkable understanding of Russian and English expansion
through global trade. See his, "Keizai yoryaku" in Nihon shisa taikei (vol. 45) Anda ShOeki Sata
Nobuhiro hen (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1977),522-570.
67 According to Yoshiyuki Nakai, Futabatei "argued that if Japan sent prostitutes to Siberia, their
ensuing friendship with the Russians would cause the Russians to become friendlier toward Japan
and to know more about the Japanese people, thus helping to avert the prospect of war between the
191
But returning to the late Edo period and the work of Watanabe Kenji we see that,
along with the tightening of control over prostitution, there was also the
establishment of a literary tradition of male domestic travel narratives represented
by texts such as Shokud6 Okagami -§'J!l::k~, Nihon yukaku s6moku S ;;fs.:iQfm*l!t §I ,
and Shokoku irozato annai U'foo-§.m~F1. 68
A strong connection between this tradition of domestic brothel writing and
the references to colonial brothels in castaway accounts is best demonstrated by the
Shanghai k6ki cited earlier. A considerable portion of the text focuses not only on
Sambei's sexual escapades abroad, but also his conquests at home. The fact that his
account includes encounters with prostitutes both at home and abroad produces a
sense of consistency in the male gaze, whether the object of desire is the foreign or
Japanese female body. Before his departure for China, Sambei begins his account
with detailed descriptions of several trips to a teahouse in the "Pine Fields of the
Rainbow" (niji no matsubara) in the Japanese port town of Karatsu.
I also heard that there happened to be a princess of sorts. An
appropriate comical verse,
Five ry6 fare to enjoy the sites ofTsushima.
Two for the rainbow ofMatsubara.
(li If) J: b J:: Ij:/7)'7.)' G --C:P: L /x-tNI J:: / m~ --c:§I;: If) J:b/ I~ t: 0)1~
m)
Taking our time, we followed the road to a "tea house" called Nigen
jaya in the middle of the pine grove. We took our rest with a young
woman of 16 years. Seeing her bring out the tea, we were surprised
to find such a rare beauty in the countryside. With her sash of
two peoples." See Yoshiyuki Nakai, "Futabatei Shimei (1864-1909)," in Papers on Japan (Vol.4)
(Cambridge: East Asian Research Center Harvard University, 1967),32.
68 Watanabe, 26-33.
192
pleasing purple chijimen, tucked into her obi, there were no words to
describe her exquisite white face and the attractive way she held back
her overflowing locks with one hand. For a moment speechless and
gazing, J reventually] asked,
Could this be the Virgin ofAmatsu,
So far away from her home ofMiho?
(7(~Gfr;6'-=-{;IVt GIiQ c' b)
In time, she gestured to speak and with a slightly blushing face she
recited,
I am a child ofa fisherwoman
Who lives in the rainbow ofthe pine grove.
(iJ!IO)t~)]U~11:1iQ Q ~O)-T:a:)
She said this as she came running to serve US.69
The "fare" mentioned in Sambei's first poem can also be read as a direct
reference to the price of a woman (not included in the translation above), and may
recall the vulgarity with which our castaway describes the women in China.
Furthermore, the verbal interaction between our aged Casanova and his "Princess"
(1fE1J~) take on a seductive quality that is perhaps not as evident when Sambei is
limited to rudimentary "brush talk" and more physical commingling. Certainly, the
"black" prostitutes that Jir6kichi describes contrast strongly with the much more
inviting figure of this "white" faced beauty, and perhaps "unlike Japan," there are
ten women to a room. But for all these differences, it is the remarkable similarity of
Sambei's two descriptions, both at home and in Shanghai, that suggest the
adaptation of a masculine discourse of leisure to a new sphere of gendered relations
within a trans-Pacific space. This is not only accomplished through the
transposition of terms such as gijo, giro, mero, andjoroya (common domestic terms
69 Kinsei hyoryllki shU, 440-441.
193
for "prostitute" and "brothel"), but also by successfully employing the narrative
strategies of seduction commonly found in popular fiction.
Returning to Funaosa nikki, we find yet another example of how the rare
appearance of a woman again comes to be transformed into a sexualized and
vaguely threatening encounter that demonstrates both the inversion of desire and the
triangulated relationship between two men and women.70 This time the encounter
between castaway (Jfikichi) and prostitute is arranged by Alexander Baranov, the
governor and Russia-America Fur Company official.
Baranov seated Jfikichi at a table. Facing him were six incredibly
attractive women (jujin). Baranov, having said something, caused
one of these women to at last come and stand before Jfikichi. After
touching her forehead, both shoulders, and chest with her hand as a
form of veneration, She took Jfikichi' s cheeks in both hands and
proceeded to lick his mouth (kuchi wo namete yukitari). Then the
next woman came and did the same thing until all six had done it and
returned to their original seats at the table. When this was finished,
Baranov went into the inner room and in his wake, left Jfikichi alone
facing these six women. Sweetened ice tea and other things were
served while the women looked at Jfikichi and laughed. Jfikichi had
no idea what was happening (:m51j:\t\iJ'ftQ~~iJ'J!r~:BEJT).The sky
turned a threatening blue... as night fell, everyone returned to the
ships beginning with Captain Pigot,71
Marked by ominous references to threatening weather, while also presenting
the opportunity for sexual encounter, the story continues with Baranov explaining to
Jfikichi that the captain has no intention of actually returning him to Japan. Baranov
then suggests that, if Jfikichi truly wishes to return home someday, he should instead
70 The work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in her, Between Men: English Literature and Male
Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985) has been helpful in negotiating
the formulation of homosocial relations in these castaway accounts.
194
choose to remain in Sitka in the service of Baranov.72 At this point, a clearly
troubled JUkichi is torn. Weighing the benefits and problems of Baranov's offer
"nervously in his head" (kokoro mota naku omofu naraha) , the narrative draws itself
out in indecision.73 He goes back and forth on whether to sleep with the women,
prays reverently to the god Kompira to protect him, before again contemplating his
preferences for both the second and third women. Realizing the late hour, he
resigns himself to having to be with these women throughout the night, only to
remind himself that "making excuses usually leads to trouble" (iiwake wo suru ni
hotonto komaritari)?4 Even after escaping to Captain Pigol's ship, he again recalls
that third woman who offered herself to him as a far safer choice than his other
option of once again crossing the seas that killed his crewmates.
In many ways similar to K6dayu's, Jir6kichi 's and even Sambei's accounts,
this moment is also interesting in that it reveals the many levels on which seduction
works within the narrative. For one, Baranov offers the women as a temptation to
lure the Japanese sailor away from his rescuer (Captain Pigot) and thus keep him in
Sitka for his own purposes. Associating JUkichi' s ultimate decision to either stay in
or leave Sitka with his decision to sleep with one of the women that night, we as
71 See NSSSS5, 525.
72 Baranov leaves Jfikichi with the women, and suddenly everyone else has returned to the ships. In
conversations with Professor Stephen Kohl, who has worked on translating this account for many
years, he has pointed out that the author, Ikeda Hirochika, leaves this space of time unaccounted for,
thus inviting the reader to imagine what happened between Jfikichi and the women.
73 Ibid. 526
74 Ibid. 526
195
readers are momentarily also lulled into wondering if Jilkichi will ever return home.
This readerly seduction, like the "great laughter" we have already addressed,
suggests that the very manner in which the story is told, with all its stops and
starts-its suspense-is yet another literary technique of drawing the reader into the
narrative.
It is important to mention that we have looked at only a handful of
references to women in castaway accounts. For the purposes of demonstrating a
strong connection between these texts and the diction and form of more domestic
literary traditions, we focused here on admittedly more fanciful, if not vulgar
passages. There is one other account that, while equally fanciful, appears to be
exceptional in its overtly moral take on prostitution abroad. Providing us with a
distinctly different portrait of prostitution in the mid-nineteenth century United
States, Hikozo (also known by his adopted name of Joseph Heco) writes on the
subject at various points in his Hyoryuki of 1863:
When adultery is discovered [in America], the entire fortune of the
paramour is confiscated and is given to the lawful husband; the
paramour is evicted from the residence, the woman severs her ties
with the relatives and leaves home; she is thus forbidden to marry
again; she makes her living for the rest of her life by selling her
charms. The prostitutes of the west are all made up of groups of
women who have had illicit sexual intercourse, and who themselves
sell their charms. I have not heard of a case where parents have sold
their children?5
75 This passage can be found in Honkoku HybryCtki (reprint of Bunmei genryu sosho daisankan 151-
179) (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankokai, 1915), 174. The translation here is Tosh Motofuji's found in,
Floating on the Pacific Ocean (Los Angeles: Glen Dawson, 1955),72.
196
Or again later, we read in Heco's account,
In America the custom is one man to one woman, and when a man
takes a wife, he is prohibited from either buying a prostitute or, it
goes without saying, from keeping a mistress. If he transgresses, he
is put in prison and undergoes punishment. Moreover, though men
of means go into liquor establishments and make merry, there is no
such thing as shaku-tori or geisha.76
This somewhat exceptional account aside, we see that the ways of writing
about women were not simply the result of an over-determined movement toward a
singular and globalized masculinization of the sea-space. Instead we can begin to
see how abstract notions of race and gender, methodologies of science and global
trade, came to be translated into a hybrid language, that is never simply the
castaway's alone. Despite the claim of our transparent scribe (Ikeda Hirochika) or
the hollow excuse of our "Dull Translator" (Don Tsilshi), the voices that emerge
from these texts reflect the appropriation of a localized gesaku literary culture, as
much as they reflect the influence of a more formal textual category of hyoryuki as
scholarly or investigative practice. Locating these many scenes of seduction into a
larger space of emerging colonial conditions made possible by exploration, trans-
oceanic trade, and whaling in the Pacific, it is tempting to fall back on the
expediency of a term such as "modernity." However, if we are to invoke the term
modernity to describe Wallerstein's "world system," we cannot simply see it as a
model imposed from the outside, but instead as an emergent series of translations,
"built on imperfect equivalencies." In the case of gender, we may in fact be dealing
76 Ibid. 176. Translation is Tosh Motofuji's, ibid. 77-78.
197
with several modernities simultaneously. In the case of domestic prostitution, there
is a historical movement toward tighter control and centralized rule under
Tokugawa hegemony and the formation of urban society (Wakita, Watanabe). At
the same time, a significant setting for late-Edo castaway narratives, the Pacific,
becomes the site for a different form of prostitution informed by notions of empire
and colony, race and class, and other terms (Wallerstein, Green) that require
translation and a hybridization of language. When these two worlds come into
contact in the castaway narrative, we begin to see the interrelations among the local,
national, and global emerge. Perhaps a critical sensitivity to a plurality of
modernities in circulation during the Edo or kinsei ("early modern") period is what
is called for, as we begin to unravel the translation and adaptation of concepts such
as race, ethnicity, and nationality.
Illustration 3.6. Frontispiece to Seiy6 jij6
198
An observant reader opening the cover of Fukuzawa Yukichi's
phenomenally popular handbook of Western culture and thinking-Seiy6J?j6 (W1$
:~Hw, Conditions in the West)-might take pause in examining the frontispiece.77
With a caption reading, "The four oceans, one family. The five races, brothers;" ([J]
ffl-~]i;lffi;:5Lffi)78 we might even wonder whether the text's subject is the conditions
of the West as the title purports, or if it is perhaps not more global in its scope. The
author's own comment on the image is as follows: "George Washington, already a
well-known figure in Japan, represents the white race, and the other four figures,
dressed in 'native' costume, represent the red, yellow, brown, and black races.,,79
As the document above suggests, by 1867 the discourse of racial difference-
particularly one that divided the world into five races-had taken root not only
among mid nineteenth century Japanese elites, but also some of the 150,000 readers
of the text's first edition. As a consummate translator of western concepts,
Fukuzawa is often credited with being one of the first to introduce a particular
western scientific discourse of race to Japan, as ifhis ideas were radically new to his
77 Originally published in woodblock, this image is reproduced from Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshCt, vol. 1
(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1958),278.
78 This is related to a quote from Confucius. "The gentleman is reverent and does nothing amiss, is
respectful toward others and observant of the rites, and all within the Four Seas are his brothers." See,
The Analects (D.C. Lau, trans.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), 113.
79 Translation of author's comments on this image is taken from, Peter Duus, The Japanese
Discovery ofAmerica: A BriefHistory with Documents (Boston: Bedford Books, 1997), 185.
199
era. 80 However, both his ideas and iconography relating this notion of race can be
seen in terms of an earlier tradition of late Edo hy6ryuki. For seventy-five years
preceding the release of Fukuzawa's text of 1867, Japanese sailors and fishermen
had been returning from encounters abroad with westerners, bringing back with
them remarkable reports of a world shaded in flesh-tone hues and governed by a
fixed hierarchy of peoples.
These accounts add up not so much to a concise or consistent way of
understanding Self and Other but instead, a confused and often conflicting story of
people and nations. Bearing witness to the concrete conditions of a colonized
Pacific, the question posed but rarely answered by these distressed sailors and
fishermen concerned just how they might fit into a scientific conception of the
world grounded in an emergent racial discourse. Paying particular attention to
castaway accounts as source material, we may trace a genealogy of race and
ethnicity in Japan. It is not my intention to present a clear-cut explication of how
western scientific knowledge was passively received in Japan, but instead to tease
out the moments of conflict between new understandings of race that circulated
globally and older indigenous "iconographies of difference.,,sl In doing so,
80 Aside from Peter Duus (ibid), Tessa Morris-Suzuki also emphasizes Fukuzawa's importance as
"the chief popularizer" of racial discourse in Japan. Referring to hisl869 text Sekai kunizukushi
(Account of the Countries ofthe World) as, "the first truly influential representation of the notion of
race," she continues, "This short and richly illustrated work introduces the reader to a neatly color-
coded vision of humanity: Europeans are white. Asians 'slightly yellow,' Africans black, the people
of the Pacific Islands brown, and the inhabitants of 'the mountains of America' red." See Tessa
Morris-Suzuki, Re-inventing Japan: Time, Space. Nation (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998),85.
81 See Ronald Toby; "The 'Indianness' ofIberia and Changing Japanese Iconographies of Other," in
Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between
200
categories such as race and ethnicity will appear as historically contested formations
in the Pacific, and not as enlightened truths emanating from the West and simply
imposed upon the rest of the world.
Like Fukuzawa Yukichi, castaways and the authors of their accounts served
as tentative interlocutors between worlds, in effect translators of ideas and language.
Concerned with the function of travel and translation, James Clifford highlights the
role played by these people between worlds, writing, "workers, pilgrims, explorers,
religious converts, or other traditional 'long-distance specialists' ... first appear as
natives; they emerge as travelers. In fact, as I will suggest, they are specific
mixtures of the twO.',g2 My own inclination is to view late Edo castaways as both
traveler and native. When immersed in the trans-national space of the nineteenth
century Pacific, they are quite consciously objects of the western gaze and at times
experience that objectification quite viscerally. For example, when they are asked
by curious westerners to perform their "Japaneseness" in the form of song and
dance, or when it is determined whether they will be share quarters with the captain
at the back of the ship or the bunks of black sailors at the front. On the other hand,
in writing about these moments in which abstract and hitherto inconceivable modes
of national and racial identity are thrust upon the castaway, their texts also serve as
Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1994), "Imagining and Imaging Anthropos in Early-modern Japan," in Visual Anthropology Review:
Journal ofthe Society for Visual Anthropology, 14:1 (1998), and "Carnival of the Aliens: Korean
Embassies in Edo-Period Art and Popular Culture," Monumenta Nipponica, 41: 4. (Winter, 1986).
82 James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 19.
201
harbingers of world historical colonial conditions outside of Japan. Their texts
written upon repatriation sometimes represent awkwardly, at other times creatively,
some of the earliest attempts to conceive of Japanese national, racial, and ethnic
discourse. In this sense, we might reverse the relations between traveler and native
that Clifford argues for, instead realizing that they first appear as travelers and only
later to emerge as "natives." The "native" in this sense is doubled: being both
exoticized Other for the westerner, but also the representative and fellow Japanese
subject for Japanese readers. Before considering just how these acts of translation
take place in early nineteenth century castaway narratives, it is important to first
summarize a longer history of alterity in the archipelago.
Certainly Indians, Chinese, Koreans, and other Others from within East
Asian sphere of influence had been arriving in the archipelago since pre-historical
times, and identities rendered vis-a-vis foreigners emerged out of a mutually shared
context of Buddhism, Chinese writing, and other continental technologies such as
medicine and weaponry.83 With the arrival of the first Iberian merchants and
missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century, proto-racial discourse first began to
83 Some of the most interesting research concerned with medieval representations of the Other has
been done by East Asian historians (Tbyb shi), and not national historians (koku shi). In particular,
Murai Shosuke, has argued for a theoretical model of territorial space that takes into account the
conception of the archipelago as a particular center (reub naigai no chiiki kiikan no moderu) within a
larger diplomatic and cultural space. In doing so, he states that traditionally understanding of trade
and national relations was based on lines or boundaries between political bodies, and calls for a new
approach that conceives of (primarily maritime) spaces between these bodies as zones. See "KoshO
(sen) kara koryu (men) he," in Murai ShOsuke, Ajia no naka no chUsei Nihon (Tokyo: Azekura
Shobo, 1988),20.
202
proliferate.84 Ronald Toby has argued that Japanese representations of these early
non-western Others most frequently placed them in an idealized foreign landscape
and not within a more familiar native topography.85 Furthermore, he demonstrates
that this "Iberian irruption" from the mid-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries
spawned a new genre of painting, which brought the nanbanjin into the "Japanese
cityscape" and geographic imagination.86 The term nanbanjin (literally' Southern
Savage" or "Southern Barbarian") was the preferred nomenclature utilized in
describing these sixteenth and early seventeenth century encounters with Europeans.
However a second term- kuronb6- was also appropriated to signify the newly
arrived "black bodies" that accompanied Europeans aboard their galleons.
Ono Takeo, while pointing out much earlier uses of the term koronb6,
suggests that the word gained new currency once Indians and Africans began to
appear on western ships.87 Toby convincingly argues that with the expulsion of
84 The term "proto-racial discourse" is used here to distinguish it from a later understanding of race
grounded in scientific, biological, and ethnographic methodologies. Tessa Morris-Suzuki I think
rightfully argues that, "[i]t is difficult, in fact, to find anything in seventeenth- or eighteenth-century
Japan which resembles a coherent ideology of race. People might be excluded from or included in
the social order, but the grounds for exclusion or inclusion tended to be explained primarily in terms
of submission to the power of the stilte." Re-inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation (New York: M.E.
Sharpe, 1998),87. For a study of sixteenth and seventeenth century interaction between Japan and
Europeans see, Matsuda Kiichi, Toyotomi Hideyoshi to Nanbanjin, (Tokyo: Chobunsha, 1992) and
George Ellison, Deus Destroyed: The Image o/Christianity in Early Japan (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1973).
85 See Ronald Toby, "The' Indianness' of Iberia and Changing Japanese Iconographies of Other ," in
Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between
Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1994),324.
86 Ibid.
87 Ono Takeo, Edo no hakuraifuzoku shi (Tokyo: Tenbosha, 1975),88-89. In tracing the origins of
this term, Ono cites the Wamyoruijusho written in the 930s, "the characters F.f~ are read kuro and
203
Iberians and English from Japan in the early seventeenth century, the iconography
of nanbanjin and kuronb6 virtually disappears and is replaced by images of t6jin
(literally, "China man," but used as a comprehensive term for "foreigner").
However, we shall see in the following passage from the Saikai zokudan ~~Jt1~~~
written over a century after the ostensible erasure of the explicitly marked nanbanjin
that the figure of the kuronb6 still lingered in the imagination of at least one author.
In this popular miscellany first printed in 1758, Oide Taka also associates
knowledge of black bodies with westerners. Under his entry for kuronb6 we read:
Kuronb6: People who come via Dutch ships. They are pure black
and extremely agile, running around atop the masts with great skill.
Commonly, they are also referred to as kurob6. 'Kuron' is the
Chinese reading for 'komon' (.~~). The 'ba' is a common suffix for
someone without hair. Furthermore, it is said that in the mountains
of Hida and Mino domains there is something called a kuronb6 that
is just like a monkey, but bigger. It is black with long hair and walks
well standing up. They can mimic the words of humans quite well
and can understand human intentions, although they are harmless.
The mountain people call them kurob6 and they are not afraid of
each other. However, if a human comes along and tries to kill one,
the kuronb6 instantly knows and will quickly escape. Therefore it is
said that they are impossible to catch.88
This passage is notable for the manner in which he conflates the "black
body" of sailors with a fanciful mountain creature. We might conclude that by the
was used by the Jin Dynasty emperor Li. They are tall in height and their color is black, thus women
serving at court call anything like this konronbo. At present, the term is written l%~ft~ (literally,
"black slave"), which has come to be read as KuronbO (l%~$-:l:jJ)." Furthermore, he points to
Chinese documents from 642 that identify an embassy from the country of Koro (~~1se:).He states
that this earliest usage of the term derives from the city of Colombo in on the island of Ceylon (Sri
Lanka).
88 Quoted in Ono, 90. Toby, while not referring to the document in question, interestingly comments
on the figure of the "slightly simian" kuronbO and his skills in managing the treacherous rigging of
ships in relation to acrobatic troupes in early modern Japan. See Toby (1994),345-347.
204
mid-eighteenth century these distant foreigners had come to occupy a mythical
world of "star people" and creatures such as kappa that also receive comment in
Oide's text.89 But while the figure of the kuronb6 may have gradually receded into
the recesses of the imagination from the moment of expulsion in the early
seventeenth century, by the late eighteenth century the term was once again
appropriated to describe the concrete and real conditions in the Pacific.
Accounts relating the circumstances of the ship Ise maru are perhaps some
of the first in which the figure of the kuronb6 is foregrounded and becomes an
important element of the narrative. Caught in a storm at sea in the tenth month of
1764, the crew eventually made landfall on the island of Mindanao after 101 days
adrift. The crew was taken captive by native inhabitants of the islands and pressed
into service as maritime laborers. From the original crew of twenty, one sailor-
Magotar6- was eventually sold to an overseas Chinese merchant before again
being sold to a Dutchman who repatriated him through the Dutch offices in
Nagasaki in 1771. While many texts recount this sailor's experiences in the
Philippines, Borneo, and other stops in the South Pacific, the Nankai kibun (1¥iY41.h%c
00) written and published by Aoki Teien (w*JJ:l~n in 1792 provides us with the
most detailed ethnographic description of these areas and their inhabitants.9o Here
89 The kappa is a mythical human-like trickster who lives along rivers in Japan. Both of these are
subjects of other entries in Oide's text.
90 Other accounts include TsCtko ichiran (vol. 270), HyoryCt Tenjiku monogatari (in NSSSS5, 653-
658), and Ka-i kyCt nen roku in Arakawa Hidetoshi, ed. Kinsei hyoryCtki shU (Tokyo: Hosei Daigaku
Shuppankyoku, 1969), 122-159. For Nankai kibun, see NSSSS5, 623-652.
205
the term kurob6 is used frequently throughout the text to describe the indigenous
islanders who first enslaved Magotar6 and to distinguish them from the more
familiar Others of Dutch and Chinese.91 Echoing Oide's passage from Saikai
zokudan written three decades earlier, the author still felt compelled to explain the
usage of this term in an interlinear note to the reader which reads, "What is referred
to as konronb6 (mi*H1.J) here is commonly read in our country as kurob6 (~:I)J).
Therefore I will use this term in what follows.',<J2
With the repatriation of Daikokuya K6dayu and Isokichi from Russia in
1792 (the same year Aoki's text was published), the stage for subsequent literary
hy6ryuki undergoes a dramatic change as Pacific littoral and maritime space begins
to reflect a globalized network of colonial relations and controlled spaces. While
we still see brief reports in kuchigaki form relating relatively uneventful details of
maritime accident, numerous longer accounts are also written that focus on this
shifting space. Beginning with the encroachment of Russian expansion in the North
pacific, the trend only becomes more clear as trans-Pacific maritime fur trade and
whaling significantly increase the number of western ships in waters off the coast of
Japan. During this time, the term kuronb6 comes to signify not simply the
pigmentation of certain peoples, but also the relative position of certain less
91 In a separate account from 1801 relating Magotaro's ordeal (he is referred to in this second account
as Magoshichi) the world is still clearly divided into four distinct peoples; Barbarians, Kurobo, Tojin,
and Japanese. Furthermore, the geography consists offour countries; Kurobo no kuni, Tenjiku,
China, and Japan. See HyofUtan in Arakawa Hidetoshi, ed. Kinsei hyoryuki shU, 91-120, particularly
96-97.
92 Nankai kibun, 628.
206
civilized bodies in relation to dominant and more technologically advanced people.
Needless to say, the connotations are negative. The conflicting uses of the word can
best be seen in a cursory comparison of several late Edo castaway accounts.
Stopping at the Canary Islands, Santa Catarina (off the coast of Brazil),
Marquesas and Sandwich Islands, and the Kamchatka peninsula, we read in the
Kankai ibun (~r'IJH,!!;IYJ) of 1807 how Tsudayfi and three other castaways were able to
literally see the world before being repatriated to Japan. In this particular account,
the term kurob6 is used frequently to describe the natives of the above mentioned
islands or "island people" (shimabito) and is a generalized marker of physical
features. This usage is highlighted in the introduction of the text,
While I have seen illustrations of the twenty types of people in the
world (~OOO)},Ji~:U:t*~fl) in the Wa-Kan shosho and having become
familiar with the different bodily shapes and languages of dwarfs,
kuronbo, and giants (these are the exceedingly large people of
Marquesas Island) ... my ears perked up and my eyes grew wide
when I heard these new and rare tales [of Tsudayfi].93
The author Otsuki' s excitement of having the opportunity to apply both his
scholarly book learning and his more acculturated, if not imaginary, iconography of
difference is barely repressible. The Wa-Kan shosho ;fQ¥~~i!=reflects a particular
Ming era diplomatic order and points towards twenty political bodies within an
regional East Asian world order grounded in diplomatic relations with the Ming
court.94 On the other hand, the world of giants, dwarfs, and kuronbo that he refers to
93 Kankai ibun: honbun to kenkyu (Sugimoto Tsutomu, et a!., eds.) (Tokyo: Yazaka Shobo, 1986), 19.
94 I am grateful for Professor Hirano Mitsuru's explanation of this text in question. For more details
identifying these "twenty-some" countries, see Murai, 101.
207
point toward other Others outside any established diplomatic world order. But
while the term kuronbo is used to describe "dark" or "black" people throughout
Pacific spaces, in a later section of the text that includes a short Russian-Japanese
dictionary we see under the heading of "Aratsupu" (Arab?) the following: "Kurob6.
Someone who is undoubtedly from Africa.,,95 The ambiguity of the term as both a
geographically bound referent and a broader category of uncivilized life outside the
Ming centered world view is something characteristic of most early nineteenth
century hy6ryaki.
Illustration 3.7. Two images of shimabito that are also described as kurobO from the Kankai ibun.
In this larger context we begin to see how terms such as koronb6 serve as
floating signifiers between multiple codes of Self and Other and are employed
95 Ibid., 437. It is important to remember that this passage is not a direct translation of the word
kuronbO, but instead of a Japanese explanation of the Russian term, "aratsupu" ("Arab?").
208
strategically in order to negotiate structural conflict between systems of
representation. A world outside the official East Asian diplomatic order is realized
in these texts only through an appropriation of older categories such as giants and
dwarfs and earlier iconographies of difference. As the need for Japanese political,
geographic, and diplomatic integrity is manifested in a global Pacific context, we
can see how these multiple codes of difference work together. For example, in 1811
when Golovnin and his crew were captured by bakufu authorities in the northern
frontier zone of Ezo, we see an instance in which Russian territorial and commercial
expansion is recast in terms of the older and mythical discourse of giants.96
Illustration 3.8. Detail from Oroshiyajin shOho no zu (Waseda Library)
96 The Russian naval officer Vassily Golovnin and his crew were captured by Japanese officials in
1811 while carrying out a survey of the southern Kurile islands. They spent nearly two years in
confinement, before being repatriated. Russians attempted to earn his release in exchange for seven
Japanese castaways in 1812, but after these negotiations failed, Lt. Ccommander Pyotr Ivanovich
Rikord seized Takadaya Kahei and one of his ships in the harbor at Kunashiri. Kahei and part of his
crew were taken to Kamchatka, before an exchange was worked out in 1813.
209
While this detail from a larger scroll entitled Oroshiyajin sh6ho no zu (1ftm
WfA~:JffiZI2Q) in the Waseda University archive simply presents us with the name,
age, and height of each Russian captive, their remarkable height (nearly all over
seven feet tall) is dramatically presented in relation to a Japanese representation of
Self.9? The fact that each sailor is tethered and leashed by a Japanese official serves
to neutralize the threat of these giants.
Much like the Sh6h6 bankokujinbutsu-zu and other early Edo period texts
that "make explicit claims to an authoritative and didactic gaze," these castaway
accounts appropriate obvious markers of savagery including nakedness, tattooing,
the use of unprocessed objects such as animal skins and vegetable clothing, and
dietary customs.98 The image of shimabito from the Kankai ibun is one of many
examples (above). All four figures are barefoot and naked, with only grass or
simple cloth skirts to cover their waists. The dark-skinned figure on the right is also
significantly tattooed. Finally, in this text as well as the Funaosa nikki written
slightly later, we read of cannibalism being practiced among some of the natives.99
97 I am grateful to the librarians at Waseda University for giving me permission to examine and
photograph this document in December of 2001.
98 Ronald Toby, "Imagining and Imaging Anthropos in Early-modern Japan," in Visual Anthropology
Review: Journal of the Society for Visual Anthropology 14:1 (1998),24-27.
99 Several castaway accounts mention the practice of cannibalism by indigenous peoples living
beyond the seas. Most references to cannibalism seem to come directly from western reports,
although they also include elements of an iconography of the Other in place in Japan that is discussed
by Ronald Toby. For example, in Funaosa nikki we read the following: "Although these two
countries [Nooji and Inden] are said to be under the control of Russia, their customs are very rude
and they have not yet been much influenced by Russia. The people's hair is uncombed and they daub
their faces with red paint, and they always wear rings on their hands. The women put something
under their lips from the inside of their mouths to stretch their lips. Whoever is strongest among them
becomes the leader. Any woman who appeals to him he takes for his own and has many wives. They
eat the flesh of dead people. In neighboring countries criminals are put to death and their corpses are
210
These codes of representation in hy6ryuki continue later into the Edo period and
appear as a consistent representational mode. The Tokei monogatari of 1849 is yet
another example. Similar to the images from the Kankai ibun, here the "savage" or
"native" (dochakunin) is represented with only a loincloth (although he also has
shoes), revealing to the reader his hairy chest and belly and elaborate tattoos on his
upper body.
r-------------_,.--
~
.,
~ ~"
" ."~
iff
~,
..
t.;
~....l",
.... .1
/
.il.
•
..
"",:J
t
Cfl
i~'
.",
...
.~
'ifL
ri.-
"
..
\.
L._
.... _-"---
Illustration 3.9. Image of dochakunin from Tokei monogatari. In the Maeda Sonkeikaku
Bunko, Tokyo.
These formalized modes of representing the Other both in terms of language
and imagery continues to be applied to Pacific spaces of empire, colony, and nation.
brought here to be cut up and sold. They catch sea animals and skin them and trade the skins to
neighboring countries for liquor and saltpeter... " From unpublished translation by Stephen Kohl. See
Funaosa nikki in NSSSS5, 522-523.
211
In the Hokusa bunryaku we read, "Greeks are kurob6 (,w,PJZ) , with upturned noses
and twisted lips, their bodies are bright red."lOo What follows is an extended
explanation of an incident where Greek traders began a fight over gambling debts
while in Russia and proceeded to murder four Russians. They were eventually
captured by officials and sentenced to execution, before a gracious and enlightened
Catherine the Great interceded on their behalf. The importance of this seemingly
divergent story emphasizes the relative civility of Russia in comparison to Greece.
This passage is found in the fourth volume of the Hokusa bunryaku under
the subheading, "Places, Customs, and Peoples Encountered in Travel." While not
all Japanese castaway accounts following the Hokusa bunryaku are as detailed as
this monumental text, most include a similar section describing people and
geography in similar terms that divide the world into continents and nations and
prescribe to them characteristics that arrange bodies into a vertical hierarchy of
peoples. Terms such as donin and dochakumin ("native"), zokkoku and zokuchi
("colony") become essential vocabulary for these castaway account authors and we
see an ethnographic turn toward description of customs, family structure, language,
and social institutions.
The confusion over the term kuronb6 that we see in these texts, written a few
years before and after the turn of the century, began to be worked out in the
following decades. In the ninth volume of Tokei monogatari, we find yet another
dictionary. This four-language lexicon includes listings for Japanese, Russian,
212
English, and Hawaiian terms and contains separate entries for "person who is black"
(5~~A) and kuronbo C~.WPJO.10l The equivalent English terms corresponding to
these two entries are simply glossed as 7'!J -y ~-Y / and -* '/ j)}v (corruptions of
"black man" and "nigger"), respectively. At this point, the term kuronbo appears as
a clearly derogatory term to express one's relative state of depravity, and distinct
from the more objectively descriptive "black man." However, confusion once again
emerges in a passage from the same text describing Anthony, one of the crew
members on the ship that rescued these Japanese sailors.
On Cathcart's ship there were two kuronbo and one was called
Anthony. His skin was black and his hair kinky. He stood seven feet,
five inches and it was said that you could quite easily stick a
Japanese zeni coin in his nostril. This giant of a man exhibited
extraordinary strength, once placing Kinz6 in the palm of his hand
and tossing him around freely. At the time Kinz6 was 19 years old
and approximately 120 pounds. This Anthony was generally quiet
and reserved, but once five or six crew members began a skirmish
with him and even after much scuffling, it was impossible to hold
him down. Eventually Cathcart intervened and because Anthony was
to blame, he was duly punished. This Anthony is not a kuronbo, but
was instead was a person from Porutoke[?]lo2
100 NSSSSS5, 751.
101 NSSSS5, 179.
102 NSSSS5, 27.
213
Illustration 3.10. Image of Anthony from Tokei monogatari. Use with permission of Maeda
Sonkeikaku Bunko, Tokyo.
The ambiguity that arises in trying to mesh an older discourse of difference
with a new racial discourse circulating in the Pacific manifests itself in various ways.
Perhaps none is more succinct that the following description of the American whaler
the Manhattan, which arrived in Edo Bay in 1845 to repatriate crews from two
distressed Japanese vessels picked up in the Ogasawara or Bonin islands. After a
brief description of the dimensions of the ship we read:
The quarters in the bottom of the ship were immensely dark and even
during the day lamps needed to be lit. Here there were two overseers
[shuch6] and seven konrondo [written with the same characters for
koronb6, ~Wfr~]. Among them, two were a deep black and their skin
was just like lacquer but the palms of their hands and the bottoms of
their feet were almost white. Their hair was red and like spirals.
This brought the total crew on board to 28 men. Toku and the others
214
were brought to this room first and given bowls of sugar water by the
barbarians (banjin).103
The passage highlights how the very architecture of the ship projects certain
colonial and racial relations embodied within it, while also suggesting a
preoccupation with the question of just how the Japanese body might fit within that
larger network.104 Ultimately, the quote reconciles this problem by falling back on
the terminology of an older paradigm where the westerner is relegated to barbarian
status outside the traditional East Asian order. Older modes of representation are
also employed in another account relating the repatriation of castaways from the
Manhattan. In the Oshuku (Y6shuku) zakki we find an image of the ship with black
figures in the mast curiously similar to the iconography of difference appearing first
in nanban-e of the sixteenth century and reappearing later in the Edo period in
representations of acrobats.105 In the upper left-hand corner we read, "The kuronb6,
103 Utagawa K6sai, Itsushi hyokyaku kibun in Ishii Kendo korekushon Edo hyoryuki soshU, vol.4
(Tokyo: Nihon Hy6ron Sha, 1992),472. I am grateful to Miwako Okigami for pointing this passage
out to me.
104 In a separate account titled Ashu sen Koho-maru hyoryuki, we find a hand-drawn image of one of
these crewman, the kurobO Harris, relegated to the lower hold of the ship. In the portrait he plays a
banjo. See (Ishii Kendo kurekushon) Edo hyoryuki soshu, vol. 4. (Tokyo: Nihon Hy6ronsha, 1992),
447.
105 See Ronald P. Toby, "The 'Indianness' of Iberia and Changing Japanese Iconographies of Other,"
in Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between
Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1994).
215
when in water, are just like fish. Furthennore, when on the ship, they climb the sails
and the masts just like monkeys."I06
,,'
Illustration 3.11. Image of ship with kuronbO from Oshuku zakki.
Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, the gaze of Japanese
castaways comes to read these foreign bodies in a symbolically charged manner. In
this context, the term kuronbo is removed from its earlier and more specific
geographical designations (Africa and India) and instead comes to signify a body's
relative position in a global hierarchy of peoples. But while this hierarchy may
appear to be stabilizing, the bodies that circulate within it are not.
106 In Oshuku zakki, vol. 567 under "K6ka Itsushi hy6ryujin ikken," in the National Diet Library. I
am grateful to Stephen Kohl for bringing this text to my attention and providing me with a copy of
the image.
216
In the ninth month of 1842 the castaway Shoz6 from Kawajiri, Higo,
explained in some detail the fate himself and his fellow crewmen met in a moving
letter to his family still in Japan. Describing his rescue by naked black natives in
Luzon who dwelt in "animal lairs," he writes:
When we had finished eating, we gazed at these human figures, and
even though our lives had been saved, we could not help but wonder
where we might be. The truly sad thing was that since our clothes
had been taken from us, under that intense sun, we were becoming
like these black men (-end:: ~ #;~ t:t3ft L< ~A(:::':f§r&1~).107
We must be careful not to make too much of the fear of becoming Other that
is expressed in this letter. The relative simplicity with which becoming a "black
man" is described may only be a trope by which the castaway relates his
disappointment of not being able to reunite with his family. However, later in this
letter he describes his own position in language that goes beyond the scope of
personal disappointment and instead projects himself and his fellow Japanese
castaways residing in Macao as representative Japanese bodies immersed in a more
abstract global order and hierarchy. "We resolved to stay in China, and if other
Japanese drifted here, we would seek them out and send them home. Indeed, we
understand world events and are in a place where people from allover the world
~ pJT)108 In yet another castaway letter written at the same time by Shozo's crewmate,
107 A facsimile of this letter is contained in "Hyoryu nin shoja utsushi," in Sosho Edo bunko: HyoryCt
kidan shCtsei (Kata Takashi, ed.) (Tokyo: Kokusho Kanka Kai, 1990),388-400. The passage in
question is from p. 395. As always, I am indebted to Stephen Kohl, with whom I translated these
letters.
108 Ibid, 396.
217
Jusaburo, their function as Japanese representatives in this global hierarchy is again
emphasized. Gesturing toward a global organization of nations, he concludes, "it is
as if we were somewhere between China and other foreign nations." (mOO r- ~oo /7
Considering that both of these letters were written at the peak of the Opium
Wars in China, a time when both China's international status and the rest of East
Asia was thrown into jeopardy, this anxiety over Self identity and Japan's position
in the world is not surprising. In fact, the opium wars played a key role in
determining just how Japan tried to figure itself into an international hierarchy of
nations. Rotem Kowner has already traced European racial views of Japan from
1548 to 1853 and in so doing, he states the earliest contacts between Japanese and
Europeans during the time of the "Iberian irruption" always depicted Japanese as
"white."llo Kowner demonstrates that, not until 1775 when Johann Friedrich
Blumenbach classified the Japanese as "yellow" in his treatise De Generis Humani
Varietate Nativa, did this "perceptual change," become "irreversible."l!!
Blumenbach is also credited with being the first to postulate a five-race system, not
unlike the classification expressed by Fukuzawa Yukichi in his Sieyo jijo.
Kowner's research unfortunately does not address the much more difficult
question of how this racial discourse was received in Japan. From quite early
109 Ibid, 392.
110 Rotem Kowner, "Skin as Metaphor: Early European Racial Views on Japan, 1548-1853," in
Ethnohistory 51:4 (fall 2004),751-778.
218
Japanese scholars of Dutch were translating European scientific discourse that
categorized the peoples of the world into distinct races. In particular the work of
Swedish naturalist Carl von Linne (Linnaeus, 1707-1778) was avidly read by Dutch
scholars and formed the basis for Blumenbach's theories. Linne divided humanity
into four broad geographical categories-americanus (red), europaeus (white), afer
(black), and asiaticus (sallow)- and his texts were being used by Japanese scholars
as early as 1789.112 The importation of these ideas is most likely related to the
arrival in Japan of Linne's student Charles Peter Thunberg, who served as a
physician at the Dutch factory in Nagasaki from 1775 to 1776.113 His contribution
to racial discourse was to turn away from skin color and instead focus on the
structure of eyes. His observations and theory that Japanese were a distinct sub-race
of the Chinese were published in the third volume of his Travels in Europe, Africa,
and Asia: Performed between the Years 1770 and 1779.114 From this point (1795),
the question of racial connections between the Japanese and Chinese loomed large
for both western theorists of race as well as their Japanese translators. We have
already briefly considered how Vassily Golovnin and his crew were represented by
III Ibid, 764.
lIZ This schematization is only developed in Linneaus's tenth edition of Systema Naturae (1758-
1759). Ibid, 762. However Kowner's study, concerned with western knowledge of Japan, does not
address when any of these western texts were first introduced into Japan. See Matsuda Kiyoshi,
Yogaku no shoshiteki kenkyu (Kyoto: Rinsen Shoten, 1998). See also, Hirano Mitsuru, "Kinsei
Nihon ni okeru Hottain 'Shizen shi' no riy6," in Ashida bunko hensaniinkai chakan hOkoku (Tokyo:
Meiji Daigaku Shuppan, 2002.)
113 Donald Keene has written extensively on early Japanese-Dutch exchange. See, Donald Keene,
The Japanese Discovery ofEurope, 1720-1830 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), 1-30.
114 Kowner, 764.
219
Japanese artists, but his own captivity narrative describing his two years in Japan
presents us with a radically different mode of representation. His is a world not of
dwarfs and giants, but instead one that appropriates the language of science and
human taxonomy. He argues that the Japanese are descendents of the Tartars and
not the Chinese. He adds, "Everything testifies that the Chinese and the Japanese
were never one people. The Japanese even abominate the idea that the Chinese may
have been their ancestors.,,115 But while he approaches his subject in scientific
terms he also suggests that it was not his idea alone that Japanese were racially
distinct from Chinese. Golovnin's text was one of a handful of texts that western
scholars turned to for a western eyewitness account of Japan and we may assume his
ideas had a profound impact on how westerners before the early 1850s conceived of
Japan in racial terms. Furthermore, the Dutch translation of his text, Mijne
Lotgevallen in Mijne Gevangenschap bij de Japannars.2dln.Uit het Russisch
volgens de Hoogduitsche vertailing was translated as early as 1825 by Baba Sajfir6
and titled S6yaku Nihon kiji Jim S**2.*.116 Therefore this brief textual history
suggests that fitting Japan into a global hierarchy of nations and the Japanese into a
fixed system of race was not something simply imposed by western scientists and
travelers, but instead a process built upon a complex series of exchanges in the
115 Vasily Mikhailovich Golovnin, Memoirs a/Captivity in Japan, during the Years 1811,1812, and
1813, with Observations a/the Country and the People, vol. 3 (London, 1824),9-11. Quoted in
Kowner, 766-767.
116 Copies of both the Dutch translation and Baba's translation can be found in the Aoi Bunko archive
in Shizuoka, Japan. This is the major repository of texts in the possession of Tokugawa bakufu.
220
Pacific. While Golovnin's attribution of Tartar origins to the Japanese may have
found its roots in arguing Russian claims to Ezo and beyond, Japanese (especially
after the Opium Wars) had just as much reason to distinguish themselves from
China.
This becomes very apparent in castaway accounts of the late 1830s through
the 1850s and parallels the coinage of Japanese terms such asjinshu Afl andjinrui
A~to translate "race," that we see for example in the following passage from Tok(j
kibun by Iwasaki Toshiakira: ll7
Furthermore, my ears perked up when I heard the strangest of facts
such as, from the beginning the three races of people in the American
continent OUIEfi:5fIj~fIO)AtIm) maintain close relations with England,
France, Spain, Portugal, Luzon, India, Annan, Malacca, Africa, and
other barbarian peoples of the five great continents. And while your
humble servant was delighted to intently listen to these curious and
strange tales, this singular opportunity is due only to the supreme
blessings of our nation (I~*,~, Jf) for which I bear sincere
grati tude .118
However, Japanese castaways were not simply translators of racial discourse.
They were, at least in one case, the only living subjects on which western scientists
and phrenologists based their discourse. In writing his The Races ofMan and their
Distribution of 1848, Charles Pickering had the opportunity to examine five
117 Hirano Mitsuru has also demonstrated that these terms were used during the Tempo era (1830-
1844) in translations of Linneaus and his contemporary Houttuyn. See Hirano, p. 4. Ronald Toby has
also pointed to uses of the term jinrui before this time, however these earlier uses are not so racially
specific, instead encompassing a broader notion of "anthropos." See Ronald Toby, "Imagining and
Imaging Anthropos in Early-modern Japan," in Visual Anthropology Review: Journal of the Society
for Visual Anthropology 14: 1 (1998),21.
j 18 "Taka kibun," in Nihon shomin seikatsu shiryo shusei, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Sanichi Shobo, 1985),310.
221
Japanese castaways in Hawai'i.119 Following Thunberg and Golovnin, this
encounter led him to argue that the Japanese were of a distinct race from the
Chinese.
Their personal appearance differed from my preconceived ideas of
the Japanese; and, for a time, I was unwilling to admit their
connexion with the Malay race. In my notebook I find recorded, that
they were all short, rather stout built men, with their complexion
nearly as dark as the Hawaiian; which, together with their slight
profile, the nose rather flat, and their thick black hair, left me for
some time in doubt. Mr. Drayton at once recognized the Polynesian
features in the eldest of the party ... the lad, however, had the nose so
remarkably broad and flat, that all idea of the Mongolian race was
out of the question.120
Accounts by these same castaways reflect an understanding of racial
discourse that was not learned from their brief encounter with Pickering, but instead
witnessed, interpreted, and translated during their ten-year experience plying the
waters of the Pacific. The "lad" whom Pickering observed was none other than
Nakahama Manjiro. The accounts that relate his adventures are numerous, but
among them the Hy6son kiryaku 1~~uc:mfrof 1852 presents the reader with the most
detailed and complete image of people and spaces in the Pacific. While the account
may be read as a scholarly text relating new and unfamiliar global conditions, it also
119 Rotem Kowner has mentioned this briefly in his "Skin as Metaphor: Early European Racial Views
on Japan, 1548-1853" Ethnohistory 51:4 (fall 2004), 770.
120 Charles Pickering, The Races ofMen and Their Distribution (London, 1848), 117. Quoted in
Katherine Plummer, The Shogun's Reluctant Ambassadors (Portland: The Oregon Historical Society,
1991),143-144.
222
appropriated the iconography of nakedness, tattooing, and other earthy qualities that
separated Japan and colonizing nations from indigenous colonized peoples. 121
Illustration 3.12. An image of natives from Hyoson kiryaku. 122
121 We might consider how magazines such as National Geographic function in a similar manner
throughout the twentieth century.
122 My copy of this manuscript is printed from a facsimile copy on CD ROM in the University of Hawai'i
Library. I was only able to print out the images in monochrome while doing research in the archive. The
color image reproduced here is taken from Drifting Toward the Southeast Kawada Shoryo, Drifting
Toward the Southeast: The Story ofFive Japanese Castaways (Junya Nagakuni aand Junji Kitadai, trans.)
(New Bedford, MA: Spinner Publications, Inc., 2003),95.
223
Looking at a more popular and vernacular version of Manjiro's account, printed
and published as Hy6ryuki in1853, we see terminology such as "the country of
Kuronb6" and "the country of Devils" to describe places that were now commonly
known as specific colonial spaces. In this text too, we see a clear distinction between an
educated and industrious Japanese Manjiro who is invited to marry the daughter of his
benefactor Captain Whitfield, and a group of lazy Cantonese merchants with whom he
met in Hawai'i and San Francisco.
It is at this point that we come full circle, back to Fukuzawa Yukichi and his
claims of five distinct races of man. In 1860 the ship Kanrin-maru was sent to the
United States in order to ratify the Japan-United States Treaty initiated by Commodore
Mathew Perry in 1853. Manjiro was asked to serve as navigator and must have had
ample opportunity to communicate with the man who would become Japan's foremost
scholar of the west, Fukuzawa. Having lived ten years in the United States already, we
might think that Manjiro shared with Fukuzawa his experience and awareness of racial
discourse. While the image from his Seiy6 jij6 suggests a fixed scientific categorization
of people, at other times Fukuzawa may have come to realize the problems that Japan
would face on the international stage if it were to continue being lumped together with
an Asian or yellow race. Despite being the translator of scientific racial theory into
Japanese, Fukuzawa is perhaps better known for his famous national slogan first coined
in 1885-Datsu A, Nyu 6 Jm.ilEJ\IIX-a call for Japan to "separate itself from Asia and
224
become one with Europe.,,123 The tentative translator Fukuzawa, unlike the authors of
castaway narratives before him, was able to take some assurance in a universalistic
discourse of science that in the last years of the Edo period was difficult to challenge in
terms of an older indigenous or even Sino-centric ideology. Instead the focus shifted to
a notion of "recovering" the lost past that had already been displaced. However, this
nostalgia or attempt to recover lost ground was not an exclusively Meij i phenomenon.
In looking at late-Edo reiterations of three earlier castaways-Magoshichi (Magotaro),
Tenjiku Tokubei, and the crew returning from Dattan in the mid-seventeenth century-
we may begin to consider in the following chapter just how this nostalgia for the past
reveals itself to late-Edo readers and viewers. However before we do, let us look at two
more terms that circulate in late Edo castaway accounts, those being dojin ±A (and
related derivatives) and shima bUo $bA.
As with notions of gender and race, we see in late Edo castaway accounts the
emergence of an ethnographic practice of describing in detail the physical and cultural
characteristics of other peoples. As early as the sixteenth century, along with world
maps from Europe, written and illustrated texts describing the peoples of the world
began to appear with some frequency: This Bankokujinbutsu zu 7JOOAttm~ published in
Nagasaki in 1645, is one example. 124
123 The slogan is invoked even today when Japan's relations with its immediate neighbors, Korea and
China, are discussed in newspaper articles. See Norimitsu Onishi, "Ugly Images of Asian Rivals Become
Best Sellers in Japan," in the November 19,2005 edition of the New York Times, Al (continued on page
A6).
124 The image is taken from the Kobe University Library website.
225
Illustration 3.13. Bankokujinbutsu zu (1645)
While we may point to numerous geographic and scientific texts, primarily from
the Chinese and Dutch, that were imported and subsequently translated into Japanese,
hy6ryuki on the other hand, provided readers with ostensibly first- and secondhand
accounts of the worlds beyond the sea. As with race, the categories of ethnicity that
emerge from these texts in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries appear not as
Western concepts simply adopted as a totalizing discourse of the world's peoples, but
instead through a much more complicated and piecemeal mix of traditional Japanese
iconographies of difference layered upon more recent scientific discourses such as that
found in the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linne's (Linnaeus, 1707-1778) Shizen shi § M
226
;"\tor, as was later translated into English as, A General System ofNature. 125 We can
point to numerous examples from the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries in
which, at these textual moments of ethnographic discovery, the authors tum to outside
sources to either confirm or contradict the speaking voice of the repatriated castaway
telling his story.
For example, in the ToM kibun (-**1L*,c~) written by Iwasaki Toshiaki (:!Ef~{~
_) in 1851, we see that the author is compelled to substantiate the accounts of his two
castaway subjects-Yaeichi and Zensuke-ofthe Eiju-maru (%:%:f1): A ship sailing out
of Setsu Domain and belonging to the Nakamura ya of Nishinomiya that became
distressed at sea and drifted to the coast of Mexico in 1840. In a sub-section of the text
titled "Jinbutsu fUzoku," or "The Customs of People," the author attempts to synthesize
what his castaway informants had shared with him concerning the ethnic make up of
"America."
There are three types (1'1) of people in America. One of these, is a group
(fl~) of people born to Europeans who long ago came here by ship and
took women of this land as their wives. It is said that there is also a type
(fl~) of people who immigrated as (male-female) couples. The second
group (f1~) consists of the aboriginal peoples (*±A). These are called
Inryo (Sp: Indio?). This group (fl~) is in a pitiful decline and the
current population is diminished. The third are called Appachi (Apache),
whose origins were not asked about. This group (f1~) is impoverished.
In fact, only the European type of people (~m E'.1'1 (J) A ~m) are flourishing
and expanding, and it is said that currently all Americans are of this type
(fl~). Since California was first cultivated and developed (~m~) by
Englishmen, it is said that the English group/tribe (~A(J)fl~) is most
125 See Matsuda Kiyoshi, Y6gaku no shoshiteki kenkyu (Kyoto: Rinsen Shoten, 1998). See also, Hirano
Mitsuru, "Kinsei Nihon ni okeru Hottain 'Shizen shi' no riy6," in Ashida bunkO hensaniinkai chukan
h6koku (Tokyo: Meiji Daigaku Shuppan, 2002.) The work of both ofthese historians suggest that
Linne's text was translated into Japanese before it was ever translated into the English edition, A General
System o/Nature (1806).
227
plentiful. Currently, the English are immigrating here in large numbers,
with people from Manila next.
~~~m~~A~=m~~o ~-~~~B*. ~.~AMm8~L.*±~k
~~~ V(1::Jf[ltLfi1EUt~o gl(:1j:~k1Jl..~='*1±ltLfi~b~~ ~v\~o ~=
1j:*±A~m~ft ~ 0 =- h ~-1 /1) :3 - ~ V\~o Jbtfi~Ri1J!Z L --C 4-ffT Q b ~
{i.tt~o ~-='fj:7'//"T~V\~o ~*~1li'J1~To Jl:tm~fj:1nt!t'YL. JJl~m~m
~A~~di-lf-k ~:liijffi~I=' L --C. 4-~~~fljj]DAIj:.l§' =- ~fi~lVt ~ ~ i':o j; 1)
*}L<=~flj:~APiJ--c~m~lt Liij:I='. ~A~fift*ii~ L ~ V\~o 4-a@i~A~*1±
itQb~~<. 7*7A=-hip?Xtt~o
Upon reading this passage, we see that Iwasaki's first statement, that is, that
there are three types of people in America-the offspring of Europeans and indigenous
peoples, Indians, and Apache-is soon undermined by the various other types and
groups that proliferate throughout the text. Even in this short passage we see the
offspring of European couples, the English immigrants, and people of Manila defying
his original claim. The usage of these terms such as shu, shurui, shuzoku, hon dojin,
and later jinshu, presents the translator with significant challenges when attempting to
render the text into English. At the expense of style, I have tried to maintain a
consistency in translating these particularly troublesome terms by sticking with "type"
for shu and shurui, "group" and sometimes "tribe" for shuzoku, etc. But with the usage
of several different overlapping terms, we might also consider the difficulty that
Iwasaki himself had in negotiating the testimony of Yaeichi and Zensuke vis-a-vis
knowledge Iwasaki had gleaned from other geographic and proto-ethnographic texts
referred to in the Taka kibun. 126 Finally (in reference to this passage), we might also
126 Likewise, Stephen Kohl, in an unpublished presentation given at the Association of Asian Studies
2008 Annual Conference in Atlanta, pointed out that the complexities of tracing the sources of
ethnographic illustrations found in castaway accounts. Often it is difficult to determine whether the
image is based upon the castaway's testimony or other images circulating among authors.
228
note the author continually reminds us of the oral nature of the castaway's testimony
with the frequent use of the sentence final to ifu (.!:: v\~/ .!:: i':). This trace of the
castaway's voice, while echoing the authority of a firsthand witness, also anticipates
what immediately follows this passage. Iwasaki seems compelled to refer his readers to
the recently published translations of Dutch geographic studies by Mitsukuri Sh6go
~fF~':g that appeared as the Konk6 zushiki (:!:$~~W~) of 1845. By doing such, he
effectively establishes a direct comparison between the latest ethnographic knowledge
of the Americas based on his castaway informants and the discourses of cultural
geography that were circulating in the form of translated scientific texts. Using the
technique of niji sage or "two-character indentation," Iwasaki comments upon this eye-
witness schematization of populations in the Americas with the following:
According to the Konk6 zushiki, the people of America are of different
types. Currently, they are divided into three large categories; the first
called dojin, the second called Westerners, and the third is called the
Koryuorensu type, and this contradicts what the castaways have said
(emphasis added)
:!:$~IIl~i':, iJE:~flJj]Q/ ;\J~JjJ:fjlblJo ~J3IJT~*J31J r-A o -8±Afj, =8
W
l$Afl, =8::11) t/7V/AAfj~~.!::lblJ"C~~A~;1PV\~ffl.!::~lRJlblJo
127
We see here just one example of the frequent dissonance between what the
castaways report and the knowledge of the more formally educated authors of these
hy6ryuki. There is also ample evidence that the sailors and fisherman themselves,
before ever becoming castaway, had already fed their own ethnographic curiosities
127 Iwasaki Toshiakira, ToM kibun (preface is dated 1851) in NSSSS5, 373.
229
through the consumption of more popular media circulating in Japan such as illustrated
books, mise mono, kaich6, or other displays of foreign objects held at temples, shrines,
and urban festivals. 128 For example, looking at the anonymously penned Hy6ryimin
Jir6kichi monogatari based on Jir6kichi's experiences in Hawai'i and the North Pacific,
we read that upon his arrival in Sitka,
We did our hair up in the sakayaki style so that they would think we are
Japanese and treat us kindly. Jir6kichi says that he was familiar with the
customs/appearance of the various foreign peoples (1~OO /< 0) J!iiH*) and
that they were no different from the images he had seen earlier outside of
Edo nI?~~I~, :ffz~s;~zJifn~w VJ 7F $1~). 129
While the source of these images that Jir6kichi claims to have seen sometime
before drifting across the Pacific remains unclear, we might note that earlier castaways
such as Koichi of the Shinsh6-maru and Oguri JUkichi of the Tokuj6-maru upon
returning to Japan, did in fact display objects in areas around Ise/Nagoya which they
had brought back from the North Pacific and Russia. Perhaps it was one of these events
that Jir6kichi attended, or perhaps it was a simply the case that he happened to view
some set of illustrations that happen to be circulating. The point is that not only the
authors of hy6ryuki, but, at least in some cases, also the castaways themselves had a
certain ethnographic awareness ofthe world around them. Furthermore, we see that a
trans-Pacific channel of knowledge exchange had developed to the degree that
Daikokuya K6dayu, Oguri JUkichi, Jir6kichi, and other castaways visiting areas in the
128 For three important works on Edo curiosity see: Uchiyama Jun'ichi, Edo no kOkishin: bijutsu to
kagaku no deai (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1996); Margarita Winkel, Discovering Different Dimensions:
Explorations o/Culture and History in Early Modern Japan (Unpublished dissertation from Leiden
University, 2004).
129 Kobayashi(2000), 221.
230
Pacific all mention that their foreign hosts, whether in Sitka or Petropavlovsk, seem to
know something of Japan and Japanese customs. Oguri JGkichi for example, after being
picked up by the ship the Forrester in 1815 off the coast of Southern California, was
shown Japanese artifacts in both Sitka (by Baranov) and in Kamchatka where he met
the Russian governor Rudakov. The governor not only greeted him in Japanese, but
also showed JGkichi several Japanese objects that he claimed to have received from
Takadaya Kahei when he was held captive in Russia a few years before JGkichi's arrival.
Likewise, Jir6kichi of the Choja -maru upon his arrival in Hawai'i in the 9th month of
1839, demonstrates the speed with which information traveled between Japan and
colonial sites throughout the Pacific. In Tokei monogatari, we see that when the crew
went ashore, they were asked about the Oshio Heihachir6 disturbance of 1837 in Osaka,
an event they were hearing about for the first time from foreigners in Hawai' i.
Having touched on just a few of the many examples of trans-Pacific knowledge
exchange found in late Edo hyoryuki, let us turn our attention to two specific terms-
dojin and shimabito-that appear in three important castaway accounts written in the
last decades of the eighteenth and first decade of the nineteenth century. The texts are
the Nankai kibun, Hokusa bunryaku, and Kankai ibun. These accounts are important
since they become models for later hyoryuki authors, both in terms of overall form as
well as for the particular lexicon they offer to describe colonialism in the Pacific.
Needless to say, dojin and shimabito are part of this new lexicon.
Dojin, or literally "earth person," is a term that has been in use since before the
Edo period. Compared to more specific later meanings, this term in the early Edo
231
period seems to have been limited in usage to describing people living in a particular
area or what we might translate as "a local." Today one ofthe more popular icons of
dojin is a naked or nearly naked African or South Pacific Islander. It is also been
adopted by at least some of today's younger generation as an expression of social
rebellion and fashion, as in the case of a group of young women in Shibuya who as late
as 2002, call themselves the Dojinzoku or "Earth People Tribe."
Aside from the many popular images of dojin circulating today, it is important to
note that from March of 1899 until May of 1997 this term dojin even found its way into
official State usage to describe the Ainu peoples. In fact, the Hokkaid6 kyu dojin hogo
h6 or Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act was the legal basis for a nearly
century-long assimilation policy that in turn, devastated Ainu cultural and linguistic
memory.
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232
Although this term rarely (if at all) appears in early-Edo period castaway
accounts, from the late eighteenth century, usage of the term is quite frequent. Perhaps
the first castaway accounts to use this term extensively are those accounts relating the
travails of Magotar6 of Nagasaki, who in 1764 while on board the lse-maru, drifted to
Mindanao Island in the southern Philippines. In the Nankai kibun, published in 1820,
but circulating in manuscript form soon after Magotar6's return to Japan in 1771, the
author, Aoki Teien employs both the terms dojin as well as kuronb6 to refer to the
people ofthis island. His frequent usage ofthe term tends to go beyond the more
neutral meaning of "the people of this land," and particularly in moments of thick
ethnographic description, suggest a civilizational depravity. First making landfall after
101 days of aimless drift at sea, the crew believes they are in an uninhabited land.
Spending several days looking for food and fresh water, they eventually stumble upon a
dwelling. The text then explains that, "nearly one hundred strange people"
O'tR~ / A B A/;, j; 1) ), with black skin and hair, either naked or wearing grass and leaves,
and armed with blowguns and spears, (and bird guns???) line up before the castaways.
These "strange people" then proceed to steal all of their goods and the tenma or lifeboat
that the castaways had used to come ashore. They are then stripped and bound, but also
fed. After a futile attempt to explain that they are Japanese (by writing the characters for
Nihon in the sand), the lost sailors realize their captors are illiterate as well. This begins
an eight-year ordeal that finds them first in the custody of these dojin, before being sold
to a Chinese merchant, and finally a Dutchman who is ultimately responsible for
233
repatriating the sole survivor Magotar6. The author Aoki, in an extended commentary,
explains that according to the Bankoku chimei k6 7500t1h1SJl. there are many islands in
this area inhabited by dojin and that they are all more or less the same (.I§'::kIRJ/J'~7 !J),
even though he later points out significant differences such as the preference for human
flesh among occupants of another island. 130 He also tells us in an interlinear note that
this island is a Dutch territory (~iiJlfW-tO)~JU1h:=:.T !J ), despite the fact that no Dutchmen
appear to assist these destitute Japanese castaways. Dutchmen and Chinese are referred
to as such, and likewise, later in the text French, Danish, and Italian ships are also
mentioned in the context of explaining European expansion in the South Pacific. l31 In
contrast, dojin stands as a catchall phrase referring to peoples clearly not European or
Chinese. This is perhaps the earliest Japanese castaway account to describe western
colonial activity throughout the world in such stark terms, but it is certainly not the last.
For from the late eighteenth century, as hy6ryuki come to paint for their reading
audience(s) a clearer picture of what is happening in the Pacific, the term dojin comes to
be used with more frequency.
In the Hokusa bunryaku of 1794, we see the term used to describe a fairly broad range
of indigenous peoples of the Aleutian Islands and eastern Russia. However, instances
in which the term is also used to refer to European Russians can also be found.
Likewise, we read such statements as, "Greeks are kuronb6,,,132 while Europeans are
130 NSSSSS5, 628. See also, p. 632 for cannibalism reference.
131 Ibid, 637.
132 Ibid. 751.
234
collectively referred to as ijin (~A).133 And while the contrast between dojin and their
colonial overlords is perhaps not as distinct as we see in Nankai kibun, nonetheless it
again often appears to distinguish Russians from others. For example we read,
Long ago, these dojin were originally violent savages (!l!HiEi5~~) that valued
only bravado (:W:~ :a:tH·tJO)J;.r~ -C) and there were very few who understood
reason (Jl~J! :a:¥1U:, Q l'- t YIJ' ~ L-) until one hundred years ago when this
country's Emperor (OO:=E) Pyotr Alexeyevich [Peter the Great] excelled in
virtue, demonstrated superior knowledge, and as an unequalled holy warrior
hero (t'M;~t1Ui§{jjfl-) cultivated lands far and wide, opened river routes,
developed thoroughfares, and profited immensely from trade. Thus the
country flourished, as other lands send scholars and dignitaries, and he
opened schools here and there, the people of this country were taught math
and writing, so that even the lowliest peasants, artists, and performers could
improve their skills, thus bringing about new ideas and shedding old bad
customs regarding even manners, language, and clothing, so that day by day
his legacy thrives. 134
While here, it appears that Russian expansion is a benevolent and enlightened
undertaking, the last lines of the text present perhaps a more critical slant. "However,
since it is so extremely cold half of the people cannot live there and thus there are many
abandoned lands. Those dojin who remain become extreme savages, who can only fish,
hunt and excel at preparing animal pelts. Therefore, the profit from taxing them is
d . ,,135ecreasmg.
The Kankai Ibun, written by physician and scholar of Dutch Learning Otsuki
Gentaku in 1806, chronicles the repatriated crew of the Wakamiya-maru, which went
133 Ibid, 764.
134 Ibid.. 742.
135 Ibid.. 825.
235
adrift in 1792 and wound up, like castaways from the Hokusa bunryaku a decade earlier,
on an island in the North Pacific. The term dojin appears numerous times throughout
text, however many ofthese cases it is somewhat ambiguous from the context whether
they are referring indigenous peoples or the Russian traders and officials that by this
time had established a dominant foothold in the region. This is most evident in the
section subtitled "DozokuJushu or "Local customs and practices.,,136 The path the four
eventually repatriated castaways take brings them first through Siberia and to St.
Petersburg on the extreme western edge of Russia, where they then board a ship and sail
through the Baltic, the Atlantic, the Canary Islands, Brazil, Hawaii, and Kamchatka,
before being repatriated in Nagasaki. Because the iconography and ethnographic
description of spaces such as the Canary Islands, Brazil, and Hawai'i appears as the
most exotic to the castaways, we might expect the term dojin to appear, however in
these particular sections the term dojin actually does not appear once. Instead the term,
shimabito or "islander" is used. This term, while certainly related to and sometimes
conflated with dojin, has a slightly different genealogy.
Like dojin, shimabito certainly predates the Edo period and certainly has a
relatively neutral meaning. However, also similar to this term dojin, its appearance in
Edo period accounts as a term to differentiate a group of naked, hairy people, from
another more familiar group of Others, seems to come about in the very late
eighteenth century. In the Nanpy6ki i¥ifJli]1c published by Zeniya Ch6hei (Shih6ken,
tt~'f) in 1798, we see a group of castaways drifting to Annan or Vietnam. While
136 Kankai ibun: honbun to kenkyu (Sugimoto Tsutomu, ed.), 230-233.
236
the country of Annan was traditionally part of the Sino-centric sphere of East Asia
and the people of Annan had figured into more traditional worldviews circulating in
Japan for some time before the Edo period, in this castaway account we see the
emergence of a new figure, that of the "islander" or shimabitol Tojin. Their comment
on these islanders is as follows. "Approaching the island, we came ashore, but these
people were different from the mainlanders. Their hair was grown out and their
beards long. Their hair was bundled up with a small skewer."
.:c ? tJ~l-;.
(-=- '2?'*1tJlj~"'J:.IJL~J7)', *00 A (: l:tjl, ;r:t 9i I=- -ClEft IJ' </J' 2: '2: <L I=- -C9i~~ '2: bli))137
For most of the twentieth century Ainu peoples of northern Japan, the
Chishima or Kurile islands, and Etorofu or Sakahlin were legally rendered as "former
dojin." Although the survivors of the Wakamiya-maru are forced to be repatriated at
Nagasaki, from the nineteenth century onward, more and more castaways are also
repatriated through Ezo chi or what is now called Hokkaido. In so many of these
accounts, we also find direct comparisons being made between Ainu (usually referred
to as Ezo, Ezojin, or other terms such as moi (hairy barbarian) and the newly witnessed
dojin and shimabito of the world. To return to Hokusa bunryaku, we see a provocative
passage in which we are told the people of Amchitka resemble Ainu, and furthermore a
suggestion that Russian policy in the North Pacific is more developed than either
Matsumae and bakufu policy in the region. We read, "The dojin ofthis land are
equivalent (hitoshiki) in barbary (ebisu) to the Ezo, however many more officials
below the rank of daikan are sent there [to oversee operations.] Furthermore, in
137 Kata Takashi, ed., Sosho Edo bunko 1: hyoryCt kitan shCtsei (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankakai, 1990), 191.
237
looking at exploration narratives of Ezo-chi from this time or even earlier, one may
find instances where the Ainu subjects are referred to as both dojin and, in the case of
Chishima Ainu, as shimabito.
In conclusion, we see that by the late eighteenth century, the vocabulary as
well as a certain ethnographic curiosity and imagination emerge from hyoryuki. While
all too often the phenomenon of Japanese colonialism is thought to have instantly begun
from the Meiji period onward, this analysis of castaway accounts gestures towards a
certain continuity bridging the Edo-/Meiji- or modern-/ pre-modern divide at least in
terms of an emerging worldview that underwrites colonialism and is used to articulate it.
In fact, late Edo hyoryuki are a profoundly colonial form of literature, not only for the
rich description of western empire building in the Pacific, but also as a medium to
comprehend and translate it for a home audience. In doing so, the texts endow the
peripheral and contested spaces such as Ezo-chi and the Ogasawara Islands with
Japanese figures and authority, and also on a more abstract level provide an
epistemological basis for laying claim to new spaces and peoples. In other words, the
representational conventions found in castaway narratives from the first half of the
nineteenth century in fact came to frame Japanese colonial endeavors in the second half
of the century. This will be addressed in the final chapter of this project. For now, let
us turn to an alternative category of hyoryuki forms that were also circulating among
more popular, urban audiences at the very same time intellectuals were attempting to
translate an increasingly colonized Pacific.
238
GEOGRAPHICAL AND DIPLOMATIC REVOLUTIONS: REITERATIONS OF
THREE EARLY EDO PERIOD CASTAWAY ACCOUNTS
Miraculously, the ship on which Asanoshin rode-was it because he was Japanese?-escaped damage
from the storm. Where it had been blown, however, no one on board knew. The great ship drifted
wherever the wind and the waves took it. Somehow the days passed, and the food and water began to run
out. No one on board expected to live much longer. But then, in the distance, beyond the surging waves,
lookouts saw an island. The excited sailors used all the life left in them to row toward it. It was the Island
of Women, a country inhabited only by women.!
--HIrai Sanjin, FCtryCt Shid6ken den (1763)
In the last months of 1763 a curious book-Furyu Shid6ken den @'11rE;s;Jl:j:Jliff~-
written by Furai Sanjin (a.k.a. Tenjiku Ronin, Hiraga Gennai) was all the rage, going
through numerous re-printings and spawning a boom in accounts of fictional world
trave1.2 Furai frames his tale as a sermon given by a historically verifiable storyteller of
some fame who preached in Asakusa and who went by the names of Shidoken and
Fukai Asanoshin. Asanoshin's story recalls his experience of visiting numerous
countries with the aide of a magic fan given to him in a dream by the immortal and
guide by the name ofFfuai Senjin (not to be confused with the author's nom de plume).
! Translated by Chris Drake, in Shirane Raruo, Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology,1600-
1900, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 504. See also, NKBT55, 155-220.
2 For a history of the text see Noda Risao, Nihon kinsei shOsetsu shi, dangibon hen (Tokyo: Benseisha,
1995), 165-I66. A partial list of representative world travel texts produced following the appearance of
Gennai's Shid6ken den to 1800 include; 1koku kidan Was6bei ~OO*~fQttA%1tJof 1774, that actually
acknowledges Gennai's text; 1koku saiken Was6bei k6hen ~OO¥B!fQttA%1tJ1H;of 1779, which was
critical of the first Was6bei text; 1kokufCtzoku waraishirushi resshi ~OOJ!\.{~~U~!ir of 1783; Ky6kun
kidan Morokoshi saiken banashi ti&~JII*~3U$[mM!lJilJ~of1784; Seisengyoku ikk6 gendan i1X:{rlrli- i=1 ~~of
1786; Sanzen sekai mitekita banashi c=. 'fiJtfflLJiI..*~.$Jiof 1799, Mitekita banashi kOhen nurete de kuri JiI..*
~.$Jil~*';~-=F--z'* of 1799; and Zusan manshin dorohahaki t±m'I~ILAJj::il!' of 1800.
239
Although not a castaway account per se, the final volume of the text adopts the form of
hy6ryuki in Asanoshin's final venture before his return to Japan. After convincing the
Chinese court to send him back to Japan so that he might make a life-size copy of
Mount Fuji, the armada of 300,000 ships carrying paper and paste is met with by storms
conjured up by the Japanese gods. Asanoshin's boat alone survives the storm, but
among the crew, Asanoshin alone (was it because he was Japanese?) survives the
demands of the island's sex-starved inhabitants.
Today Gennai's Shid6ken den stands as a masterpiece of the dangi bon genre
and a brilliant satire of mid-eighteenth century Japan. The Island of Woman
(nyogonoshima) that Gennai conjures up was not his invention alone. In fact, other
famous literary authors such as Ihara Saikaku, as well as anonymously written castaway
accounts of the day (see next chapter) occasionally made reference to this fantastic
space in the middle of the ocean.3 But at least in Gennai's account, this island is not the
exotic and pleasurable utopia of male heterosexual fantasy, but instead a site in which
male and female roles are reversed in an otherwise familiar space of the legitimate
urban brothel districts in Edo and elsewhere. With Asanoshin enslaved as a prostitute,
Gennai provides a critique of the actual conditions of indentured women of another
floating world. Gennai has often been compared to his European contemporary
3 There are also Ainu and Dutch references to islands of women. The term is said to have been a poetic
name for the Hachijojima islands from very early.
240
Jonathan Swift, and his ability to satirize by de- familiarizing the category of the "real,"
is reminiscent of Swift's own fictional castaway account, Gulliver's Travels. 4
Although this dangi bon predates the arrival of Kodayu and Isokichi in 1792, we
might assume that as an associate of Katsuragawa Hoshu, his brother Morishima
Churyo, Otsuki Gentaku, Sugita Genpaku, and other Edo- and Nagasaki-based scholars
familiar with the geography of the outside world, that he had direct access to hy6ryuki
accounts. 5 Recently, Marcia Yonemoto has argued that Gennai' s work reflects a certain
"geographic imaginary" that she claims emerged among urban consumers both high and
low in the eighteenth century. She points to world maps and Chinese encyclopedias and
gazetteers ofthe known world such as the San cai tu hui .::::.::tlllit of 1609 and Shanhai
jing 0-lr4jH~ of the second century, B.C.E. as the source for Japan's own worldview.6
Yonemoto concludes that Japanese texts such as Terajima Ryoan's Wa-Kan sansai zue
fr:Jt~r= ::t~*€; begun in 1712 and Nishikawa Joken's Ka-i tsush6 k6 $i%i!i!Piti15 of 1695
(revised 1709) attempted to arrange a new geographic knowledge "within one
4 It has been suggested that Gennai read a Dutch version of Swift's Gulliver's Travels, although these
theories are based on similarities between the two texts, and without any conclusive evidence. A
summary of Homer's Ody55ey existed in Japan from very early on. See Donald Keene, The Japanese
Discovery ojEurope , 1720-1830, Revised Edition (Smnford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969),74-75.
Likewise, Robinson Crusoe was translated numerous times by the late Edo period, and in fact, Niijima 10
is said to have brought it along with a copy of the bible when he set out for America in 1864. For Nijima
Jo information see Hirakawa Sukehiro, "Japan's Turn 0 the West," in Bob Wakabayashi, ed., Modern
Japanese Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
5 Noda notes that in the introduction to his Kakanju ryakusetsu;Jd3'C::ffJOOe-imGennai explains how he learned
the method of making asbestos and other inventions he is credited with, through his participation in a
discussion between Aoki Sensei (I assume Aoki Konyo) and one Captain Yangaransu. See Noda (1961),
310. Noda Hisao, Kinsei shOsetsu shi ronkO (Tokyo: Kaku Shobo, 1961),310-316. Demonstrating even
further that Gennai not only had access to numerous castaway accounts, but also Dutch sailors.
See also Yonemoto (2003), 110.
241
overarching epistemological system inherited from the Chinese. Both [texts]
fundamentally shaped the work of later Japanese writers and illustrators-including
authors of satirical fiction-who depicted foreign countries and peoples.,,7 The Chinese
"overarching epistemological system" she explains earlier is, "a new Japan-centered
worldview," or what we have referred to earlier (following Arano) as Nihon-gata ka-i
chitSujO.8 But perhaps the better question to be asked is not whether Shid6ken den or
other Edo fiction of the world might engage a shared imaginary geography, but instead
what other geographic imaginaries might circulate in the text? Looking at the
reiterations of early Edo castaways in the late Edo period, we can see a certain
dissonance among multiple geographic imaginaries. Ikeuchi Satoshi in his study of
tycoon diplomacy and might (fttwx), has articulated similar concerns when he writes,
During this same time in the mid-eighteenth century, not only was
there this Japan-centered civilized-barbarian consciousness (S *1J!.!
¥~~~), but also, as the Motoori Norinaga strain of Nativist
Studies upheld, a worldview (t!t3'f.1iJl.) that centered on the emperor
and the court to explain Japan. Furthermore, Dutch and
Confucian scholars who understood ka and i in relative terms and
conceived of Japan as instantly outside the paradigmatic center (cjJ
¥), came to the forefront from the eighteenth through to the
nineteenth centuries. In other words, in Japan in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries there were a plurality of worldviews that
coexisted, and a Japan-centered civilized-barbarian consciousness
was simply one among them.9
6 Marcia Yonemoto, Mapping Early Modern Japan: Space, Place, and Culture in the Tokugawa Period
(1603-1868), (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 105.
7 Yonemoto (2003), 106.
8 Ibid., 104.
9 Ikeuchi Satoshi, Taikun gaiko to 'bui': Kinsei Nihon no kokusai chitujo to ChOsen kan, Nagoya: Nagoya
Daigaku Shuppan Kai, 2006),201.
242
While most of the texts considered by late-Edo and Meiji period readers to be
hy6ryuki are shorter, bureaucratic documents of the kuchigaki form, there are a handful
of notable exceptions. lO In fact, if we were to plot out incidents of drift that generated
multiple textual retellings, three general categories would emerge. From the beginnings
of the Edo period, through to 1794, most all accounts take place in the context of
established East Asian diplomatic protocol and most foreign spaces and peoples fall
within a traditional understanding of nations and peoples. As has already been
demonstrated, with the repatriation of K6dayu and Isokichi in 1792 we begin to see a
new formal geme of hy6ryuki emerge. During this same moment, older castaway
narratives also re-emerged in more popular forms and gemes that tended to disseminate
castaway narratives to wider reading and viewing audiences. While after 1794, most
accounts of significant length and detail focus on encounters with westerners, older
accounts that did not, now began to be rewritten as published adventure narratives and
kabuki theater, as if these older stories had somehow been rendered politically safe to
rewrite as fiction. I I Thus, two of these three general categories of hy6ryuki texts that
emerge during the late-Edo period consist of 1) accounts relating to traditional Asian
others (Chinese, Koreans, Siamese, Cambodians, Ryukyuans, etc.) written throughout
10 Besides the three subjects of this chapter, namely Tenjiku Tokubei, Magotar6/Magoshichi, and the
surviving crew of Dattan hyoryCtki. we might consider HyofCttan. and two accounts to Vietnam as major
texts produced before 1792. There are also several early accounts related to uninhabited islands (see
Chapter Five) and Ezo that exceeded the formal limits of kuchigaki.
11 The few accounts taking place exclusively in Asia after 1800, such as Palau hyoryCtki. Luzon hyoryCtki.
and Batan hyoryCtki still comment upon a colonized Pacific and are populated by a mix of westerners,
Chinese, indigenous peoples.
243
the Edo period but in increasingly popular forms by the late-Edo period; and 2)
accounts written between 1794 and the 1860s that take as their topic western expansion
and colonialism in the Pacific. A third, less-represented category that spans both the
early- and late-Edo period is made up of 3) accounts dealing with uninhabited islands
(addressed in the next chapter).
While we have focused primarily on accounts of maritime disaster taking place
in the late Edo period, in this chapter we will consider three incidents of drift that
actually took place in the early Edo period. Our objective is not to recover the historical
details of the accounts themselves, but instead to investigate the remarkable manner in
which they were re-inscribed and staged in the late Edo period. In doing so, we shall
see that over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it was not
so much a single dominant world-view or geographic imaginary that informed cultural
production, but that numerous world-views-including a revised ka-i order that now
placed Japan as the true inheritors of Ming civilization, notions of the world based on
earlier visions of a Tenjiku-centric geography, as well as a slightly later notion of the
globe based on knowledge marked by scientific methods predominant in many of the
texts we have considered thus far. 12
12 Margarita Winkel suggests as much in her unpublished study of Edo period perceptions of the world.
For example, in her discussion of Morishima Chfiry6's Kama zatsuwa and Bankoku shinwa, she
emphasizes Chfiry6's use of both Chinese and Western texts, concluding that he, "not only succeeds in
making new and original observations, but also to evaluate foreign conditions quite independently from
one single type of source on world view." Margarita Winkel, "Discovering Different Dimensions:
Explorations of Culture and History in Early Modern Japan," Doctoral Dissertation, Leiden University,
2004),115.
244
TENJIKU TOKUBEI
In the 7th month of 1804 the Kawarazaki za of Edo staged Tsuruya Nanboku the
IV latest play, Tenjiku Tokubei ikoku banashi or ''Tenjiku Tokubei's Tales of Foreign
Countries." Records indicate that this play was sold out for over two straight months
and its popularity vaulted both its author and lead actor, Qnoe Matsunosuke, into a
realm of unprecedented fame.13 The play begins with the return of a Japanese castaway
from the land of Tenjiku. He discovers that his real father is in fact the Korean refugee
priest, Sokan, who has spent his life plotting the assassination of the shogun. Tokubei,
inheriting the secrets of toad magic, eventually brings about resolution to the conflict by
destroying Sokan's mansion and soldiers.
According to the Shibai nendaiki Z:Ji§-1f1i;~c, the performance included
outrageous tricks such as giant fire-breathing toads, the collapse of a building on stage,
and throwing performers off stage into tubs of water that would in turn drench the
audience. But what seems to have made the biggest splash was the fact that for the first
time in Kabuki history, costume changes were done underwater and with such speed
that rumor soon spread that the actor Matsunosuke was using Christian black magic to
perform such feats. 14 Scholars conclude that it was Matsunosuke and Nanboku
13 Toita Kenji, Meisaku kabuki zenshU, vol. 9 (Tokyo: Tokyo Sogen shinsha, 1969),5.
14 Kawatake Shigetoshi, Hy6shaku Edo bungaku s6sho kabuki meisaku shU, j6 (Tokyo: Dai Nihon
Yfibenkai Kodansha,1935),204.
245
themselves that generated such rumors for the sake of increasing even more the
popularity of the play, nonetheless this did not stop the Machibugy6 from sending
officials to the theater to conduct a thorough investigation,I5 Despite the concerns of
officials, the play was allowed to continue being performed and by later that year
people in the streets of Edo were chanting, "Ry6goku Matsuroku mizu atari!"
("Splashed by the water of Ry6goku Matsuroku!") as reference to Matsunosuke's
staged antics,I6 Likewise, the popularity of the Tokubei legend is attested to in the
extensive number of woodblock prints based on specific performances that exist today,
Illustration 4.1.
Three-panel woodblock print for Onoe Kikugoro lchidaiki (lchimura za) by Utagawa Kuniyoshi 17
15 Ibid, 204. See also Toita, 6 and James Brandon & Samuel Leiter, eds., Kabuki Plays on Stage:
Darkness and Desire. 1804-1864 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002), 35.
16 Kawatake, 204.
17 From Tsubouchi Memorial Museum, Waseda University, also in Brandon & Lietier.
Illustration 4.3.IIlustrated program (Yon go me) for Tenjiku Tokubei ikoku banashe9
18 Toita Kenji, Meisaku kabuki zenshCi, vol. 9 (Tokyo: Tokyo Sagen Shinsha, 1969),8.
19 Toita Kenji, Meisaku kabuki zenshCi, vol. 9, 3.
246
247
While some scholars have attributed both the popularity of the play and it's
emphasis on the "bizarre" to the decadence of the Bunka-Bunsei eras (1804-1830),20 the
inscription and performance of the Tokubei legend was not new to the early nineteenth
century. A partial list of texts would include:
1707 Tokubei Tenjiku monogatari, hy6ryuki with characteristics of setsuwa written by
the Priest Soshin
1743 Tenjiku Tokubei ki, hy6ryuki manuscript at Kyoto University
1757 Tenjiku Tokubei kikigaki 6rai, kabuki play (Omatsu Hyakusuke za)
1757 Tenjiku t6kai monogatari, popular handwritten hy6ryuki of which several copies
still exist
1763 Tenjiku Tokubei sato no sugatami, j6ruri play written by Chikamatsu Heiji and
Takemoto Saburohei (Takemoto za)
1784 Tenjiku Tokubei 6rai banashi, printed text written by Rakuda Sanjin
1804 Tenjiku Tokubei monogatari kusaz6shi written by Santo Kyoden and illustrated
by Utagawa Toyokuni
1804 Tenjiku Tokubei ikoku banashi, kabuki play written by Tsuruya Nanboku
IV(Kawarazaki za)
1832 Tenjiku Tokubei oboegaki, hy6ryuki manuscript
1847 Onoe Kikugor6 ichidaiki, kabuki play (lchimura-za)
20 Brandon & Leiter, 34.
248
Likewise, providing a handful of titles, Ikeuchi Satoshi identifies 45 named and
unnamed accounts written between 1737 and 1878 that take as their topic the story of
Tokubei?l His interest in the Tokubei legend, is part of a larger concern for the ways in
which popular (OOI~;) representations of Koreans were manifested in early modern
artistic texts of the Other (jfri!tj(~t=-:B,t Q il'fd~1I).22 He singles out two other legends-
those of Coxinga made popular in Chikamatsu Monzaemon's Kokusenya gassen and
those relating the murder of the Korean official Sai Tenso ~7(* in 176423 at the hands
of Suzuki Denzo, one of the Tsushima Domain's Korean translators- that along with
Tenjiku Tokubei, present dramatic possibilities in re-writing historical foreign relations.
Ikeuchi's research attempts to read these later re-workings as expressions of sympathy
for Korea that was earlier invaded by the Japan and further demonstrate a growing
concern for justice found in other theater of the time focused on more domestic issues.
We shall see later in this chapter that this mid-eighteenth century boom in Japanese
popular representations of Koreans coincided with the re-inscription not only Tokubei,
but also the castaways from 1644 that returned from drifting to Tartary (Dattan).
Although the theatrical techniques incorporated into Nanboku's masterpiece
were perhaps new to audiences, the story of Tokubei was not. The drama they
witnessed would have resonated with earlier versions of Tokubei's story found in
popular drama, graphic art, and literature. The highly fictionalized accounts of Tokubei
21 Ikeuchi (2006), 180-181.
22 Ibid., 194-199.
23 See Ikeuchi (2006), 150-151 for detailed account of this incident.
249
that found their way into late Edo period theater and popular fiction all find their
common source in the much earlier Tokubei Tenjiku monogatari (1707). A brief
genealogy of these texts reveals that the story, as it appeared in Nanboku's 1804
performance was the result of numerous textual reconfigurations taking place across
genres over nearly one century. In 1757 the kabuki play Tenjiku Tokubei kikigaki 6rai
had proven very successful for the Omatsu Hyakusuke za. 24 That same year, the
document Tenjiku t6kai monogatari was written.15 Seven years later the Takemoto za
staged Tenjiku Tokubei sato no sugatami as a j6ruri play. Based on a brief look at the
Kokusho s6mokuroku, we can see that numerous handwritten accounts concerning
Tenjiku Tokubei were written over the course of the Edo period including; the Tenjiku
Tokubei ki (1743), Tenjiku Tokubei 6rai banashi (1784), and Tenjiku Tokubei oboegaki
(1832).16 Contemporaneous with Matsunosuke's performance mentioned earlier, the
most famous popular writer and illustrator of the day, Santo Kyoden and Utagawa
Toyokuni respectively, even turned to the Tokubei legend, writing their kusa z6shi text,
Tenjiku Tokubei monogatari. Even after Nanboku's version of 1804, the story has been
rewritten for the stage and has continued to prove popular with the success of plays
24 Toita,4.
25 In the National Diet Library. A printed edition of the text can be found in volume 10 of the Nihon
bunko.
26 Numerous referenes to Tenjiku castaway accounts and other more popular forms of this particular
Tenjiku castaway account can be found in Kokusho s8mokuroku. vol. 5 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1967),
821.
250
such as Onoe Kikugoro ichidaiki performed by the Ichimura-za in 1847 (Illustration
4.1).
Although the story of Tokubei was often rendered fantastic through dramatic
reinventions, all the stories borrow the basic story of a historically verifiable hyoryuki
based on the adventures of a sailor, Tokubei, whose ship became distressed in 1627.
The earliest accounts chronicle his wanderings throughout the land of Tenjiku,
providing the reader with descriptions of the peoples, customs, wildlife, and products of
distant foreign countries, while later accounts such as Tenjiku Tokubei ikoku banashi
focus on extrapolating the details of Tokubei's return to Japan. While we have already
seen several examples in which a particular incident of drift, in turn generated a
plurality of inscriptions, the Tokubei stories are somewhat remarkable for both the sheer
number of reiterations and the specific popular forms of theatrical performance that
these particular retellings take.
Nanboku's play was investigated for connections to Christian black magic only
to be approved by the Edo magistrates. We may also consider the fact that the author of
the Tenjiku Tokubei monogatari, Santo Kyoden, had spent 50 days in handcuffs for
writing subversive sharebon a decade earlier while his Tokubei text seemed to have
passed without any similar repercussions?? While it is often said that castaway
narratives were underground texts that were otherwise strictly controlled, the
appearance of numerous printed accounts as well as public theatrical performances
27 Peter Kornicki, The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century
(Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001), 240-241.
251
demonstrates that dissemination of at least some of these texts was not so tightly
monitored?8 We might wonder why authors of the time felt compelled enough to flirt
with authority in telling such a story, or was there something that distinguished
Tokubei's story from other castaway narratives that in turn allowed it to be reiterated in
such popular forms? In order to consider these questions further; let us now turn our
attention to the earliest versions of Tokubei's story known as the Tokubei Tenjiku
monogatari,z9
Although Edo period castaway accounts are often considered as a monolithic
genre, this study has attempted to demonstrate that what constitutes the category of
hyoryuki is in fact comprised of a broad spectrum of texts ranging from the kuchigaki
form, to encyclopedic accounts modeled on Katsuragawa Hoshfi's Hokusa bunryaku
and Otsuki Gentaku's Kankai ibun, to playful accounts that employ poetry and other
literary means for the sake of entertainment. Tokubei's maritime travel must first be
formally and historically differentiated from other accounts of the era. It is in many
ways the product of a different epoch characterized by licensed trade with foreign
countries through the distribution of shuin or vermilion seals.30 In this account we see
28 On a related note, we might also point toward a sets of illustrations in the Kochi Prefectural Museum
and the Whale Museum in Taiji, Wakayama produced at the very end of the Edo period meant to
accompany a oral performance of Manjiro's story (kami shibai).
29 See Appendix E for a complete translation of Tokubei Tenjiku monogatari. This is based on the
document as it is reproduced in EHSS 1,487-504. This is the definitive version of the text in print and is
based on the work of Ishii Kendo, who compiled and transcribed the text into printable form based upon
multiple handwritten versions and variants.
30 Iwao Seiichi is the most eminent scholar of this early transnational trade. See Shuinsen b8eki shi no
kenkyu (Tokyo: Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1985 and Shuinsen to Nihon machi (Tokyo: Shibundo,
1963). See also, Nakamura Hiroshi, "Maps Used by Japanese Licensed Trading Ships," in Nakamura
Hiroshi, East Asia in Old Maps (Honolulu: East West Center Press, 1964),74-84.
252
numerous instances where Tokubei clearly associates himself with this elite group of
traders privileged to carry out trade within this older order.
It is said that since in the past, merchants from Japan were permitted to
carry out trade with Tenjiku, Suminokura Yoichi, Chaya Shirojiro,
Hirano Heijiro, Kagoya, Beniya, and folks of this ilk became official
Tenjiku traders. I, Tokubei, was a merchant captain working under
Suminokura Yoichi and chartered by the ship captain Maebashi Kiyobei
departing Nagasaki on my way to Tenjiku at age fifteen?l
Fortunately for Tokubei, his return to Japan in 1633 came only two years before
the already mentioned set of maritime prohibitions (kaikin), commonly misconstrued as
Sakoku rei, came to be implemented, and thus his fate was not subject to dictates that
now forbade travel abroad by Japanese and threatened to execute any repatriated
Japanese.32 Although we are told that Tokubei himself dictated his story, we are also
told that it was not until age of 89, over seventy years after his return to Japan, that he
took the tonsure and priestly name of Soshin and proceeded to record his account.
Recollected seventy-some years after the fact, this story is somewhat unique among Edo
period castaway accounts of the foreign. During the long 74 year period that transpired
while the narrator Tokubeil Soshin was refining his story, regulations controlling
overseas travel were reconfigured, repatriation policies between countries were formed,
and a whole genre of texts known as hyoryuki or castaway accounts came to be
spawned. As we have seen, by the turn of the nineteenth century these texts came to
31 All citations from the Tokubei Tenjiku monogatari are taken from my appended translation. I am
grateful for Stephen Kohl's advice with this translation.
32 Hiraga Nohuru, ed., Nihonshi shiryo senshU, vol. 1. (Tokyo: Bon'ninsha, 1990), 141-142.
253
almost always warn of the ominous designs of Western imperial and commercial
expansion in Asia. Furthermore, they relate an equally imagined yet very new
geography of a finite and nearly closed world of colonies and colonizers, a hierarchy of
civilization, race, and emerging Nation-States, and an ideology of territorial exploitation.
In other words, by the 1790s this textual category of hy6ryuki became intimately linked
to the development of global relations in the context of early modern world history.
However, being of an earlier epoch, Soshin's version of the story is grounded in a
radically different Buddhist-centered geography and topography in which the category
of "the West" is barely existent and a region of the world now considered "Europe"
remains peripheral at best. In Tokubei Tenjiku monogatari we do see a few references
to European countries, however their status as a colonial threat is completely absent.
This is despite the fact that knowledge of the Dutch or the English at this time ironically
came via the imperial outposts they were able to set up in Batavia and other Southeast
Asian ports.
Going to Chaya, Rokukon, and Hitsuhira, about 800 ri from the capital
[Kyoto]33 there is a place called Shakatai. From this place leaving Suwau
and Kyara, it is another 900 ri in the SW direction to a place called
Jagatara [Jakarta]. This place produces various leather products as well
as shark [skin] and other goods. Until this point we were still in the
country of Makata, however to the southwest is barbarian country of
Tsuritogisu [Portugal???]. In the northwest direction are Granda
[Holland], Igirisu [England], Nuisukuwanniyoro, and the country of
Dattan.34
33 Alternate text reads, "in the SW direction." The text seems to make a very large geographical jump here
and begins to describe a completely different area. It is impossible to determine based on the text
whether this is information gleaned from firsthand experience or not.
34 The narration of this geography may be based on the colonial outposts in Asia that these western
countries laid clam to, or it may actually refer to the European countries themselves. Since S6shin does
not include any distances here, it seems he could in fact be referring to the very distant European
254
Makata being the extent of Tokubei's travels, the European countries appear
simply as neutral components in a catalog of foreign countries-a catalog comprised of
identifiable, unidentifiable, and completely imaginary lands (such as the islands of men
and women)-and that exist only on the horizon, at the limits of this Buddhist-centric
worldview. This positioning of countries is radically different from the vast majority of
castaway narratives that come later. By way of contrast, Katsuragawa Hoshfi's
geographic descriptions of the world as they appear in the Hokusa bunryaku are painted
with a western inflected notion of world geography.
Having been shown maps of Amchitka and various places [we were able
to imagine] the direction, route, and distance to Kamchatka and [we
could see] that this was one island in the "Areuchisuki" archipelago.
The island of Arukukuto in Zeogarahi lies right between the two great
continents of Asia and America. The islands are spread out like stars all
the way to the coast of North America. However, since these islands are
so small, they cannot all be named. They begin 600 or 700 ri to the
northeast of Ezo at 52 or 53 degrees North Latitude... [Russians] have
without a doubt laid claim to America. Among the four great continents,
three-America, Asia, and Europe-are connected.35
Although we may find fault with the details of this description by Katsuragawa,
the basic components of continent, nation, and colony, as well as the abstractions of
European exploration such as latitude, that we see here, marks a dramatic break from
castaway accounts such as Tokubei' s that came before it. Reading Tokubei Tenjiku
monogatari today, we are continually confronted with a certain geographic dissonance.
countries themselves. It is important to note that unlike later Edo period castaway accounts which often
focus heavily on descriptions of empire and colonial relations, Tokubei's story seems to be completely
void of this vocabulary.
35 NSSSS5, 744.
255
Even the designation of the space "Tenjiku" presents a problem. Early literary texts
such as Taketori monogatari and Konjaku monogatari often equate this term with India
and this is still a common practice today. However Tokubei's travels in fact take place
throughout a space coinciding with today's Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia,
Thailand, and Vietnam. While focusing on mendicant priests from Tenjiku arriving in
Japan (Tenjikujin hijiri) , the historian Tanaka Takeo, has demonstrated that by the
fourteenth century the land of Tenjiku was in fact a much more loosely determined
space that included Java, parts of China, and other areas outside the traditionally
understood borders of India.36
Tenjiku is perhaps better understood in terms of its central position in a
particular Buddhist cosmology represented by a particular type of map known as Go
Tenjiku zu 3i::R~~. Tenjiku was frequently divided into five (and sometimes sixteen)
smaller countries and was said to comprise the larger part of the continent of Jambu-
dvfpa or "The Whole World." (1: Nansen bushu). The birthplace of the Buddha and
center of this worldview was commonly marked by a vortex in the north-central
mountains of this landmass and a central lake from which four major rivers flow.J7
Map 4.1 is a very early example of how this worldview was conceived spatially.
It is interesting to note that in this map, the Japanese archipelago remains on the very
upper right-hand border, on the very edges of the world. While this geography came
36 Tanaka Takeo, "Ken Minsen b6ekika Tachibanay6 Nishinobu to sono izzoku," in ChUsei kaigai kOshO
shi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppan, 1959), 117-120.
256
under greater and greater scrutiny, with the growing knowledge from the West and a
redirected gaze toward the Pacific, these Tenjiku zu continued to be produced and
evidence suggests that the particular view of the world embodied in these maps
maintained a certain authority over the course of the early Edo period. This is not to say
that it was the only, or even predominant, geography of the day. By the end of the
eighteenth century, maps based exclusively on western geographic knowledge also
came to circulate. (See Map 4.2) As a parallel or alternative geography, these maps
superimposed a latitude-longitude grid over the world and established a spherical logic
of the globe by having all horizontal lines bend in proportion to their relative distance to
the equator. Produced just a few years after Tokubei was said to have written his
account, we may also consider the Nansen bushu bankoku sh6ka no zu of 1709 or
171038 by the priest H6tan (Map 4.3) as another example of the many Tenjiku maps that
were produced during this period. While Japan appears as a much more accurate and
distinct body in relation to the continent, we also see European countries distinctly
marked in the upper left-hand corner. Muroga and Unno have demonstrated that H6tan
based his map on an earlier anonymous map known as the "Namba map" (Map 4.4),
and incorporated new geographic information about the European world gleaned from
the Dai Min kyuhen bankokujinseki rotei zenzu?9 Thus they conclude that, "H6tan's
problem was now properly to bring these far-off countries into Jambu-dv'ipa while
37 See Muroga & Vnno, "The Buddhist World Map in Japan and its contact with European Maps," in
Imago Mundi, vol 16 (1962),49-69.
38 The exact dating of this map is somewhat unclear. See Muroga & Vnno, 62.
257
retaining its traditional shape. The Namba map provided him with the best material
possible."40 Thus, this map maintains the elements of the vortex and rivers that emanate
from it, as well as the singular landmass that comprises this world found in the Tenjiku
precursors.
Map 4.l.GoTenjiku zu at Hy6ryuji, 136441
39 Ibid, 62.
40 Ibid, 62.
41 From Nihon no kochizu (Tokyo: S6gensha, 1969), 1.
258
Map 42.Enkyu bankoku chikai zenzu, 18024"
Map 4.3.Nansen bushU bankoku shOka no zu, c.a. 1710 by the priest H6tan43
42 From Nihon no kochizu (Tokyo: S6gensha, 1969),20-21.
259
Map 4A."Namba Map,,44
With a long history of exchange between China and Japan, we may well wonder
why the "Middle Kingdom" does not appear completely accurate. Certainly we may
find it marked (if not so accurately) in the Tenjiku maps we have already seen. In the
Shinch6 itt6 no zu (Map 4.5), we see the centrality of China emphasized at the expense
of Tenjiku. It is important to note however that Tenjiku, along with the Japanese
archipelago and the Korean peninsula are still there, even if relegated to the extreme
right margin. Perhaps the most interesting fusion of these two disparate geographies is
found in the Bankoku ikkan zu of 1809 (Map 4.6) Except for the Americas, this map
43 From Columbia University Japanese Maps webpage. Also in Nihon no kochizu (Tokyo: S6gensha,
1969), 13
44 From Nobuo Muroga & Kazutaka Unno, "The Buddhist World Map in Japan and its Contact with
European Maps," in Imago Mundi, XVI (1962),58.
260
reveals an awareness of the world not so different than our own worldview. It does so,
while maintaining the earlier mentioned characteristics of Tenjiku zu such as the vortex.
But in order to reconcile these two perspectives, it relies on two separate map keys.
While the key in the lower left-hand corner refers to the newer concepts of continents,
the five color-coded circles near the center of the map speak of the "Five Tenjiku."
Map 4.5ShinchO itta no zu by Seitaien (1835)45
261
Map 4.6.Bankoku ichiran zu by Koyano Yoshiharu (1809)46
The transformations in geographic knowledge manage to even permeate the
concrete usage of language. The verb "toten" ("to cross to Tenjiku") which appears
numerous times in Tokubei 's narrative with such phrases as, "Nagasaki wo shussen
tsukamatsuri toten itashi sora," (from the above citation) suggests its own becoming
obsolete and must have already sounded somewhat archaic in the context of post-
shuinsen international relations. Originally used to describe Chinese priests' travels to
45 From Nihon no kochizu (Tokyo: S6gensha, 1969), 17.
46 From Nihon no kochizu (Tokyo: S6gensha, 1969),22-23.
262
the holy-land of Buddhism, by the beginning of the seventeenth century it was more
often used to describe international trade between Japan and various ports in Southeast
Asia.
The antiquated sense of this term is reinforced with the repeated
qualification that the story is one set "in the past," and repeated emphasis that
the circumstances of Tokubei's misfortune are something rendered no longer
possible. Towards the end of his story we again read:
In those days, the commercial products sent from Japan included
mosquito netting, umbrellas, fans, lacquer ware, guns, bronze, tools,
swords, long knives, however this is now strictly forbidden by Japan.47
In those days, we would return from Tenjiku with thread, fabric,
medicines, fragrant woods, and shark that we bought.
Aside from distinguishing between transoceanic trade of the past and present, it
is important to also point out that the geography of Tokubei 's account is populated with
Buddhas, dragons, and even mythical phoenixes. It is unique among castaway
narratives in that it borrows heavily from setsuwa tradition and lacks scientific and
ethnographic description found in later accounts. Unlike later versions of Tokubei's
story that appear on stage and in popular literature, Tokubei Tenjiku monogatari
primarily focuses on visits to holy sites, explanations for the origins of relics kept by
temples in Japan, and anecdotes of a mysterious world. For example, he identifies a
stupa in Cambodia with Ryojusen, or Vulture Peak, in Northern India, where we are
told, Shakamuni gave a sermon.
47 Alternate text reads, "In particular umbrellas, netting, and fans comprise the majority of cargo because
Japanese paper is so thin and strong."
263
Forty ri upstream from the capital there is a mound called Ry6jusen.48 It
is one ri high and eight ch6 wide and 16 ch6 in length. At this place you
can see a huge boulder. On this Rock Mountain a sermon was given by
Shakamuni. High on that rock is the Buddha's wash basin.49
Since our author of this tale is writing only after Tokubei has become the priest
S6shin and is identified with being affiliated with a temple in Takasago, Harima, we
might not find this formal emphasis on the setsuwa ~R~g;tradition and the preponderance
of Buddhist-related stories so strange. As a hagiographic document relating the
adventures of Tokubei, it also may have been written in part to ratify the cultural
authority of the temple with which Tokubei is affiliated. We should not overlook
passages in the text that draw direct connections between S6shin the Buddhist priest and
the system of Shuinsen trade.50 For example, invoking the name of a particular temple
in Japan, we find Tokubei at one point explaining just how a set of sutras written on
leaves of a tree from Tenjiku find their way to Harima. As Tanaka's earlier cited study
demonstrates, social institutions at least partially outside the direct control of centralized
governance, particularly Buddhist temple complexes, developed tight relations between
the highly regulated system of official vermilion seal traders.51
48 This mountain, Ry6jusen, is the famed "Vulture Peak," where the Buddha was said to have expounded
many sutras. It is actually located in central India, however it seems that our narrator has once again
confused his geographies.
49 Alternate text reads, "a statue of the Buddha, his footprints, and a wash basin."
50 While pointing out that the Shuin sen "system" (seido) was instituted by an emerging early-modern
centralized State, Iwao is also careful to demonstrate that the development of this system also had its
origins in a shift from an older worldview (kyCt chitsujo). Iwao Seiichi, Shuinsen to Nihonmachi (Tokyo:
Shibund6, 1963),8-14.
51 Tanaka Takeo, "Ken Minsen bOekika Tachibanay6 Nishinobu to sono izzoku," in ChCtsei kaigai kOsho
shi no kenkyCt (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppan, 1959), 121.
264
There are leaves of the Tarayau tree growing around the mountain of
Ry6jusen. [Editor explains that this is a reference to the leaves of the
Tara tree, upon whose leaves are inscribed the teachings of the Buddha.]
Every year one cartload [of leaves] is exported. They have some of these
leaves at JOrinji Temple in Takasago.52 An old priest at Tehiyatai asked
us to get one of these leaves of the Tarayau tree on which the disciples at
the time of Buddha's life used to transcribe the Buddha's sermons. The
elder priest asked for one leaf and because this man was the father-in-law
of Kinoshita Rokubei-the overseer of the dorm belonging to my
employee Maebashi Seibei- we offered this to the temple.
We may also consider the following story of the Japanese merchant M6bei,
whom we are told Tokubei had met in person. This is a very concrete example of a
merchant attempting to smuggle back into Japan, artifacts of particularly sacred value
whose ultimate planned destination would have more likely than not been a temple:
There is a person named M6bei from Japan who came to Tenjiku twice.
On his second trip he had wrapped two or three of these Rain Dragon
scales in some nose papers and boarded the ship. At the mouth of the
RyOsa River they were not able to budge an inch, upon which the captain
of the ship determined that among those on board someone was in
possession of either the bones or scales of a Rain Dragon. M6bei would
have to quickly dispose of them in the river while a search [for the
culprit] was being conducted among the crew, otherwise even after
several months, the ship would refuse to move as long as they could not
find any contraband on board. They would begin to fight among
themselves thinking that one of them had concealed something on their
persons. Although they had all boarded the ship in the morning, by noon
they were still stuck, and since none of them were to leave the ship, this
man called Mobei secretly took all three scales from his pocket and
disposed of them. Immediately the boat took off. I heard this story from
Mobei himself. It is because of the power invested in the Rain Dragon,
that they can only be captured alive [and later] cut up and sold in pieces.
It is very difficult to dismiss this story completely, [since] the depth of
the Ryusa River at its center is 75 hiro, and I was told that there are
places that are 100 hiro.
52 Alternate text reads, "Nagasaki."
265
Although this particular story does not reappear in Nanboku's staged
performance of Tenjiku Tokubei ikoku banashi if9\ij.:R~1~Aw:r, it is juxtaposed nicely
with the later playwright's invention of fire-breathing magic toads. While the earlier
stories of dragons are "difficult to dismiss," by the 1800s the fire-breathing toads lay far
enough outside the realm of possibility that their existence remains an unthreatening
fiction. The sorcery of controlling these magic toads is associated in the play with both
Christianity and Ainu beliefs, through Tokubei's costumes that incorporate elements
from both the West and indigenous peoples (stage notes have him wearing both Ainu-
like and Dutch-sailors costumes). Though loosely based on S6shin's original account,
the playwright Nanboku added this Christian motive with specific directions concerning
Tokubei's appearance. As Brandon and Leiter point out,
Christianity, officially prohibited in the 1600s, was associated with
miraculous powers. The large Japanese toad (gama). . . [were]
considered frightening. The Ainu were reputed to believe that lunar
eclipses were caused by a toad swallowing the moon... Many folktales
and plays... exploit this belief, sometimes with a leading character
mastering the toad's magic and, with the toad at the character's side,
using its power to overcome its enemies.53
In considering just how fictional this invention appeared to late Edo viewers, we
should recall the fact that rumors of Christian sorcery that surrounded the production of
this play had nothing to do with the incorporation of fire-breathing toads, but instead
with the inventive acting techniques of its star performer Matsunosuke. Thus, as this
older Buddhist-centric geography of the Five Tenjiku countries was rendered obsolete
53 Brandon & Leiter, 35-36.
266
and replaced by a newer knowledge of the world informed by an increasing western
presence in Asia, new literary and fictional possibilities for the Tokubei story become
apparent.
Perhaps the most significant twist on the story of Tokubei that took place in later
Edo dramatic interpretations involves the identity of Tokubei himself. In the Tokubei
Tenjiku monogatari of 1707 Tokubei is unambiguously associated with a temple in
Takasago, Harima (in today's Hy6go Prefecture). However, in Nanboku's play of 1804
Tokubei comes on stage and is introduced as, "the captain Tokubei ... from Takasago in
northern Japan. Five years ago he was blown off course and landed in India.,,54 While
Takasago is a place-name for several sites in the archipelago (and Taiwan), the
somewhat ambiguous, for Edo audiences "Takasago in northern Japan" was most likely
the port of Takasago in Ezo-chi (now part of Muroran, Hokkaido). Along with the
Ainu-patterned, padded robe that Tokubei wears later in Act II, this introduction
manages to recast the castaways origins away from the Inland Sea, to the frontier zone
of the north where a decade earlier Kodayfi and Isokichi had been repatriated and where
the threat of Russian encroachment and Christianization of the Ainu in the Chishima
Islands had become one of the most significant concerns for the bakufu. As the play
unfolds, we learn that Tokubei has returned to the mansion of the father he never knew,
the Korean refugee Sokan, who has married a Japanese woman (Yfinami, Tokubei's
mother) and has spent his years in Japan so that he might master invincible magical
54 Kabuki Plays On Stage, volume 3: Darkness and Desire, 1804-1864 (James R. Brandon & Samuel L.
Leiter, eds.) (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002),37.
267
powers and carry out his life-long dream of assassinating the Shogun. Sokan's true
identity and admission of hoping, "to avenge Japan's cruelty toward Korea," comes in
his dramatically charged scene of suicide. The following scene then shifts to the deck
of Tokubei's ship, where Sokan acknowledges his paternity and proceeds to pass the
magic sword, mirror, and secrets of toad magic on to his son. After testing and
experimenting with his newly found powers, Tokubei turns to his father and says,
"Wonderful! I'll soon bring Japan to its knees! The gutters will run with blood! I
understand the magic, Father!" and later, at the close of the scene, he states, "I'll rule
land and sea! I'm invincible! Death and destruction to all Japan! I can even level Mt.
Fuji!"55 This re-assignment of Tokubei's identity as not quite Japanese, but instead as
someone from the border lands of the emerging national consciousness and with a
Korean lineage, seems to have its origins in Tenjiku Tokubei kikigaki arai of 1757.56
While Ikeuchi does not provide any textual analysis of the 45 Tenjiku texts he
identifies, this theme of Korean revenge that we see in this particular Tenjiku play
certainly fits well with his argument that popular sentiment among Japanese audiences
in the later Edo period tended to reflect sympathies for Korea. Furthermore, we might
point to similarities this Tenjiku play shares with the other two historic narratives that
Ikeuchi points to, namely the Coxinga and Sai Tensoliterature. As in the Coxinga
stories, the hero of Nanboku's Tenjiku play is the child of a Japanese mother and
foreign father. Furthermore, the geographic imaginary in both plays is rendered
55 Ibid.. 44-45.
56 See Ikeuchi (2006),384.
268
problematic in their respective reiterations. While Nanboku may have embraced an
increasingly obsolete Tenjiku-centric tale as source material in order to critique bakufu
relations with Korea, Chikamatsu Monzaemon also foregrounds the geographic
schematization of his Kokusenya Gassen of 1715, highlighting a certain dissonance
between a map that places China at its center, and the question of Japan's own claims to
centrality in a post-Ming East Asia. For example, in Act III, scene 1 we read:
I knew that Japan lay to the east, at the edge of the world, so each day
at dawn I bowed to the rising sun, and at dusk I spread out a map of
the world and said to myself: 'Here is China, there is Japan, where my
father is.' Japan seemed so near on the map, but you were three
thousand leagues away or more.57
As with Coxinga, Nanboku and other later writers and artists found the Tokubei
story on the one hand sufficiently exotic for entertainment purposes, but on the other
hand, historically and geographically far enough removed from contemporary realities
in order to avoid both the censorship of authorities and freely manipulate the details of
the original castaway narrative in creative ways. Namboku was not the only late Edo
writer to re-write early Edo castaway narratives in creative ways, and as we shall see in
our analysis of later versions of the early Edo castaways from Dattan hy6ryuki and
Magoshichi/Magotar6 legends, also engage the shifting geographic imaginations of
their readers in important ways.
57 Translated by Michael Brownstein, in Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900,
288. See also, NKBT50, 256-272.
269
DATTAN HYORYITKI
The Dattan hyoryuki lI@lf!£IjJ\'UJ1Eilc was first written in the 8th month of 1646 soon
after 15 of the original 58 crew members were repatriated to Japan via the Qing court in
Beijing and the Choson court of Korea.58 Along with Tokubei Tenjiku monogatari, it is
considered to be one of the earliest detailed (beyond the kuchigaki form) castaway
narratives of the Edo period.59 Also similar to the Tokubei story, the Dattan castaways'
story was significantly rewritten at least nine times after 1646.60 The general story
appears in various forms under the title of Ikoku monogatari ~~~~fr, while it was
published twice as both Kanei hyoryuki Jt:7k?~mtilc and the Chosen monogatari Jj!Ur~~fr,
the latter being published in at least two editions. This suggests that there was a
profound interest in this story among reading audiences throughout the Edo period, and
that by the early eighteenth century the reading audience included urban consumers who
58 For a katsuji version of the earliest documentation regarding this shipwreck see Ishii Kend6 korekushon
Edo hy6ryitki s6shit, dail kan (Yamashita Tsuneo, ed.) (Tokyo: Nihon Hyoronsha, 1992), pp. 97-130. A
summary/ translation of this account was done by V. Posdneeff and published as, "The Wanderings of the
Japanese Beyond the Seas," in The Transactions o/the Asiatic Society, Second Series, Volume 6 (1929),
20-51. The most extensive research to date done on these texts was by Sonoda Kazuki, Dattan hy6ryuki
no kenkyit (Fongtien City: South Manchurian Rail Co., 1939). See also, Sugiyama Kiyohiko, "Dattan
hy6ryuki no kokyo wo tazunete: Echizen Mikuni Minato homonki," in Manzoku shi kenkyu, dai san g6
(July 2004),156-172.
59 As for the attribution of being one of the first hy6ryitki following the implementation of early Edo
kaikin see, Arakawa Hidetoshi, Nihonjin hy6ryitki (Tokyo: Jinbutsu Oraisha, 1964), 39.
GO Suzuki Aya, in an article on the Ch6sen monogatari, cites Sonoda's Dattan hy6ryuki no kenkyu stating
that there are nine different versions of this account produced in the Edo period. See, Suzuki Aya,
"Enkyo - Kanenki no 'Chosen buumu' ni miru jita ishiki," in Rekishi hy6ron No. 651 (July 2004), 64.
270
purchased the text in published form. 61 Needless to say, there is no evidence that the
published versions of the story were suppressed or caused any problems with authorities.
Furthermore, unlike the Tokubei legend, the later versions of Dattan hy6ryuki are not
performed on stage or in puppet theater and instead of relying on the fantastic power of
toad magic and other supernatural elements to tell the story, the versions of the Dattan
castaways' story remains more-or-less a travel narrative, framed as factual, and relying
on detailed and accurate description of places the castaways stayed and the people with
whom they met. The Dattan hy6ryuki and variants of Ikoku monogatari are texts in two
parts, the first being a summary of the castaways travels, followed by a longer section
comprised of specific points of elaboration and descriptions of language, counting
systems, etc. encountered in Dattan and Beijing.
A month after their return via Tsushima in the spring of 1646 two castaways,
Kunita Hyoemon and Gno Yosaburo, were summoned to Edo to be questioned. The
resulting text, Dattan hy6ryuki, was a detailed account of the ships' crew and the
survivors' experiences through northeast Asia, to Beijing, and Korea on their return
home. The writing of the text coincided with the moment the bakuju were considering
61 For a katsuji version of the Ikoku hyoryi1ki see, Arakawa Hidetoshi, Ikoku hyoryi1kishi1 (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1962). The Kanei hyoryi1ki was reproduced and published as afukusei edition by
Kisho Fukuseikai (Tokyo: Yoneyamado, 1940). The Chosen monogatari was reproduced and published
as afukusei edition by the Kyoto Daigaku Kokubungakkai. See, Kimura Riemon, Chosen monogatari
[reprint of original 1750 text] (Kyoto: Kyoto Daigaku Kokubungakkai, 1970). Kyushu University
Library has placed a digital copy of the original text on the internet. See, http://record.museum.kyushu-
u.ac.jp/ntyou/top.html (May 1, 2006).
271
sending arms and assistance to the Ming loyalists and at a point when the bakuju was in
dire need of updates on the newly established Qing dynasty.62
According to the Dattan hyoryuki, in the 4th month of 1644 Takeuchi Fujiemon
and his son Takeuchi Tozo outfitted two ships and Kunita Hyoemon outfitted a third
with a total crew of 58 men.63 They original itinerary was to sail from their home port
of Mikuniura in the province of Echizen on the coast of the Japan Sea to Matsumae in
what is now in southern Hokkaido. They soon encountered a storm that blew for
approximately fifteen days. When the winds and rain finally abated, they found
themselves off the coast of an uninhabited shore. They assumed they had drifted to the
northeast, but after taking on drinking water and repairing their ships, they encountered
yet another storm, which drove their ships fifty ri (approximately 196 km.) further to
the west. Here they encountered natives in small boats, and once they realized that
these foreign peoples had access to ginseng, the Japanese sailors decided to somehow
load their ships and return with a rare and valuable cargo. The day after meeting the
foreigners, fourteen of the crew stayed on board the ships while the remaining forty-
four set off in search of ginseng, led by native guides. The crew members who went
ashore were ambushed and killed by the natives, who then turned to loot and set fire to
62 For a thorough review of this see Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early-modern Japan,
Princeton University Press, 1984, 131 ff.
63 The following narrative summary is taken from Stephen Kohl and Michael Wood, "Getting the Story
Right: A Castaway's Travels in Korea and the Textual Genealogy that Followed," forthcoming from
Columbia University Press. See also Arakawa Hidetoshi, Nihonjin hy6ryuki (Tokyo: Jinbutsu Oraisha,
1964),24-32. As Stephen Kohl and Haruna Akira, before him have pointed out, the likelihood that this
was actually a case of accidental drift is highly suspect. However, perhaps because of geopolitical
sensitivities at the time, the castaway's story was accepted as a case of drift.
272
the ships. In the end only fifteen of the fifty-eight castaways survived to be made slaves
by their captors.
Eventually Manchu (Dattan) officials arrived to investigate. They took the
fifteen Japanese survivors and three local village officials to the capital at Shenyang and
brought them before the magistrate. The official ruled that the local people were guilty
of ill-treating the castaways and of not reporting the matter of the arrival of foreigners
to the authorities. While they were taken care of in Shenyang, they were told that they
would have to petition the emperor in the newly established capital of Beijing if they
hoped to return to Japan. The castaways arrived in Beijing in the autumn of 1644 where
they were given a house, food and clothing, and servants to take care of their
housekeeping. In the spring of the following year they submitted a petition to the
emperor asking to be repatriated. Six more months passed until finally on the 5th day of
the 11 th month, they were told that they would depart within the week for Japan via
Korea. The Japanese were outfitted with winter clothes for traveling and given horses.
They joined more than a hundred horsemen with banners and servants all going to Seoul.
They passed through the Great Wall at Shanhaikuan, and returned to Shenyang
before making their way south toward Korea. At the Yalu River most of the Dattan
escort turned back when the castaways, along with about ten of the Dattan officials
were met by a party of some two hundred Koreans who took them on to Seoul.
Arriving at the end of the 12th month, the castaways were impressed by their Korean
273
escort, thinking that they had drawn such attention.64 Perhaps they did not realize that
the Dattan court was sending an ambassador to Seoul and they were merely attached to
the ambassador's retinue.
In Seoul the castaways were entertained on several occasions with elaborate
feasts and given gifts, before being sent to Pusan. As Stephen Kohl has pointed out, the
reason for their delay in Seoul was that Cheng Meng-shou, an interpreter for the Dattan
ambassador who had been part of the retinue from Beijing to Seoul, proposed that a
delegation including himself should accompany the castaways not merely to Pusan, but
all the way to Edo in order to meet with the Shogun Iemitsu and present him with a
message from the newly installed Qing emperor.65 The Korean officials who had dealt
regularly with the bakuju through Tsushima and its representatives knew perfectly well
that this proposal was outrageous. After Korean officials succeeded in persuading the
Qing ambassador to instead write a letter on behalf of his emperor, it was taken to
Pusan and handed to a Japanese representative, who in turn passed it to the proper
authorities in Tsushima. Nonetheless, Cheng Meng-shou's proposal delayed the
castaway's departure for Seoul by three days and caused considerable dismay among
64 The description of the treatment the castaways receive by the Manchu (in this text "Dai Min" is used)
officials often conflates the castaways' nationality with the level of attention they receive. For example,
in the Takeuchi manuscript it reads, "Even if we became slightly ill, a doctor would be called and because
Japanese are clean freaks (S *)d'i~IiT~!JX;0E!3 ~-=: --C), they would constantly purify themselves.
Furthermore, the wives and such of high ranking officials ($1t~O)~j]7'ct ~,,) were always begging us to
sing Japanese songs, and we were additionally treated to many feasts." EHSSl, 102-103. Sonoda, Kazuki.
Gp. Cit., 303.
65 Kohl & Wood, (forthcoming article, page 6 of manuscript submitted to editors)
274
the Korean officials.66 At Pusan the castaways were turned over to the custody of
Furukawa lemon who was the Tsushima domain's representative in Korea. They were
given lodgings in at the Japan House67 (K: Waegwan) in Pusan. On the 17th day of the
2nd month of 1646 the castaways arrived at the port of Wani no ura on Tsushima and
were at last on Japanese soil almost two years after leaving their homes. They spent
nearly four months on Tsushima presumably being debriefed by Tsushima authorities,
and then were sent on to Osaka, arriving there on the 16th day of the 6th month.
While Dattan hyoryuki is perhaps the earliest extended version of these
castaways' travels, Arakawa has argued that the story was soon reworked in various
manuscript forms and titled Ikoku monogatari. He continues his argument by
suggesting that the Ikoku monogatari was written as a morality tale combining the
historical events with elements of a much older legend of Urashima Taro, by which the
greed of the sailors in trying to smuggle ginseng into Japan for the sake of profit is
criticized, although this may be somewhat of a stretch.68 While the Ikoku monogatari
and many other shorter documents exist concerning this account of drift, for our
purposes we will now turn to later published forms of this story that appear to have been
widely consumed.
While the earliest re-inscriptions ofthe Dattan hyoryuki were handwritten
manuscripts, the Chosen monogatari published in Kyoto in 1750 by Kimura Riemon
66 For a summary of this see: Sonoda, Gp. Cit., 184-7, and Haruna, Akira. Sekai wo mite shimatta
otokotachi: Edo no ikyo taiken, Chikuma Bunko, Tokyo, 1988,251-304.
67 In ChOsen monogatari this is referred to as Nihon machi no ryoshuku (S *IHJO)nl\1i§').
275
and the Kanei hy6ryuki published sometime in the Hoei or Shotoku periods (1704-1716),
stand as two examples of commercially published texts.69 Suzuki Aya has argued that
the writing and publishing of the Ch6sen monogatari coincided with a "boom" in things
Korean that was sweeping Japan in the late 1740s and 50s.70 As with late Edo
performances of the Tenjiku story, we might wonder why the Dattan castaways
demonstrated such a publicly visible afterlife in the late Edo period, long after the
question of Qing legitimacy (for the bakufu) had been resolved. Was it simply
attributable to a boom in commercial literature on Korea?
These versions of the story are palimpsests of sorts, having been built upon
layers of earlier texts, but while their origins may be traced to the handwritten
manuscripts of Dattan hy6ryuki, a closer examination reveals that they are in fact
strikingly different. While the Dattan hy6ryuki primarily describes events in Dattan and
Beijing, the description oftheir time in Korea is relatively scant, limited primarily to
descriptions of the food and goods they received from the Choson Court and an
68 Arakawa (1964), 32-33.
69 While I have been able to find at least two editions of the Chosen monogatari (including a version
brought back by Siebold, now in the Leiden University collection), the Kanei hyoryuki seems to only
exist today in afukusei (reprint from original woodblock prints) edition produced during the war years.
See Yamada Seisaku, ed. Kanei hyoryuki (Tokyo: Yoneyamad6, 1940). For dating of the original Kanei
hyoryuki see Kobayashi (2000),202.
70 Suzuki (2004); It should be noted that much earlier Ronald P. Toby pointed out this boom in Japanese
representations of Koreans in popular culture, pointing out that the 1748 embassy incited popular
enactments of Korean visitors. See Ronald P. Toby, "Carnival of Aliens: Korean Embassies in Edo-
Period Popular Art and Culture," Monumenta Nipponica 41:4 (Winter 1986),422. Suzuki does not
consider the earlier Kanei hyoryitki that was certainly one source for Kimura in his own writing of the
story, but it may be that as ChOsen monogatari corresponded to the arrival in Japan of Hong Kyehui's
visit to Ieshige in 1748, the earlier Kanei hyOlyliki may have been at least partly inspired by the arrival of
Cho T'aeok 37 years earlier.
276
itinerary of their travels through Korea. The relative absence of information regarding
Korea in the earliest versions ofthe Dattan castaways reflects the geopolitical concerns
of the bakufu concerning the Ming and Manchu courts. For example, when the drifters
are put under the charge of two Tsushima officials while still in Korea, in essence the
first time officials directly answering to the bakufu have the castaways in custody, we
read, "Our joy could not be expressed in words and there was no equivalent in this
world. They [Tsushima officials] listened to our tales of Dattan and the Great Ming.,,7]
Told from the castaways' perspective, this moment in the text seems to emphasize the
purpose of Dattan hyoryuki being primarily to relate conditions in Dattan and the status
of China during the Qing takeover from the Ming court.
On the other hand, the four-volume Kanei hyoryuki dedicates approximately half
of its pages to the relatively short time spent passing through Korea during their return
home. Separate from the castaway narrative, the fmal volume is exclusively focused on
general description of the geographic, political, social, and cultural elements ofKorea
with maps and a dictionary, and in comparison to the later Chosen monogatari's maps
and dictionaries, it is clear that Kimura was familiar with the earlier text. As the title of
Kimura's text suggests, the process of shifting emphasis from Dattan to Korea is
completed over these three accounts and Kanei hyoryuki appears to provide a
transitional role.
Comparing the fourth book of Kanei hyoryuki to the fifth and final volume of
Chosen monogatari demonstrates a strong influence on the latter text. Unlike the
71 EHSS1, 104.
277
preceding volumes of each text which are narratives accompanied by images, the final
volumes of both texts are instead composed of two maps, a gazetteer of Korea, a list and
description of ranks and titles, and a Japanese-Korean dictionary. In particular, the map
of Korea with which the volume begins appears to be nearly a direct copy, the only
differences being minor changes to the title in the upper right-hand corner.
Map 4.7. Kanei hy6ryitki (vol. 4), "Map of Korea" 72
72 Kanei hyoryCtki (jukusei ed.)

279
The Dattan hyoryuki mentions only briefly two matters related to the castaways'
experience in Korea; the performance of Japanese songs for the Korean officials and a
description of the foods that were served to them in the Capital. However, the five
volumes of the Chosen monogatari are quite detailed in not only relating the events that
transpired while the castaways were being repatriated from Korea (via Tsushima), but
also expands upon historical, geographic, political, linguistic, and general cultural
knowledge of Korea. Hamada Atsushi, in his introduction to the published facsimile
copy of the 1750 text, suggests that some of the lexicographic information in the
Chosen monogatari may have been taken from the "Ikokujinbutsu Chosen" J<OOA4h
Jjljjffil section of Terajima Ryoan's Wakan sansai zue flJ¥l-=.::t~~ of 1713.74 More
recently Suzuki Aya has confirmed Hamada's original assumption that the Wakan zue
was another source (besides the Dattan hyoryuki) for the Chosen monogatari. She has
also demonstrated that the author of the Chosen monogatari, Kimura Riemon, borrowed
heavily from the Nihon shoki S ~<tq!i=*C. 75 An historical linguist, Hamada was primarily
interested in knowledge of the Korean language in Japan and considered only the word
list contained in the Chosen monogatari. 76 Suzuki on the other hand, based her findings
74 He bases this assumption on the fact that all the words contained in the dictionary attached to the
Chosen monogatari are also contained in this earlier work. See Chosen monogatari. 6-7. The Toyo
Bunko has produced a convenient 18 volume edition of the Wa-Kan sansai zue. See, Terajima Ryoan,
Wa-Kan sansai zue (Shimada Isao, et aI., eds.) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1986). For the text in question see
Volume 3, 237-257.
75 Suzuki Aya, "Enkyo - Kanenki no 'Chosen buumu' ni miru jita ishiki," in Rekishi hyoron No. 651
(July 2004), 64.
76 However it should have been clear to Hamada that, since there are only 108 Korean words listed in the
Wa-Kan sansai zue (compared with 298 words in the Chosen monogatan), that other sources were also
280
on a close analysis of the narrative content, pointing out a correspondence between
phrasings and references to some of the earliest known relations between the Japanese
archipelago and the Korean peninsula. While her conclusions are nuanced, her research
demonstrates that the Chosen monogatari was written in order to recast Korea's relative
position to Japan. For example, in her discussion of Confucianism she points out that
the Chosen monogatari repeatedly emphasizes Korea's tributary relationship with Japan,
but at the same time presents Korea as a country upholding the principles of Confucian
order and maintains an examination system (kakyo seido T4~mlJoc) unlike Japan.77 She
also maintains that Shinkoku :tIflOO thought-an emerging form of nationalist discourse
that posited Japan as a divine and superior country-is absent from Chosen
·78
monogatarz.
But while Suzuki is careful to present a reading of the Chosen monogatari that
represents Korea in a positive light, we cannot overlook elements of the text that seem
fairly explicit in positioning Korea in a subservient position vis-a.-vis Japan. For
example, concerning Korea's refusal to send emissaries to Japan after Hideyoshi's
invasions, the text reads, "Since [Korea] has been a tributary (zokkoku) of Japan from
time immemorial, it was insulting to us." -(11)1<' B*O)~OOfd' G~b:h:a:-l, \J\' LIvT':5 f,t. VJ 79
referred to in compiling the latter text. See, Terajima Ry6an, Wa-Kan sansai zue (Shimada Isao, et aI.,
eds.) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1986),255-256; and ChOsen monogatari, 208-223.
77 Ibid., 66.
78 Ibid., 66-67.
79 ChOsen monogatari, 57. Cited in Suzuki, 66.
281
lIIustration4.4. Page from ChOsen monogatari referring to Korea as a Japanese Colony (ji, 00)80
Other aspects of the text that have been interpreted as demonstrating a respect
on the part of the author for Korea, may also be interpreted in a opposite manner. For
example, the fact that the castaways were treated to such elaborate feasts and showered
with gifts during their stay could be read on the one hand as demonstrating Korean
civility. On the other hand, if we are to consider the lowly status of the castaways in
80 From Hamada'sjitkusei edition. Interestingly, the page from the edition kept in Leiden differs. While
the text is the same, in the lower right hand corner of the text we have an illegible author's name XX-T~.
This may be another name for Kimura, or it may be that the second volume is written by someone other
than Kimura.
282
comparison to their hosts, we may take this passage to suggest the ridiculous admiration
paid to even the lowliest Japanese sailors due to some sort of perceived inherent
superiority.
In fact, while both Hamada and Suzuki seek to find other textual influences on
the Chosen monogatari, without comparison to the earlier Dattan hyoryitki and Ikoku
monogatari, and ignoring the clear role that the Kanei hyoryitki played in the
composition of the later account, they fail to see the more obvious transformations this
story underwent over the course of a 110 years. Not only did the publication of Chosen
monogatari satisfy the popular demand for information on Korea identified by Suzuki,
it in fact was the final shift in a multi-step process of rendering an early account of drift,
marked by lack of established protocol, into a tale of Japanese superiority over Korea
(and by extension, Dattan).
Firsthand accounts of the newly established Qing court at Beijing were of
particular strategic importance for the bakufu and Tsushima domain, however it should
be noted that the capital of Beijing is referred to throughout text as the "Great Ming
northern capital" (*~O)~t~) in the Dattan hyoryitki and at least some versions of the
Ikoku monogatari. 81 While this alone may suggest that the castaways themselves, even
after being repatriated and questioned at various points along the way, remained
oblivious to the geopolitical shifts they encountered. However, in other parts ofthe text
81 For example, EHSSl, 97.
283
they refer to battles between the Great Ming and Dattan.82 In comments on the
languages of Dattan and the Great Ming it becomes clear that the castaways are not
confused about the dynasty change, and that the author consciously chose to frame the
account in a geographic imaginary based on an East Asian diplomatic order that placed
the Ming court at the center of civilization and Dattan on the periphery as a barbarian
tributary state. As for Japan's position in this hierarchy of civilization, according to the
Dattan hy6ryuki high-ranking officials wined, dined, and generously provided for even
these lowly castaways, precisely because they were Japanese. The castaways
themselves attribute their privileged position to the fact that they are subjects of the
Shogun, and express gratitude toward him, and not Beijing or Seoul.
The intentional use of the name Dattan was in fact a pressing diplomatic point of
contention between Korea and Japan during the castaways' repatriation. Having
pressed for an official letter of gratitude on behalf of the bakufu addressed directly to
the Qing court for the repatriation of these Japanese castaways, Korea served as an
uncomfortable mediator between their neighboring states. After producing a letter
(after some delay), Tachibana Narimitsu delivered it to the Korean representative Min
Ohyop in the 11 th month of 1646. But Min rejected the letter on the grounds that
Japanese officials chose to use the characters Dattan ti,~OO instead of Qing rilfOO .83
Stephen Kohl, in an analysis of the diplomatic paper trail that followed these castaways,
writes:
82 EHSS 1, 111.
284
This launched a furious diplomatic debate. Min opened the exchange
by saying that he had never heard of a country called Dattan and asked
what nation that term referred to. Tachibana countered by arguing
that the Ming court had also been called Chiangnan and that Korea
(Chosen) was also called Kogury6, and that by the same token the
Qing court is also called Dattan. "That is the name by which my
country (Japan) prefers to call it. There is no other significance to it
than that." Min then replied, "Your country (Japan) lies beyond the
sea, while my country (Korea) is right next door [to China]. Thus
there is no reason why we would not know the proper national
designation of the Qing court. Moreover, in this matter of repatriating
castaways, our promise to see that they were repatriated was clearly
made to the nation of Qing. Therefore, should not your country also
respond accordingly? This is the correct way and thus it is impossible
for me to accept this document. Please revise it. I insist that you
make your documents consistent with ours. Is it such a difficult thing
for you to change a few characters?" At this point Tachibana dug in
his heels and rejoined, "Even if there are errors in the text, the entire
letter was written by Hayashi D6shun and cannot be changed.84
Etsuko Hae-jin Kang, in her study of ethnocentric ideologies under a Chinese
world order, has demonstrated that Hayashi D6shun (Razan) played a key role in the
transformation of diplomatic protocol in the 1630s. In establishing what is referred to as
"taikun diplomacy," Kang demonstrates that Hayashi's protocol reflected a shift in the
diplomatic perception of China and Korea after the fall of the Ming.85 While the Ming
Dynasty claimed a certain centrality and placed both Japan and Korea on the periphery
as subordinate and tributary states, Kang demonstrates that both Korea and Japan adopt
their own ideologically informed notions of each country being the true inheritors of
83 This is based on the research in Stephen Kohl in Kohl & Wood (forthcoming), as was presented by
Stephen Kohl at a conference on Korean travel writing at Leiden University in 2006.
84 Ibid
85 Etsuko Hae-Jin Kang, Diplomacy and ideology in Japanese-Korean relations: From the Fifteenth to
the Eighteenth Century (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 159-164. She also makes a strong
argument that Hayashi Razan was instrumental in reconciling Confucianism with Shinto thought and the
rise of Shinkoku thought.
285
East Asian supremacy. Her schematization of Japan's diplomatic perceptions suggest a
parity between the Japanese and Ming Chinese emperors while positioning Japanese
shoguns and Korean kings as equivalents. This is at odds with Japan's ideological
perception of its relation to Qing China, which she also diagrams.86
Japanese emperor ~ Chinese emperor
Tokugawa shogun ~ Korean king
t
Tsushima daimyo
Diagram4.1. Japanese Diplomatic Perception (post-Razan)
Japan (ka, superior, unique)
.j \
Korea (i, inferior) Qing China (i, barbarians)
Diagram4.2. Japanese Ideological Perception
The distinctions in Japan's ideological and diplomatic visions of itself that Kang
outlines, explains at least in part the insistence on maintaining the somewhat
anachronistic "Dattan" in Japan's letter of gratitude. For both Tachibana and Hayashi
Razan himself, embracing the name of Dattan was also a manner of maintaining the
nomenclature of a Ming-centered diplomatic order, and keeping the Q'ing in their
subordinate, tributary status. That the Qing would be sensitive to the symbolic
significance of this, or that a concerned Korea would push for change, is understandable.
286
But it also allows us to consider the ideological facet of the Dattan hy6ryuki texts, and
the significance of their later Edo manifestations.
The publication of the Kanei hy6ryuki coincides with another shift in Japan's
perceived status within an East Asian diplomatic order. With the rise of Arai Hakuseki
in the Tokugawa Ienobu's administration and his short-lived reforms Japan-Korea
relations in 1711, Japan's relations to the Qing become secondary to Korea's own
assertions of supremacy. Based on the notions of peace, simplicity and parity, Hakuseki
attempted to rectify the complications of having a center of authority (emperor) separate
from the center of power (shogun), by changing the title of "Taikun" (great prince) to
"Nihon koku 0" (King of Japan). 87 Through Hakuseki's reformulation of East Asian
relations the ideological and diplomatic perceptions of Japan's relative position also
changed. For Hakuseki, the Qing dynasty was not an equivalent replacement for what
was once the "Great Ming." In fact, by making it clear that "Japanese kings" (shoguns)
maintained parity with "Korean kings," he also assumed a superlative position once
reserved for the Ming, but now due to Qing shortfalls, was only occupied by the
Japanese Tenn6.
As with the older Dattan hy6ryuki and Ikoku monogatari texts, their later
commercially published re-writes also maintain the usage of "Dattan" and it seems that
even though in other contexts the Japanese eventually adopted Shin 1F'f (but not "Great
Shin) to refer to the Qing, the many versions of the 1644 castaway incident remain
consistent in their usage of Dattan. What changes in the later re-writes in not the
86 Diagrams are adapted from Kang (1997), 165.
287
references to "Dattan" and the absence of "Qing" but instead, the disappearance of
references to the Ming. By the early eighteenth century it was perhaps more obvious
that the Qing arrival in Beijing was not a temporary development. The erasure of any
references to the Ming that had first appeared in the Dattan hyoryuki, thus manage to
reframe the question of Qing China's relative status to Japan and Korea by rendering
the country as a barbarian usurper. As a catalyst for both Japan and Korea's own
assertions of supremacy come in direct conflict, texts such as Chosen monogatari
become one cultural form in which to project ideological formations that recast Korea
as an historic colony of Japan (zokkoku).
87 For a summary of Arai Hakuseki's reforms see Kang (1992), 197-203.
288
MAGOTAROI MAGOSHICHI ACCOUNTS
Having considered two examples of how early castaway narratives-those of
Tokubei and the Dattan castaways-come to be rewritten in radically different ways, we
now turn to our last case of pre-KodayO accounts that come proliferate in popular forms
during the late Edo period, the case of Magotaro (as his name appears in kuchigaki
documents as well as a lengthy Nankai kibun) or alternatively, Magoshichi (as his name
appears in most popular handwritten narratives).88 Unlike our first two examples, the
incident of Magoshichi/ Magotaro's drift between the years 1764 and 1771 is
historically much closer to the accounts of the Shinsh6-maru and Wakamiya-maru. But
as with the previous examples, the case of this third incident produces not only
numerous handwritten manuscripts but also the Nankai kibun by the Dutch Scholar
Aoki Teien, one of a handful of castaway accounts to be published by during the Edo
period.89 Later collectors of hy6ryuki may have recognized that the numerous versions
of the Ise-maru accounts, fell into two general categories of Magotaro and Magoshichi
hy6ryuki. Ishii Kendo included Nankai kibun (Magotaro) and Fukinagare Tenjiku
88 I will use both names based on which text is under discussion. The fact that he has two first names is
not uncharacteristic of Edo period castaways, but the fact that one name is used exclusively in official and
academic texts, while another is used by several other texts that clearly share much else in terms of both
form and content, suggests that this account circulated among two circles of readers, those interested in
the conditions and ethnography of the South Pacific on the one hand, and a group of readers (perhaps in
his hometown or sailors with whom he once sailed) that knew him as Magoshichi.
89 Arakawa Hidetoshi recognizes three of these accounts and provides a summary of the castaway
Magotaro's experiences. See, Arakawa Hidetoshi, Nihonjin hyoryCtki (Tokyo: linbutsu Oraisha, 1964),
48-56.
289
hy6ryuki in his K6tei hy6ryu kidan zenshu and Ikeda Hiroshi in his introduction to his
own katsuji edition of Nankai kibun and Hy6ryu Tenjiku banashi comments,
Nankai kibun was compiled by Aoki Teien over the years and its
academic value is quite high, while the Hy6ryu Tenjiku monogatari
[Hy6ryu Tenjiku banashi] , even though the author is unknown, was
written as literature. ::t"its"J r::ifi.pnt~ 'b 0)'1:' ib /5 Ishii Kend6 once said,
'When we speak of literary value ::t"its"J1iffi1il!ib /5 'b 0) Magoshichi Tenjiku
monogatari and Tokuj6-maru Funaosa nikki are certainly two jewels.90}~
ilITA:<
Furthermore, as with the Wakamiya-maru castaways, Magotar6's repatriation at
Nagasaki in 1771, generated numerous kuchigaki documents and other debriefing
documents. It appears that the length of his absence from Japan, as well as the exotic
nature of his reports relating the conditions in the South Pacific piqued the interest of
the Nagasaki Bugy6, Izumi no kami Natsume, as well as official Dutch translators
Namura Genjir6 and Imamura Genyilemon i1JRtiW:JF~and other bakufu officials.91 While
these documents are in some ways more detailed in terms of names of particular islands
visited and peoples met, unlike the more popular documents that were to also surface
soon after Magoshichi's return, they are significantly briefer, valuing detail over
narrative.
90 NSSS5, 624.
91 The bakujU-related documents regarding Magotar6 are found in Arakawa Hidetoshi, Nihon hy8ryu
hy8chaku shiry8 sha (Tokyo: Chijin Shokan, 1962),275-294.
290
Considering three of these Magoshichi texts- Fukinagare Tenjiku monogatari
(17707),92 Hyoryu Tenjiku banashi (17707),93 and the Ka-i kyu nen roku (1774) _94 we
can see that they all share a common source, with whole paragraphs of the first two
versions being nearly identical. This is best demonstrated by comparing the manner in
which a particular scene from the narrative is written. Before the Ise-maru became
distressed, Magoshichi/ Magotar6 experienced an ominous, and in his own words, "a
most strange" dream that is incorporated in the more colloquial versions of his story.
Having planned to depart from the port of Kobuchi the following day, we read:
Fukinagare Tenjiku monogatari
J: ,.
~01:::, + jj +[J] S 0)~$=:'0iJ'~ j't;t L~F:, sA -§i(:::Ji!.j't *-- L,
L.~L-It:~\L.!vIl)? Ll-j7:;.j L-11>?:=V'c;t 2:::t "i
:It-T p';j Jm:E 0) ~€,; =:' ~ '6 J: Jm 0), +=-m:a: ;b C'-\=, iJ' (::: , f.Jj 0) r~, 0)1$M J:: V) I±\
t=-"! fJ't:.. </,.,
C'*i';O, ~1'i+¥~M(=1~/)A: L ~, 1RiJ00h",-.:c'JIt~ V) *i';b, ~~Imh(:::.L-C~
t::..ti) L
j'ttfJt::.. V), f*1::;/f}[~HllH=,i[!!,OiJ' '" 0 1~U t ~iJ' ~':hli', ~~4-Itf.+1L~, ft j:
Cv\ft 0*V \Ol±\ L, ~,j~ ~:hlv t ~GiJ' L <, 0 )i.t= l'il±\ ~ -:;.' V) (t V) 95
Hyoryu Tenjiku banashi
92 There are several handwritten manuscripts that are nearly identical to Fukinagare Tenjiku hy6ryuki.
such as Karatomari Magoshichi hy6wa (in the Imperial Household Agency archive), Chikuzen Magotar6
hy6ryuki (in the Mit6 Domain's Sh6k6kan archive), and Tenjiku monogatari (in the National Diet
Library), exist. See Ikeda Hiroshi's introduction to the text in NSSS5, 624. Because of the many
different titles used with this version of the story, it is difficult to get an exact figure of how many
remaining texts exist today, but it demonstrates that this version of the story was relatively popular and
circulated and rewritten throughout the late Edo period. I will use Ishii Kend6 katsuji version of the
account found in EHSS2, 113-157, the dates of which place its inscription before Magoshichi's return to
Nagasaki. Most likely the dating of the text is incorrect since it is highly unlikely that Magoshichi would
have returned to his hometown months before his verifiable return through Nagasaki. I will also refer to
Chikuzen Karatomari ura Magoshichi Tenjiku banashi in ESSS5, 653-668.
93 Two modern katsuji versions of the text exist. See, NSSS5, "Nankai kibun Tenjiku Hoyryu
monogatari," 623-652; and NHSS2, 161-252.
94 The Ka-i kyu nen roku is found in Arakawa Hidetoshi, Kinsei hy6ryuki shu (Tokyo: H6sei Daigaku
Shuppankyoku, 1969), 123-159. The Introduction (jobun) is dated 1775, while the conclusion is dated
1774.
95 EHSS2, 114-115.
ftQ ,=+jj +Im S~~~JU:~ Jt L ~ ~Jt 8 A ~§O)Ij;L :r\:-rP'Jom:r:0)*111~ Jl Qpo
~ J:::J~ 0), + =-0 ~ '"b ;b -C.l\> 7J > ~=, f.Jll 0) rFl~ 0)~$M J:: V) I±l ffi5"O, :fX l;iINljlH=1~
'" L ~, [NjO)jJ",:cflt± VJ M:tbo ~~~=. L -c~jU::. V) 0 t~-t/F,i[!!,~o)}~,Oft
L, 7J> '> Q{y0 L b ijfJ ('::"nl;t, :fX~4&f·f§'1L1j\L ft;t I:V\ft Q* i31±l-C~~rtfF (':: n
lvblfG7J> L <, I=lJl-I=t;tl±l(':: ';;.' VJ ItQ o 96
Ka-i kyu nen roku
ftt=+ jj 1m S1Jr~-C, aif~JjJttJ. ,l::', B A ~§'= -C JlJt L, -C b ,l::':r\:-rP'Jom:r:O)
~ t ~
*,§;~ Jj. Q Po ~+=-~mO)~}*u= -c, ~:t1l!0)~~0) JU~t:Jbf.JllO)rFl~O)~$M J:: VJ, IJ\
rJilH=;t "'J.:c ~ fIt± V) ffi5"b ~ Jl-C, J'1;tJtt~ VJ 0 t~-t/F,i[!!,~O) ,\!,I,O~ ft L, ;6> '>
QfY0~ijfJgnli, :fX~4&f.+1L~, ft;t 1:'L"ftQ*i31±l V~nlvbJOl:;6>L ~,
I=l JI- ~= t;t I±l ~' VJ ~ 0 97
In essence the above three passages relate a dream encounter that Magoshichi
has with a specter-like flying robe similar to the robe which adorns the picture of
Shikishi Naishinno in the "Collection of One Hundred Poets." The encounter takes
place on the deck of the ship and the robe appears from the ship's shrine at the back
of the ship. In the dream, Magoshichi is warned by the apparition to wait in the
Port of Kobuchi, however since Magoshichi is only nineteen years old and sensitive
to the ridicule he may receive if he were to relate his dream to others, he chooses to
avoid embarrassment and remain silent. While there are several minor
discrepancies among the three passages above, the similarities clearly demonstrate
that they share a single source. Furthermore, that subject of the above passages
describe not only the dream, but also the reasoning behind deciding to stay quiet
about the dream, implies that the shared source originated from a orally transmitted
version of the story issued from the mouth of Magoshichi himself. Finally, this
96 ESSS5, 653.
97 Arakawa, Kinsei hyoryuki shU, 124-125.
291
passage stands as yet one more case in which some later Edo hy6ryuki exploit the
emotional and interior reasoning of the speaking castaway to render the tale more
entertaining, but also more relative to the reader's interests in a story guided by
thinking and reasoning speaking subject. The use of warera (generally reserved as
first person pIural pronoun) to refer to Magoshichi (warera kotoshi jukyu sai) is an
adoption of the common pronoun found in kuchigaki texts (along with the similar
watakushidomo) , however in the case of these Magoshichi-related hy6ryuki,
Magoshichi is the sole survivor, and so we might expect a singular pronoun such as
ware, watakushi, or even a proper noun such as "Magoshichi" (which is also
commonly used in these texts) when the narrator refers to himself. The appearance
of these plural nominals, allows the singular narrator to speak of the un-repatriated
crew, but with a singular speaking voice embodied in Magoshichi himself, the tale
is rendered as ultimately individual experience of heroic proportions (ala
Matsudaira Sadanobu's interests in the subjectivity of the castaway).
Although this analysis may appear to over-generalize or conflate all the
colloquial Magoshichi texts as identical, it is important to note that the trope of the
dream is employed in slightly different ways in the three texts we have considered.
In particular, Ka-i kyu nen roku employs reference to both the dream- and floating
world-state in its retelling. For example, soon after the storm responsible for their
distress passes, we read, "However, the winds still blew strong, the waves swelled
stormy and cold, side-waves severed the rudder, and the ship was once again in a
pitiful condition so we discarded the surplus lumber. Not knowing in what country
292
we may end up, it was simply like a dream (R&:Jt LIL'±-iB1:h.)98 Likewise, the ship is
qualified by the phrase, "a ship lost on a dream-road" (&:Jl%{:::'1 J::b::ffl-),99
Magoshichi 's experience is referred to as, "the dream of my nineteenth spring" (4'
1f.+:11. (7)W(7)&:) and "moving through a dream of light and shadow" (7'tp~&:,!::1'$ VJ
i'J), 100 while his emotional state is described as "the feeling of seeing a dream" (&:
~Q IL'±-iB).101 Furthermore, the trope of the ukiyo or "Floating World" of urban
entertainment is also invoked in these particular texts. Again, in Ka-i kyu nen roku
the narrator states, "the following year we again drifted on the waves of the floating
Until now nine crew had escaped life and only four had escaped death
and more and more our story was not one of the floating world, but
one of the envy of the dead, the dew encroaching on life ... " (4'.it:11.A
!:::9E53lJh, ImA{Ui~53lJh, v\,!:: I,;'¥,¥-iit(7)fj!VJ ft<, 9Ei"j"A(7)~L<, JI:,!::
tfrHi:t3LlPG C, ),103
While the author(s) of Ka-i kyu nen roku depend on the tropes of dreams
and the floating world most frequently, in fact all of the three colloquial versions
of this story that we have considered here share some of this. Most notable is
the conclusion that is more or less shared by all three texts, with minor variations.
98 Arakawa (1969), 127.
99 Ibid., 130.
100 Ibid., 133 and 141, respectively.
101 Ibid., 139.
102 Ibid., 143.
103 Ibid., 134.
293
294
In the closing sentences of these three accounts we again see a similar narrative
pattern emerging that ends with references to both the floating world and dreams
(perhaps the result of an oral conclusion developed by Magoshichi himself). In
both the Fuki nagare Tenjiku monogatari and the Hyoryu Tenjiku banashi we
read that with no wife, child, or parents the narrator feels the "suffering of this
truly floating world," (~~=-1~i1t0)~i*=-:C~J;L-'tn) and wonders the difference
between dream and reality (Jt:JJu:~:e,i[!;,LHtQ).]()4
Talk of dreams and the floating world do not appear in either the kuchigaki
versions of the story or the more detailed accounts of Dutch interpreters in
Nagasaki such as Ikoku hyoryu no kotO. 105 In Nankai kibun, a much-abbreviated
mention of Magotar6's dream of the disembodied robe incident does appear, but
only marginally as an interlinear note. It is likely that Aoki Teien or later editor
of the text, having read or heard of Magotar6's dream from earlier versions of
the story, decided to add it as an afterthought. However significant
discrepancies, such as the disembodied robe now appearing as a woman in a
white robe, may also suggest that Aoki gleaned this detail from yet another
source.
Although there are certainly many narratival similarities between the
Nankai kibun and the more colloquial versions of the story, the significantly
different formal qualities of the Nankai kibun are notable. Aoki Teien's Nankai
104 EHSS2, 157; ESSSS5, 666. Quotes are taken from the former, the latter account is nearly identical.
105 In Arakawa Hidetoshi,Ikoku hyoryuki shU (Tokyo: Yoshikawa K6bunkan, 1962),77-85.
kibun is remarkable for the formal similarities it shares with Hokusa bunryaku
and Kankai ibun of 1794 and 1805, respectively. In fact, the later Nankai kibun
reads as a scientific and ethnographic exploration of the different people met and
places passed through during Magotaro's eight years of drift, slavery, and return
to Japan. While Magotaro's incident of drift took place two decades before
Kodayfi's Shinsh6-maru first came ashore in the North Pacific, it is important to
remember the version of Aoki Teien's Nankai kibun was published
posthumously more than two decades after Katsuragawa Hoshfi wrote his
Hokusa bunryaku. While we may assume that Teien did meet with Magotaro
numerous times to collect the exhaustive materials for his text, either Teien
himself or one of his students who ultimately published the text we have before
us today, modeled the text upon the earlier accounts of Russian repatriation. The
subheadings found in Nankai kibun such as "Production" ~?<Jii:and "Customs," J!t
{~as well as the inclusion of lexicons and maps suggest as much. Likewise, as
with the accounts of repatriation from Russia, there is a pronounced difference in
the geographic vision of the world when compared to the more colloquial
Magoshichi stories. While both the Magoshichi accounts and this Magotaro
account employ terms such as Tenjiku, Nanban, and Tojin-all carry-overs from
an earlier geography- the Nankai kibun is more detailed in foreign place names
and frequently quotes from the Min-Shin no sho kiroku, Il}H~ / ~~c~ the Tosei
yoko ~j!I'P'P:ilS and other geographic texts. In the Nankai kibun glimpses of a
colonized Pacific come through not so much in the main body of the text, but
295
instead in the indented editorials of either Aoki Teien or a later editor. For
example, under the entry for tobacco we read the following comment that recasts
Japan within a larger system of global trade:
Upon further investigation, these days in places where sailing
ships of the world pass through, there is nothing more useful than
tobacco. At first, this plant [was found by] a Frenchman in the
land of Tabako in Mexico in America, who collected the seeds
and cultivated it in Europe. In many countries they came to call it
Tahako, as it is in various parts of Asia. 200 years ago, it came
from Batavia to Luson where it became established. I have heard
that trading ships pass through all the countries of East Asia with
several countries preferring this [Luson] tobacco. This tobacco is
also grown in our realm (/$:ijfJj) , but we began with a type of
tobacco having come directly from Batavia. 106
For Aoki, unlike the earlier anonymous Magoshichi texts, Magotar6's drift,
enslavement by natives, and ultimate repatriation with the help of a Dutchman
was not a means by which to craft a story of suffering and salvation so much as it
was a catalyst for investigating the geopolitical conditions of Southeast Asia and
both Chinese and western scientific discourse and trade relating to the area. The
earliest castaway narratives ofthe Edo period such as Dattan hy6ryuki (1646)
took as their subject Japanese sailors and fishermen who accidentally drifted to
other lands in Asia or, as we see in Tokubei Tenjiku monogatari (1707),
reiterations of much older accounts of merchants that predated the maritime
prohibitions of the 1630s and sailed abroad under the auspices of the vermilion
seal trade (shuin sen) system. In these narratives the geographic imaginary is
based upon either a traditional view of the world based upon the order of ka-i or a
296
Buddhist inspired worldview that held Tenjiku as central. Ifwe may distinguish
these as two separate worldviews we must also acknowledge that they were not as
incompatible as they might first appear. Maps such as Shinch6 itt6 no zu also
suggest a certain syncretism between these more traditional understandings of the
world. Likewise, the stories of Magoshichi tend to merge both the geographic
imaginary of Tenjiku and the worldview of civilized center and barbarian
periphery associated with an Asian ka-i order. In so doing, the once epicenter of a
Buddhist cosmology found in Tenjiku, is rendered the epitome of barbarity and
home of wicked kuronb6, while the benevolence of Magoshichi' s Chinese and
Dutch overseers is emphasized.
With the return ofthe first Japanese castaways from Russia at the end of
the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, we begin to see a
significant change in both the form and content of castaway narratives. Like the
maps that these repatriated sailors returned with, the world no longer emanated
from the axis mundia of Tenjiku or the concentric circles of civilization
emanating from Asia, but instead was reterrtorialized through the abstract
concepts of longitude and latitude. Unlike the more ambiguous zones of
civilization and barbarism reflected in the ka-i order, accounts came to be
informed by clearly delineated boundaries between Orient and Occident,
continents, empires, and nations just as its subjects came to be defined in terms
ofrace and status as native or ruler.
106 ESSSS5, 641.
297
We have seen that in the case of Tenjiku Tokubei stories the geographic
imaginary that informs the earliest texts is rendered obsolete by the mid-Edo
period, in turn allowing later authors to fictionalize the story in fantastic ways
that appealed to theater audiences. Likewise, the Dattan hy6ryuki undergoes
several formal transformations in the early to mid-eighteenth centuries in light of
a shifting relationship with Korea, the Qing, and other Asian neighbors,
ultimately recasting Japan as the new center of Asian civilization. However, in
the case of Magotaro/ Magoshichi it does not appear to be such a simple case of
translating the experience into a more believable worldview. Instead, Magotaro/
Magoshichi's story seems to have achieved at least some level of popularity as
both a text for entertainment and as a learned survey of recent conditions in the
South Seas. As has already been argued, the influence of Katsuragawa HoshG's
Hokusa bunryaku, and to a lesser extent Otsuki Gentaku's Kankai ibun,
presented later readers and castaway scholars an important literary form, marked
by comprehensive narrative, scientific and ethnographic concerns, and erudite
editorial commentary. Aoki Teien clearly attempted to adapt Magotaro's story
to such a format. But while the first repatriates from Russia may have instigated
this formal shift, castaway authors before 1794 certainly exploited the
entertainment, moral, and narrative potential of stories of drift within Asia.
Therefore, while we may point to accounts of Russia as monumental in the
development of hy6ryuki as a literary medium, it was a process that began with
earlier accounts of drift.
298
299
UNINHABITED ISLES AND THE SPACE OF THE KINKAI ("NEAR SEAS")
What is meant by a maritime nation? It is a country not connected by land to any other, but bordered on
all sides by the sea. There are defense preparations that are suited to a maritime nation, and that differ in
kind from those prescribed in Chinese military works.
--Hayashi Shihei, Kaikoku Heidan (1791Y
We have seen that with the repatriation of castaways from Russia in the late
eighteenth century, the bakufu concerns with territorial encroachment, along with a
more diffuse interest in world geography and knowledges resulted in a new textual form
for the inscription of drift. This form initiated by the Hokusa bunryaku and Kankai ibun,
projected a world-geography of continents and empires and spoke of an increasingly
colonized Pacific and the ideological underpinnings of human and material resource
extraction by distant western powers. At the same time, with this new focus on rapidly
changing relations in the Pacific and a preoccupation with assumed hierarchies of global
power, older "intra-Asian" accounts also came to be rewritten in a variety of more
popular cultural forms. But while these accounts depended on an inherent category of
I Translation taken from Donald Keene, The Japanese Discovery of Europe. 1720-1830, Revised Edition
(Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1969),39.
300
the "foreign," a third group of castaway accounts were also written that took as
their literary tapas, spaces much closer at hand. These hy6ryl'jki generally take place in
the space of mujint6 ~A~ and deal with uninhabited islands and more ambiguous
spaces in peripheral spaces of the archipelago. Haruna Akira has noted that during the
Edo period the category of "hy6ryu" included both "itinerancy in foreign lands" (~OO:@l
J:rt), or what he also refers to as the "Odysseus type" (:t-7" vi: rJ A~), as well as less
common experiences in uninhabited spaces which he refers to as the "Robinson type"
(0 1:::"/, Y /'~)? However, unlike Robinson Crusoe, who Haruna recognizes as a model,
Japanese castaways to uninhabited islands take place not half way around the world
from home, but in the small islands much closer to the nation. While several of these
mujint6 accounts predate the territorial anxieties brought about by first Russia, and later
England and the United States, like the older stories of Dattan hy6ryuki and Tenjiku
Tokubei, they were resurrected to assert claims of Japanese occasional occupation of
these otherwise uninhabited lands in the later Edo period. In other words, this third
strand of our genealogical braid of hy6ryuki appears from relatively early in the Edo
period but came to take on a new significance in the later Edo period, once bakuju
officials began to assert geographic boundaries of the nation and make claims to certain
peripheral sites of the State.
Having addressed both encounters with westerners and accounts focused
primarily on encounters with older Others within East Asia, we will now turn to
accounts that focus primarily on spaces of the Near Sea (kinkai Jli14if:). In particular, we
301
will look specifically at rnujint6 hy6ryuki related to the Ogasawara and Tori shima
islands to the southeast, accounts taking place in the frontier zone of Ezo in the north,
contested islands of Takeshima and Utsuryodo in the Japan Sea. In doing so, our
analysis of Japan's near-sea spaces of drift will address three of four territorially
contentious sites Hayashi Shihei demonstrated concern over in his Sangoku tsuran
zusetsu.3 Joining Honda Toshiaki, Matsudaira Sadanobu, Kudo Heishiro, and other Edo
period intellectuals who called on the bakufu to secure territorial claims of Japan,
Hayashi Shihei raised significant concern over the establishment of national borders
with the writing of his Sangoku tsuran zusetsu and Kaikoku heidan 14!tOOA~~ (1785 and
1791, respectively). The former text may best be described as a geographical primer
focusing on Korea, Ryukyu, Ezo, and MujintO, while the latter outlines a strategy for
strengthening and developing economic and territorial claims along the coast, especially
in Ezo-chi to the north.
These sites comprise four separate points of contact between early-modern
Japan and the outside world, and even into the twenty-first century, have continued to
be sites of territorial contention.4 In analyzing these spaces of drift on the edges of the
archipelago, we shall better understand the relationship between castaway accounts as a
2 See entry for "Hyoryfi" in the Kokushi daijiten, vol. II (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1987), 1033.
3 Despite the tripartite nature of Hayashi Shihei's Sangoku tsuran zusetsu ~oo:@~~m, the text is in
fact divided into four distinct topical sections ('Uf, J:ilEf;;j(, ~~~, and ~A,I1$). See, Hayashi Shihei,
Shinpen Hayashi Shihei zenshU, vol. 2, (Tokyo: Daiichi Shabo, 1979).
411 might be mentioned that even today, Japan is engaged inn territorial disputes with Russia, Korea, and
China. Furthermore, as recently as 1968 and 1972 respectively, the United States claimed the Ogasawara
302
cultural and textual category on the one hand, and the ever-transforming
configurations of political and geographic space. As the frontier zone imbued with sub-
national relations gave way to outright appropriation by the State, these once ambiguous
zones came to be rendered within the bounds of a distinct State and its newly
recognized nationalist subject. Hayashi Shihei's calls for a system of maritime defense,
not dissimilar from Matsudaira Sadanobu's own, included both the collection and study
of hyoryuki related to Ezo-chi and spaces of the near seas.
While Japan has not always been considered an exclusively thalassocractic
nation-an important exception being the first half of the twentieth century-the term
shimaguni ("island nation" ~OO) has been in use since the earliest written records to
describe a political body in the archipelago.5 The notion of Japan as a maritime nation
expressed by Hayashi Shihei was nonetheless complicated by the notion of tributary
relations between Japan and its neighbors in Korea, Ryukyu, and Ezo. Several texts
from this period, including those of Hayashi Shihei and the Chosen monogatari
discussed in the previous chapter, suggest that these surrounding countries were of
and Okinawa islands. The fact that roughly twenty percent of Okinawa is still US military bases, has
caused some to suggest that the United States has still not returned sovereignty over these islands to Japan.
5 In the Kojiki (712) the term Oyashimaguni ("The great country of eight islands") is used. It should be
pointed out that the eight islands referred to are today referred to Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, Awaji, Iki,
Tsushima, Oki, and Sado islands and furthermore, that the characters used to write this term are :;k:JU'I'!~
and not the ch~acters Ii'l;OO more common today. The discourse of Japan's geographic and cultural
borders all too often assumes or posits a well-defined Nation-State and National culture. In the post-
Pacific War era in particular the notion of shima-guni or "island nation" has served as an important
foundation for a proposition that Japanese are somehow isolated from world developments and as such,
have been able to foster their own unique cultural identity (Nihonjin ron). At the same time, this emphasis
on Japan's geographic, and by extension cultural insularity, has served as a powerful means to conceal
the history of Japanese imperial expansion that took place in the first half of the twentieth century.
303
zokkoku ~OO ("subject states") status. This somewhat complicated maritime
identity led to a preoccupation with peripheral islands as Japan came to transform its
polity and foreign policy, once construed and informed by rules of East Asian
civilization and tributary status, into a geographically delineated nation with stable and
ostensibly irrevocable borders. Rendering a somewhat ambiguous geographic and
cultural boundary zone into a clearly marked international borderline was of utmost
importance to the baku.fu as liminal territories came to be occupied by foreigners. In
thIs endeavor, castaway accounts, both factual and fictional, dealing with the near seas
on the edges of the nation had an important role to play.
304
MUJINTO OF THE OGASAWARA AND TORISHIMA ISLANDS
Just as it was important to describe the cultural and ethnic limits of Self and
Other in castaway accounts taking place in the farthest reaches of the seas, it became
equally important to inscribe a hard boundary to delimit the territorial extent of the
nation. These accounts of the near seas are markedly different from other hy6ryuki
accounts in that they are primarily concerned with laying claim to smaller peripheral
islands, thus drawing a line or border where once stood a less clear zone or frontier. In
this sense these castaway accounts of the near seas tended to be more geographic and
less anthropologic, particularly with mujint6 hy6ryuki that ostensibly had no Other to
speak of per se. These stories of "no man's land," thus became accounts of "Japan's
lands" on the very periphery of the Nation. Increasingly the term mujint6 (or
alternatively, bunint6) came to signify more specifically uninhabited lands on edges of
and ostensibly in the possession of Japan. Thus, the category of mujint6 hy6ryuki came
to play an important role in delineating the emerging hard boundaries of the nation, and
it is no coincidence that anthologies of mujint6 hy6ryuki accounts, along with several
completely fabricated accounts, began to appear at the end of the Edo period when these
islands came under threat of occupation by non-Japanese.
305
While mujinto may be literally translated as simply "uninhabited island,"
the term came to signify a specific group of islands off the Izu peninsula that included
what are today known as the Ogasawara (Bonin), Iwojima, and Tori shima (Markus
Island) archipelagos 700 miles southeast of Edo.6 While these remote islands today are
considered the easternmost lands claimed by Japan, during the Edo period their status
was much more ambiguous. Thanks in part to a group of castaways from Awa Province
who managed to return from these islands in 1670, the Bakufu ordered Shimaya
Ichizaemon to investigate the presence of uninhabited islands off the tip of the Izu
Peninsula and Hachijojima. In the Fourth (leap) month of 1675 the Fukokuju-maru set
sail from Shimoda, and after passing Hachijojima and Aogashima, reported a small
round island (maruyama) with a three ri (approximately 7.5 miles) circumference? The
official report titled Shimaya Ichizaemon mujinto e noriwatari oboegaki states that
sailors boarded a small boat to explore the island and were surprised to find many large
white birds that they were able to capture with their bare hands and were not in the least
afraid of humans. Thus this island came to be known as Tori shima and later castaways
to this island frequently mention the presence of large, fearless white birds (thought to
6 Kawai Hikomitsu (Nihinjin hyoryuki, 120-121) claims that few castaways who drifted to the
Ogasawaras could ever return home so the documents relating to these accidents are few. However he
claims that many Japanese castaways must have continued to drift to other islands and mixed with
natives ??? or that it is impossible to verify whether some accounts took place in Ogaswaras or other
uninhabited islands. He points to one document relating the drifting of Kichiuemon, Shohei, and Rokuhei
of Sanuki, Takamatsuura in 1625 who reported drifting to an inhabited island, before returning to
Hachijojima (via Aogashima). According to their story, the first island they arrived at would have been
one of the Ogasawaras. Kawai mentions only two accounts that can be identified as Ogasawara accounts
(compare to 11 Tori shima accounts, 12 Aogajima, and 100s of Hachijojima islands).
7 Shimaya Ichizaemon mujinto e noriwatari oboegaki (shahan manuscript in Meiji University Central
Library copied during Edo period).
306
be albatrosses). The Fukokuju-maru continued on to other uninhabited islands to
the south (the Ogasawara Islands) where they carried out more detailed investigation of
the islands before returning to Edo in the following month.
England and America claimed possession of Haha and Chichi jima islands in
1824 and 1853 respectively. By 1830, with permission from Richard Charlton, the
British Consul in Honolulu, Matteo Mazarro set out with about 30 settlers of European
and Polynesian descent to start a colony on the islands. While bakufu concerns with
Russia in Ezo-chi continued, by the third decade of the nineteenth century the primary
external threat to Japan as represented in castaway accounts shifted to England and their
new foothold in Japan's mujint6 to the South. For example, we read in Tokei
monogatari:
At this time England has a very powerful military and it is said that
they plan to conquer the entire world within 100 years. Those that
have not yet been conquered and those in Russian territory always told
us that you could see the wrath of England on the surface as well as
the evil inside their hearts. Furthermore, English ships are hated in
Canton and the Portuguese do not even approach them... At that time
we were also told that 300 ri to the south of Enshu and west of
Hachijojima there was an uninhabited island that had in recent years
been developed and populated by 50 [English] people.s
England comes to be more maligned with each Asian imperial exploit. In
particular the Opium wars are frequently made reference to in accounts written after
1840. In Bandan we read how in 1841 the castaway Jirokichi had heard rumors while
in the Sandwich Islands of a war being waged in Canton concerning an opium
8 NSSSSS, 93
307
disturbance with the Chinese.9 Likewise, Otsuki Kiyomasa (son of Gentaku-/
author of Kankai ibun) includes in his Luzon koku hy6ryuki (1845) not only a detailed
history of domination in the Philippines, but also a much more recent story of English
aggression with China in the Opium wars. lO The beginnings of this long history of
hegemony that Otsuki relates begins with the suzerain Ming court, however it ends with
the once the powerful Chinese sphere of influence giving way to both British warships
and the demands of international trade. Noting the profits it brings Luzon, Otsuki's
editorial commentary explains that England's war with China is part of larger global
ambitions on the part of Britain for profit from trade. This is not the only account to
predict the massive influence the English would have throughout the planet over the
course of the next century. Bandan too, warns that, "Already six-tenths of the world is
English and in one hundred years their language will certainly be mixed throughout the
world and everything will be transformed by English customs."] I With the appearance
of a new "English" colony in the near seas off Japan, the bakufu acted deliberately to
claim these once uninhabited islands.
In 1861 Iemochi sent a bakufu mission to Ogasawara and began to populate the
islands with subjects from Hachij6jima. By 1876, all residents (including those
originally coming from Hawai'i) were made subjects of Japan. While cases of Japanese
drifting to these islands appear to have taken place as early as the late sixteenth century,
9 NSSSS5, 301
10 NSSSS5, 578
II NSSSS5, 265.
308
it was not until the early nineteenth century that they these accounts were
proliferated, categorized, and anthologized, precisely at the moment when these
previously uninhabited islands came to be populated. While most of these accounts of
distressed sailors can be verified through interrogation proceedings and other historical
records, there are also numerous falsified accounts that were written in the early
nineteenth century but claim to re-articulate incidents of drift taking place centuries
before. In this final chapter, we will consider how this textual category of mujint6
hy6ryuki comes to be established and how the space of uninhabited islands comes to fix
itself within geographic imagination of late Edo Japanese.
In the lih month of 1861, after more than two weeks aboard Japan's prized
warship Kanrin maru, the bakufu's magistrate of foreign affairs, Mizuno Chikugo no
Kami Tadanori, at last set foot on the contested ground he had come to claim. His
destinations on this mission were Chichi and Hahajima in the Ogaswara chain
approximately 700 miles southeast of Edo. 12 Reports that these ostensibly uninhabited
islands were in fact the site of a small colony of Western and Polynesian settlers from
Hawai'i had been familiar to the bakufu for nearly 30 years. The consternation caused
by this territorial encroachment is suggested by the care with which Mizuno and the
bakufu had plotted their own arrival in the islands. While the colonists continued to
12 These islands are also known as mujinto, but one historian has argued that the Sinified reading for
"island" (to) was adopted only later and that throughout the Edo period mujinshima, muninjima, and other
variants using the indigenous shima/jima were used. See Hirano Mitsuru, '''Izu Shichit6 zenzu tsuke
mujinjima hachijfi shozu' 'Z6tei Izu Shichit6 zenzu tsuke mujinjima hachijfi shozul S6bu B6s6 kaigan
zu' no seiritsu jij6 to chosha tsuke Ogasawara shima no kyfimei 'mujin shima' ha 'muninshima,' in Aida
BunkO Hensaniinkai: ChCikan hOkoku 2, vol. 49 (Tokyo: Meiji Daigaku Jinbunkagaku Kenkyfijo, 2001),
376-382.
309
refer to their new home as the Bonin Islands (ironically a corruption of the
Japanese Bunin, yet another way to read "uninhabited" ~A), Mizuno preferred to
instead call them the Ogasawara islands. 13 He had sent members of the crew ashore the
day before in order to erect a hi no maru flag atop the soon to be renamed Mt. Asahi.
They also served notice to the leaders of the foreign port community on Chichijima or
Peel Island as it was known to its residents, that Mizuno would be granting them an
audience the following day.14 For Mizuno's coming ashore, the crew erected tents and
bunting on the beach and arranged other preparations that deliberately mimicked
Commodore Mathew Perry's staged arrival in Japan nearly a decade earlier.15 Dressed
in full ceremonial attire, Mizuno proceeded to meet with Nathaniel Savory who had
arrived in the islands thirty-one years earlier as a leader of the original group of
colonists. What ensued was a bizarre showdown in which both parties attempted to
prove legal possession of the islands. With the most famous castaway of his day,
Nakahama "Jon" Manjiro, serving as interpreter, Savory claimed that the islands were
13 In his The History of the Bonin Islands. 1827-1876. Lionel Berners Cholmondeley cites Kaempfer as
the originator of this phonetic corruption. See Lionel Berners Cholmondeley, The History ofthe Bonin
Islands. 1827-1876 (London: Constable & Co., 1915),6-7.
14 Tabohashi Kiyoshi wrote extensively about this mission, and published his research in a four-part
installment of Rekishi chiri (vol. 39 and vol. 40) in 1922. For description of this meeting and a
transcription of the meeting see, Tabohashi Kiyoshi, "Ogasawara shoW no kaishfi, ichi," Rekishi chiri
39:5,369. His research appears to be based on the examination of various documents, but the above
encounter can be confirmed by comparing to "Ogasawara shima no junken gokaitaku setsu torishirabe
sora omomuki moshiage sora shotsuke," in Ogasawara shima kaitaku sh6ki. chUkan in the Diet Library
Archives lID # 173-177] leaf3 to II.
15 Hyman Kublin has suggested that the bakufu turned to Perry as a model for colonial diplomacy. See
Kublin, 274. Tabohashi, whom Kublin was greatly indebted to, is less direct but suggests the same thing.
See Tabohashi 39:5,21. My own research on the Ogasawara islands in the late Edo and early Meiji eras,
suggests that Perry's own interest in developing the islands provoked the bakufu to send an official
mission to the islands and lay claim to them.
310
in the possession of England and that he had documentation from 1827 that stated
as much. Mizuno, in a clever act of diplomatic one-upmanship, countered by citing a
relatively obscure handwritten document known as the Tatsumi bunin-jima sojo narabi
ni kojo tomegaki that claimed that the islands had been discovered and named by
Ogasawara Sadayori nearly three hundred years earlier. In order to emphasize Japan's
claims to the island, he added that until recently the islands in question had been
inhabited by Japanese.!6 Without recourse to any earlier documentation, Savory
surprisingly conceded that he had in fact seen some evidence of prior Japanese
occupation. In exchange for recognition of Japanese territorial rights to the islands,
Savory was given a barrel of sake, 50 soup bowls, live ducks, and other goods. The
negotiations were completed with Nathaniel Savory committing to paper his acceptance
of Japanese dominion and rule. He concluded this letter with the following:
My expectations are to remain here for life. Since the arrival of the
Japanese authorities I have been treated with respect and much friendship.
To the Chief Commissioner in particular for the very kind manner which
he has been pleased to treat me I return him my sincere thanks.
Respectfully, your obedient servant,
N. Savory!?
While it is unclear exactly what evidence of Japanese occupation Savory was
referring to in his encounter with Mizuno, it is certain that this had not been the first
time Savory had met with Japanese in the islands. Twenty-two years earlier, in the 11 th
16 Tabohashi Kiyoshi, 369.
17 Cholmondeley, 119.
311
month of 1839 a ship from the port town of Otomo, Michinoku called the Chakichi
maru drifted to the island with its crew of six. Savory and other colonists provided
assistance to the distressed sailors in order that they might return home. Receiving an
English book on ship construction, Sannosuke and his crew repaired their vessel and
returned to Japan in the 3rd month of the following year. 18 Their recorded testimony
(kuchigaki) elaborated on the daily lives of thirty "red-eyed, dark-skinned" settlers in
waters "just off the tip of Hachijo jima." 19 The bakufu ordered Utagawa Yoan (1798-
1846) to translate the text on ship construction that they received?O
While these castaways from the Chakichi maru served as the earliest eyewitness
report of Westerners on these islands, numerous other castaway accounts written
between 1831 and Mizuno's arrival in 1861 also mention foreigners living in islands off
the coast of Izu.21 In fact, castaway accounts served as the primary documentation by
which information concerning these islands came into Japan. Even before their
occupation by foreigners, bakufu officials were made aware of this space. The earliest
18 The castaway account relating these details is found in Arakawa Hidetoshi ,Ikoku hy6ryuki zoku shu
(Tokyo: Kish6 KenkyOjo, 1964),238-249. See also, Tsuk6 ichiran zokushu. vol. 150 (lkokubu yon
hy6ryu).
19 Arakawa, 241 & 245 respectively.
20 Kawai Hikomitsu, Nihonjin hy6ryuki (Tokyo: Shakai Shis6sha, 1967), 120-121.
21 Hy6ryuki such as Randan written in 1851 and accounts from roughly the same time relating the events
surrounding Nakahama Manjir6's (Mizuno's interpreter) ten years abroad are examples. Another
incident involving the repatriation of sailors from two separate ships (the K6h6 maru and Senshu maru)
by an American whaler The Manhattan in 1845 also provided Japanese officials with details of the
foreign colony in the Ogasawaras. While the former ship was picked up at sea, the latter of these two
Japanese ships managed to drift to an island. See "A-shu sen K6h6 maru hy6ryuki" and "Itsushi
hy6kyaku kibun" in Ishii Kend6 korekushon Edo hy6ryuki s6shU, vol. 4 (Tokyo: Nihon Hy6ronsha, 1992),
411-484. See also entries for March 15th to April 21 st (1845) in the "Log of the Whaleship Manhattan" on
microfilm at The Whaling Museum.
312
authenticated reports of these islands by Japanese took place in 1670, when a
derelict ship from Awa returned to Japan?Z Following this incident, the bakufu in 1675
ordered Shimaya Ichizaemon to carry out a detailed exploratory mission to the islands?3
Outside of the various castaway accounts, this was the only documented visit to these
islands by a Japanese until Mizuno's arrival.
Although visits to these islands by Japanese before 1861 were limited almost
exclusively to the occasional castaway, they did not go unnoticed by a larger readership.
Ito Togai mentions the islands in his yaken shoroku (written in the Kyoho era, 1716-
1735), while Hattori Genroku and Yamashita Yoshifusa attempted to visit the islands in
1774 before being blown back to Japan in a storm. Likewise, Hayashi Shihei argued for
their exploration and development in his Sangoku tsaran zusetsu of 1785, as did Sato
Nobuhiro in his Kondo hisaku?4 In his Gaikokujijo sho, Watanabe Kazan publicly
called for stronger coastal defense and stated that he had heard from a Dutchman in
Dejima in 1837 that British had taken over the islands?S His interest in the subject led
22 See A-shU sen mujint6 hy6ryuki in Yamashita Tsunewo (ed.), Ishii Kend6 korekushon Edo hy6ryuki
s6shCt, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Nihon Hy6ronsha, 1992), 193-204.
23 His report is found in a shahon manuscript in the Meiji University library Shimaya Ichizaemon mujint6
e noriwatari oboegaki. [ID # 299-1]
24 All cited in Tanaka Hiroyuki, "Edo jidai ni okeru Nihonjin no mujint6 (Ogasawarato) ni tai suru
ninshiki," in Kaiji shi kenkyu, vol. 50 (June, 1993). Concerning Hayashi Shihei, we might note that
Marcia Yonemoto claims that Shihei, "perceived the primary oceanic avenue between Japan and the West
as one that circumnavigated Asia and Europe," furthermore concluding that, "the Pacific is completely
absent from his view." Contrary to this opinion, it is clear that Shihei was very much concerned with
invasion by the West from the Pacific side. See Marcia Yonemoto, "Maps and Metaphors of the 'Small
Eastern Sea' in Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868) in Geographical Review 89:2 (April, 1999), footnote #6.
25 Watanabe Kazan, "Gaiikoku jijo sho," in Nihin shis6 taikei, vol. 55 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1976),31.
313
him to seek passage to the islands, before he was arrested in the famous Bansha no
goku Incident of 1839 and was eventually compelled to commit suicide?6 Likewise,
more literary collections such as the Kasshi yawa (1818-1830) tell a fantastic story of an
entire village from Kozuke province mysteriously disappearing in the space of a night,
only to be discovered later living on an island off the Izu peninsula?? While in 1772,
Kanzawa Teikan included in the 37th volume of his Okina gusa a verifiable story of a
castaway who spent 21 years on an uninhabited island before returning to Japan?8
26 Charges included; 1) His involvement in a plan orchestrated by a priest Junsen to visit the islands
secretly, 2) Aside from the aforementioned plan, he also privately plotted to feign shipwreck in order to
go to America via Luzon and Hawai' i 3) He wrote Bojutsu yume monogatari, based on translations
provided by Takano ChOhei [However, Ch6hei is usually credited with writing it.1 4) He had been
keeping correspondence with Oshio Heihachir6. He was eventually exculpated of these charges and
instead re-arrested for writing a critique of the bakufu titled Shinki ron, which was apparently discovered
during a search of his dwelling. See, Tanaka, 10.
27 Tanaka, op.cit.
28 For date see Okinagusa jo (Tokyo: Kyoikusha Shuppan, 1980), 15. For account in question, see
Okinagusa ge (Tokyo: Kyoikusha Shuppan, 1980), 160-174. This is one of the most remarkable and
popular castaway accounts from the Edo period. In 1719 a merchant ship carrying a crew of twelve met
stormy weather off the B6shu peninsula. Drifting for roughly two months, land was sighted in the first
month of 1720. Without food or water, the crew decided to go ashore. But while searching the small
island, both their launch and larger ship were destroyed in the surf, and they found themselves marooned
on what is today known as Tori shima (or Markus Island). While there was no source of fresh water on
the island, they devised contraptions to collect rainwater and lived off of grasses, seaweeds, fish, and
albatrosses. During the winter of 1721, an abandoned vessel became stranded off the coast of this island
and the men discovered that it carried sixty to seventy bales of rice, of which they were able to recover
about half (20-30). Even after drying the rice, they had nothing to store it in, therefore they left what they
could not immediately eat packed in bales. However one of the bales began to sprout young rice plants
that they managed to plant throughout the island wherever enough soil was to be found. This provided
them with about 3 to of rice per year, which they used sparingly. They also managed to make their own
clothes and tools. Of the original 12 crew members, most succumbed to malnutrition and disease.
However three-- Heisabur6, Jinpachi, and Jinzabur6-managed to survive twenty years. This was long
enough to meet the crew of another distressed ship with a crew of 17 that happened to drift to this island.
The crew of this newly arrived ship was given food and water by the three men and repairs were made to
the ship, before the survivors from both ships returned to Edo via Hachij6jima in 1739. Numerous
versions of this story were written out, cirCUlated, and even performed in the form of shibai entertainment
throughout the remainder of the Edo period. The repatriated sailors were even summoned to a private
interview with the 8th Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune. See Arakawa Hidetoshi, Kinsei hyoryuki shU
(Tokyo: H6sei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 1969),288.
314
Stories of these islands continued to proliferate throughout Japan, as did
occasional crackdowns by the bakuju attempting to stifle such discourse?9 There is
evidence to suggest that by the late 1830s, discussion of these islands outside the
context of castaway accounts was perceived as taboo. For example, the author of the
preface to T6j6 Kindai's fzu Shichit6 zenzu, specifically mentions that ten years prior
Ogura Nagatsune and Watanabe Kazan had argued that exploiting the islands would
bring national profit, as did Hiraga Kunimichi (Gennai) and Hayashi Tomonao (Shihei)
fifty years before them.3D Framing his own efforts within a larger discourse on the
uninhabited islands to the south, did not prevent him from suffering the same fate as his
predecessors. As with Ogura Nagatsune, Watanabe Kazan, and Hayashi Shihei before
him, T6j6 too was placed under house arrest in 1842 for the publication of his own text
related to these islands.31
It is clear that the bakuju had kept a close watch over information regarding this
contested space, thus it is highly unlikely that Mizuno, in his negotiations with Savory
on the beach in 1861, would not have known the details surrounding the Tatsumi bunin-
jima soj6 narabi ni kOj6 tomegaki which he had diplomatically employed. What he
29 Hayashi Shihei, T6j6 Kindai, and Watanabe Kazan were just a few who were punished for writing
about mujinto.
30 I am grateful to Professor Hirano Mitsuru for first directing me to this document in the Aida Archive at
Meiji University, and later going through it with me. Hirano's theory concerning the dating and
authorship of this document can be found in Hirano Mitsuru, '''Izu Shichit6 zenzu tsuke mujinjima
hachijG shozu' 'Z6tei Izu Shichit6 zenzu tsuke mujinjima hachijG shozul S6bu B6s6 kaigan zu' no
seiritsu jij6 to chosha tsuke Ogasawara shima no kyGmei 'mujin shima' ha 'muninshima,' in Aida Bunko
Hensaniinkai: Chakan hOkoku 2, vol. 49 (Tokyo: Meiji Daigaku Jinbunkagaku KenkyGjo, 2001), 376-382.
31 This is documented in the 33 rd book of the 33 rd volume of Sakata Sh6en's Ogasawarajiki (manuscript
in the National Diet Library Archive dated 1874) and is cited in Hirano Mitsuru (2001),376.
315
failed to mention to Savory was that this text, which he had used to secure
Japanese territorial claims to the islands, was in fact based upon a completely fabricated
voyage of discovery. Concocted in 1727 by a petitioner calling himself Ogasawara
Kunai Sadato, the text was originally thought to be based on the records of Sadato's
purported ancestor, Ogasawara Sadayori. He submitted the documents to the bakufu in
order to receive permission to explore the islands. However, it was eventually revealed
that Sadato was no more than a charlatan and in 1735 was exiled for his deceptions and
forgery.32 Considering the extensive preparations for this mission and the carefully
staged meeting with Savory, it is doubtful that Mizuno would not have known about
SadatO and the spurious nature of his manuscript. This, coupled with his statement that
Japanese had been living in the islands until recently, suggests that Mizuno quite
consciously employed the use of false intelligence to justify territorial claims, and
demonstrates the renewed importance of documentation, both factual and fictional,
relating to these islands. This decision coincided with the bakufu's attempt to populate
the islands by sending thirty-eight immigrants from Hachijojima in 1862. Along with
several officials including Obana Sakunosuke who was appointed by Mizuno to oversee
this fledgling outpost, an actual Japanese presence was first established.
It is thus not so surprising that acts of collecting and anthologizing these mujint6
hy6ryuki also became important endeavor during the bakumatsu and into the early Meiji
era. Oguma Ryoichi has pointed out that the most ambitious project to collect
32 For an account of Sadat6's deceptions and the Bakufu's response see, Koji ruien, vo!. 3 (chibu ichi)
(Tokyo: Koji Ruien Kank6kai, 1912),682-683.
316
documentation related to foreign relations was the Tsuk6 ichiran, completed in
1853 by the Hayashi family. He also notes that the 12th volume is dedicated to
documentation dealing with uninhabited islands?3 However, this was by no means the
only such attempt. Other examples of collections from the late Edo period that bring
together multiple mujint6 hy6ryuki and related materials include Mujint6 yori kikoku no
mono goshirabigaki, Toshu mujint6 hy6ryuki, and the Kaihy6 ibun.34 While the first
two collections focused exclusively on the space of uninhabited isles, the Kaihy6 ibun is
much broader in scope and stands as perhaps the most extensive anthology of castaway
accounts compiled in the Edo period.35 Consisting of seventy-nine extant volumes, the
editor(s) organized the various accounts into geographical categories labeled with signs
of the zodiac.
33 Oguma Ryaichi, Rekishi no kataru Ogasawarato (Tokyo: Nanpa Daha Engokai, 1966), 17-18.
34 These include Hachijo jikki, Mujinto yori kikoku no mono goshirabigaki. Toshu mujinto hyoryuki. and
Shimaya Ichizaemon mujint6 e noriwatari oboegakiJ mujint6 t6kai karabune no gi tsuke tomegaki/ hyoryu
no oboe/ Chaei hanashi kikigaki. It should be noted that in comparison to the Tsuk6 ichiran and Kaihy6
ibun, most of these anthologies tend to have been compiled on a more regional basis, and appear less
concerned with projecting a national identity or claiming the islands as Japanese.
35 Housed in the Dashisha University archive, this document is as remarkable as it is mysterious. Based
on five indexes (mokuroku) that are attached to the inside back cover (mikaeshi) of volumes 15,17,18,
and 41, it is evident that the complete document has not survived. However I cannot determine how many
volumes were originally included with the 79 surviving volumes, since the indexes only list the various
castaway accounts without distinguishing volume numbers. The authorship and date of compilation are
also in question. The editor refers to himself as Tessa Dojin (1tH~:±A) which is clearly a nom-de-plume.
The many accounts are also written in different brush, suggesting that the anthology was a collaborative
effort among several people. Each volume however is stamped with a vermilion seal of "BunhOdain" (X
JJ.Mit) which, according to Iwasaki Naoko (citing Miyaji Masato), was used by Matsuura Takeshira and
Edo merchants doing business with him. Matsuura was alive until the Ansei era (1854-1860). The latest
account to appear in the collection took place in 1847. Based upon this information, we can assume that
the text was most likely compiled in the late 1840s or early 1850s. Recently photographic facsimiles of
each page of the text as it exists today have been made available through the internet and include a Kaidai
by Iwasaki.
317
(-r) Rat~ Ezo/Karafuto/Dattan (Northeastern China)
(II:) Ox~ Shina (China) /Russia/Ezo
(ffir) Tiger~ Ogasawara Islands and mujinto
(~) Rabbit- Ryukyu
(J.P<) Dragon- Taiwan
( B) Snake- Chosen/Russia
(If) Horse- Todo (China)
(*) Ram- Canton (Southern China), Annan (Vietnam)
(I'fl) Monkey - Batan/Luzon (Philippines), Other areas in Southeast Asia (Borneo,
Thailand)
(cock, dog, and boar are missing and may never have been part of the collection)
The tara or tiger grouping of texts appears as the shortest grouping within the
anthology, but demonstrates that mujint6 accounts had come to be seen as an
independent sub-category of castaway stories. Comprising a scant two volumes (48 and
49), it contains three mujint6 hy6ryuki,36 as well as a map (Ogasawara shima zenzu) ,
and a document titled Ogasawara Kunai yuisho gaki. This last document is not a
castaway account, but instead a detailed description of the Ogasawara chain and
surrounding islands with a focus on the exploitable resources, attributed to the rogue
Sadato who had been exiled for fabricating his ancestor's mythical discovery in the
sixteenth century. While this recalls the document that Mizuno had referred to in his
discussions with Savory, we might note that the title here has been altered to suggest
both its historical veracity and its elevated importance as a source for otherwise
questionable claims to the islands by Japan (yuisho ="venerable").
36 These include EnshU Arai Jinpachi Jinzaburo mujinto hyoryuki, Edo Rorie Cho Tomiya Takebei
mujinto hyoryuki, and Awa Buyo Tokunosuke Shimousa ChOshi Minato Jusuke mujinto hyoryuki. The last
of which mentions the occupation of these islands by foreigners.
318
Even more surprising is the appropriation of falsified castaway accounts by
hy6ryCtki scholars in the Meiji and even early Showa eras. For example, Ishii Kendo,
includes in his Ikoku hy6ryCt kidan shCt of 1927 two accounts-Genwa hy6ryCtki and
SanshCt bune shimaguni dakk6 dan-supposedly taking place in 1616 and 1625
respecti vely, that were in fact falsified documents most likely written sometime during
the early to mid-nineteenth century?7 While he is careful to cite the location of the
original manuscripts from which he transcribed the stories, he never once mentions the
fact that no contemporary documentation confirming their veracity exists, nor seems to
question the questionable content of their narratives. For example, the Genwa hy6ryCtki
relates a dubious tale in which three castaways drifted to an island off the Izu peninsula
only to be captured by a community of almost one hundred Japanese who traced their
ancestry to two couples who came from Miura (Kanagawa) in 1558. They were held as
laborers until a disease struck the island. The three then drifted to Hachijojima where
the castaway Kihei was said to have met Ukita Hideie (former lord of Bizen exiled for
his support of Toyotomi).
By the time Kendo had published his text, the islands had unquestionably
become part of the Japanese empire, thus it is likely that his oversight regarding these
specific texts was simply the legacy of an earlier time when the status of possession was
contested. Mizuno's oversights on the other hand were quite deliberate. For example,
an early historian of the islands Russell Robertson, in an address to the Asiatic Society
37 Ishii Kenda, lkoku hyoryu kitan shU (Tokyo: Shin linbutsu Oraisha, 1971 (reprint). Concerning the
questionable origins of these texts, see also Yamashita Tsuneo (ed.), EHSS1 (Tokyo: Nihon Hyaronsha,
1992),64.
319
of Japan in 1876, stated that the bakufu had erected a stone monument on the
island in 1862 that recorded Ogasawara Sadayori' s sixteenth century discovery of the
islands.38 Concerned with the encroachment of Westerners in to waters of the coast of
their realm, it is understandable why bakufu officials strategically revived once
apocryphal texts in order to secure territorial claims.
But while Mizuno and others representing Japan's case in international
diplomacy may have known about the spurious origins of these documents, Savory,
Perry, Robertson and other Westerners with an interest in the islands strangely
conceded knowing about Japan's claimed connections with the islands. It is unclear
why they did not question Mizuno's story, but considering the scant references to the
islands that appeared in European texts we might also wonder if they had reason to.
Engelbert Kaempfer first mentioned the incident of 1670 in which Japanese castaways
returned from the islands in his History ofJapan. 39 The earliest mention of Sadayori's
discovery of these islands in a European language comes much later in the work of
Julius Kalproth, who translated Hayashi Shihei's Sangoku tsaran zusetsu into French in
1826.40
38 Russell Robertson, Esq., "The Bonin Islands," in Transactions of the Asiatic Society ofJapan, vol. IV
(Tokyo: Yushodo Booksellers, Ltd., 1964 (reprint)), 124.
39 In his The History of the Bonin Islands, 1827-1876, Lionel Berners Cholmondeley cites Kaempfer as
the originator of this phonetic corruption. See Lionel Berners Cholmondeley, The History of the Bonin
Islands, 1827-1876 (London: Constable & Co., 1915),6-7.
40 Julius Klaproth, Memoires relatifs aI'Asie, 3 vols. (Paris, 1824-1828), vol. 2, 190-197. I have not seen
this text and am relying here on the work of Kublin, who cites this document on pages 266-267. Writing
in 1951, Kublin was probably the first non-Japanese to uncover the details of this longstanding hoax. He
concludes, "through the instrumentality of Remusat and Klaproth the legend of Ogasawara Sadayori was
320
While possession of the islands continued to be contested after Mizuno's
visit, the baku/u's position continued to emphasize Sadayori's discovery in the sixteenth
century, while foreign parties at least accepted it. When Sir Rutherford Alcock first
received news of Mizuno's mission to the islands, he wrote to Japanese diplomatic
officials arguing that Japan had forfeited any rights to the islands since they were
uninhabited at the time that Captain Beechey had claimed them for England in 1827.
As a compromise to the dispute, he recommended that they be opened to shipping by all
nations. 41 The bakufu, having already read Mizuno's initial report of bountiful
resources in the islands, officially responded to Alcock's proposal by stating that
Japanese had been in the islands long before any British subjects had.42 With yet
another occupation of these islands by American military forces from 1943 to 1968, the
Ogasawara islands briefly reemerged as a topic of numerous texts, however castaways
seem to have been for the most part forgotten.43
The first of these mujint6 castaway accounts appearing under the "Tiger" sub-
heading of Kaihy6 ibun titled Enshu Arai Jinpachi Jinzabur6 mujint6 hy6ryuki n!lHlfm#
llkA . f= =&~~A,lj'lJY~Y1rE§2) relates one of the most remarkable and popular castaway
accounts from the Edo period. The story begins in 1719 when a merchant ship carrying
a crew of twelve met stormy weather off the B6shfi peninsula. Drifting for roughly two
introduced to the West, where it has been accepted with little question to this very day. Ironically, he was
writing this at a time when the islands had been a United States' possession (1945-1968).
41 Kublin, 277.
42 In Isshin shi, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Monbush6, 1940),918. Cited in Kublin, 278.
321
months, land was sighted in the first month of 1720. Coincidentally, this is just
about the time when Defoe's Robinson Crusoe was being published in England for the
first time. Without food or water, the crew decided to go ashore in a smaller launch to
see if they could find anyone willing to help them. While searching the small island,
both their launch and larger ship were destroyed in the surf, and they found themselves
marooned on an uninhabited island, what is today known as Tori shima (or Markus
Island). While there was no source of fresh water on the island, they devised
contraptions to collect rainwater and lived off of grasses, seaweeds, fish, and albatrosses.
During the winter of 1721, an abandoned vessel became stranded off the coast of this
island and the men discovered that it carried sixty to seventy bales of rice, of which they
were able to recover about half (20-30). Even after drying the rice, they had nothing to
store it in, therefore they left what they could not immediately eat packed in bales.
However one of the bales began to sprout young rice plants that they managed to
transplant throughout the island wherever enough soil was to be found. This provided
them with about three to (54 liters) of dry rice per year, which they used sparingly.
They also managed to make their own clothes and tools. Of the original twelve crew
members, most succumbed to malnutrition and disease. However three-Heisabur6,
Jinpachi, and Jinzabur6-managed to survive twenty years. This was long enough to
meet the crew of another distressed ship with a crew of seventeen that happened to drift
to this island. The crew of this newly arrived ship was given food and water by the
43 United States policy during the (extended) occupation included allowing only the descendents of the
original non-Japanese colonists to live in the islands.
322
three men and repairs were made to the ship, before the survivors from both ships
returned to Edo via Hachijojima in 1739.
The second mujint6 hy6ryuki in the Kaihy6 ibun, titled Edo Horie Ch6 Tomiya
Takebei mujint6 hy6ryuki rIp :ifttlrIfllTJ;§.tM;ft:1!r~A ~{~{JTEllc, relates the details
concerning this second ship. These two stories together comprise one of the most
dramatic castaway accounts of the Edo period. And while no strange foreigners were
encountered, numerous versions of their story were written out, circulated, and even
performed in the form of shibai entertainment throughout the remainder of the Edo
period. The repatriated sailors were even summoned to a private interview with the 8th
Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune.44
The third and final account to appear in the Kaihy6 ibun is titled Awa Buy6
Tokunosuke Shimousa Ch6shi Minato Jusuke mujint6 hy6ryuki ~iiJ¥EH1!~.1J@Z~r*,t&f~.:r
r~:m:fl):J~A~r~i5TEllc, however the title on the inside cover of the 49th volume of this
anthology refers to it more simply as Anan hyopaku jikki ~iiJJ¥rr~B~llc. This document
relates the drift and subsequent rescue of crews from the K6h6 maru and Senshu maru
in 1845 by an American whaler The Manhattan. While the former were picked up at
sea, the latter of these two Japanese ships also managed to drift to Tori shima.45 From
1830 onward, both English and Americans inhabited Hahajima in the Ogasawara chain
in order to provide a refuge to whalers plying the waters of the Pacific. Ports and bases
were established sufficient for carrying out repairs and the restocking of food and water
44 Arakawa Hidetoshi, Kinsei hyoryuki shu (Tokyo: Hosei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 1969),288.
45 EHSS4, 411-484. ~iiJ~'I'liird¥:i':1L~liTEjj2 . L. EI~'i;jj2F:lfJ
323
supplies. As Westerners came to use the islands more frequently, the rescue of
Japanese sailors drifting to this area also increased. Including perhaps Japan's most
famous castaway, Nakahama (Jon) Manjiro. The fact that Manjiro does not appear once
in the entire Kaihy6 ibun suggests that it was compiled before his return to Japan in
1851.
The Awa Buy6 Tokunosuke Shimousa Ch6shi Minato Jusuke mujint6 hy6ryuki is
one of many castaway accounts that relate the occupation of these islands by
Westerners, which was certainly of great consternation to the bakufu. However, it is
curious that the editors of the Kaihy6 ibun chose among the numerous castaway
accounts dealing with uninhabited islands in and around the Ogasawara chain, this
particular one. This last text is removed from the first two accounts by more than one
hundred years. If they were resigned to compiling only a partial anthology of mujint6
accounts, would it not have made more sense to include arguably the more dramatic and
sensational account of the Chukichi maru, whose crew of six in 1840 (only five years
prior to the account included) drifted to Hahajima in the Ogasawaras and met directly
with Nathaniel Savory, who at the time led the first permanent Western colony in the
islands. The story was fairly well known among readers of castaway accounts, while
their story also appears to have been disseminated among a more popular readership in
the form of brief summaries that began to appear in kawaraban.
The contentious history that characterizes these islands throughout the late Edo
period is also evident in the titles attributed to the individual documents included in the
324
Kaihy6 ibun. While the term Ogasawara appears in the first two documents
comprising the Torasha, the three castaway accounts instead refer to the space as
mujint6. The term mujint6 was and still is used to describe any uninhabited island, and
in fact appears in this more literal sense of the term in other sections of the anthology.
(For example, in the eleventh volume in the context of uninhabited islands in the far
north.) However in 1675 the 4th Shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna sent an expedition team to
these islands in question. This endeavor literally put these islands on the map for the
bakufu, and while occupying an extremely peripheral position among the political
concerns for the bakufu, they were formally recognized with a name. The Chinese
characters for mujint6 were used as a proper noun to identify these islands, and from
this time the reading for these characters was established as Bunin jima.46
With the later discovery by James Coffin in 1824, these islands were for a short
period referred to by Westerners as the Coffin Islands. With the arrival of Matteo
Mazarro and thirty other settlers in 1830, the individual islands in the chain retained
their Western names, but the term Bonin Islands (a corruption ofthe Japanese Bunin)
came to be used to describe the entire chain. While this designation is attributed to
Engbert Kaempfer and appears in his History ofJapan, Together with a Description of
the Kingdom ofSiam 1690-1692, its political purpose in the nineteenth century, only
46 See Hirano Mitsuru, "Bunkyu nenkan no Ogasawara shima kaitaku jigyo to honsogakushatachi," in
Sanko shoshi kenkyu dai 49 go (March 1998),5 and 37.
325
emphasized the original lack of any human population, thus rendering these lands
fair game for the advance of American and English colonization in the Pacific.47
It was only at this time, with the occupation of certain islands by Westerners that
the bakufu made a concerted effort to secure claim to these islands. In doing so, one of
the first initiatives was to refer to them as Ogasawara shima, and not mujin or buninto.
Named after Ogasawara Sadayori, the first recorded Japanese discoverer of these
islands, this appellation solidified a historical claim going back to 1592. In fact one of
the documents contained in the Kaihyo ibun collection, the Ogasawara kunai yuisho
gaki, is attributed to a descendent of Sadayori, Ogasawara Sadat6, who for one reason
or another felt compelled to produce such a document in the 1830s, nearly 250 years
after the purported discovery by his ancestor Sadayori. While the name Ogasawara
appears more frequently on Japanese maps and in official documentation from the
1830s on, castaway accounts instead tend to retain the older term mujin or buninto.
Thus we see even the final document in the Kaihyo ibun collection which, we may be
reminded, was only produced after 1845, titled Awa Buyo Tokunosuke Shimousa Choshi
Minato Jusuke mujinto hyoryuki. Perhaps repatriated castaways from these islands and
the authors responsible for writing their accounts saw their own endeavors as part of a
established subgenre of hyoryuki dealing specifically with mujinto hyoryuki, for even
after the appellation of Ogasawara was instituted, the accounts tended to prefer
47 In his The History of the Bonin Islands, 1827-1876, Lionel Berners Cholmondeley cites Kaempfer as
the originator of this phonetic corruption. See Lionel Berners Cholmondeley, The History ofthe Bonin
Islands, 1827-1876 (London: Constable & Co., 1915),6-7.
326
mujint6.48 This recognition may have been fueled by the attention the surviving
subjects of the Enshu Arai Jinpachi Jinzabur6 mujint6 hy6ryuki and Edo Horie Ch6
Tomiya Takebei mujint6 hy6ryuki (the first two mujint6 hy6ryuki found in the Tora
section of the Kaihy6 ibun) received upon their eventual return to Japan. In fact,
Daikokuya Kodayu was neither the only, nor even the first castaway to receive an
audience with the Shogun. Fifty-four years earlier, during the sixth month ofl739, the
eighth Tokugawa Shogun Yoshimune met with these six of these mujint6 castaways,
three of whom had spent more than twenty years on an uninhabited island. For the
length of survival alone, their tale is perhaps one of the most dramatic stories of survival
among Edo period castaway accounts, and as we have already seen, was recorded in
various popular forms such as the Kasshi yawa and Okina gusa.49 But perhaps the
anonymously written Nanpu ni fukinagaresareta Enshu Arai bune kako no kikoku
monogatari best demonstrates the ubiquitous nature of this story and the literary or
entertainment value that such a tale might hold.50 This particular version of the story
begins, as in most other versions, with a factual description of the uninhabited island to
which they drift and the basic functions of securing water and food. In regards to
48 I have yet to find a castaway account based on an actual incident of drift that uses "Ogasawara" to
designate an island or archipelago.
49 NSSSS5, 468. See also, Kobayashi Kaoru, Tori Shima hy6chaku monogatari-jCthasseiki shOmin no
mujint6 taiken (Tokyo: Seizando, 2003), 95-97; Kawai Hikomitsu, Nihonjin hy6ryCtki (Tokyo: Shakai
Shisosha, 1967), 188-191.
50 For a complete transcription of the Nanpu ni fukinagaresareta EnshCt Arai bune kako no kikoku
monogatari kept in the Hamamatsu City Central Library see, Shizuoka Ken shi. shiry6 hen 1. Kinsei 5
(Shizuoka: Shizuoka Ken, 1990), 1011-1015. The title, as it is written on the cover of the text (hy6shi) is,
EnshCt Arai bunefukinagashi kikoku monogatari koto.
327
drinking water, we read that the castaways' thirst is satiated only once they have
prayed to Japanese gods ( S;$:OO q:r:t$ k 1*) after which they are rewarded with three days
of rain. Unlike other versions of this account, the castaways decide to go to another
island one hundred days sail from their original site of landfall instead of remaining on
the same island for twenty years. It is on the second island that the Arai castaways'
story diverges into a mode of fantasy writing.
We read that on this second island, which is later described as "Tenjiku Annan
koku," (Vietnam) the castaways discover a group of armed, naked, dark-skinned men
and women who stand eight feet tall and exhibit large mouths, long hair, high noses,
and bright eyes. Threatening at first, once the castaways demonstrate they are from
Japan, the natives drop their sticks and provide food for the drifters. While this text
recalls the other Tenjiku stories- both Tokubei's and Magoshichi 's-that we examined
in the previous chapter, it also functions to recast the old Asian Others as barbaric and
strange beast-like creatures. But most striking is the description of orgiastic practices
among the islanders.
At night, with out distinction between men and women, they enter a
house to rest and copulate ten or fifteen at a time. Like beasts, they do
not care whose wife they are with, and when they are attracted to an
attractive bride O*E.::=.:l&&iij:~ VJ {~aif) they spend their time having sex
without any concern for day or night, inside or outside.51
After four months of, what we can only imagine to be, exhaustive ethnographic
fieldwork among this island of fornicators, the castaways explain that they would like to
51 Shizuoka ken shi, shiry8 hen 13 (kinsei 5).1012.
328
return to Japan and are given a boat for that purpose. However, the next leg of
their adventure brings them no closer to home, but instead to an island of forty or fifty
beautiful, white-skinned, curly haired women. The castaways, as the only men on the
island, are housed in a palatial and well-secured building where they are fed exotic
foods and given a yellow, gooey alcohol. However, their luck again seems to quickly
change as each man is paired with five or six women and forced into sexual servitude
O¥!U::::. L --C) both day and night. Reminiscent of Hiraga Gennai's Furyu Shid8ken den
or Ihara Saikaku's K8shoku ichidai otoko, the particularly male fantasy of an island of
women is fully adapted to an otherwise historically verifiable castaway incident. Much
like Asanoshin in Gennai's work, the only recourse these castaways have is begging for
direct intervention from Japanese gods. After six of the nine castaways die due to
overexertion, and are eaten like fishes by the women, the three surviving castaways beg
the Japanese gods and Amaterasu for help and after getting the women drunk and
keeping them occupied for two days without rest, they make their escape by small boat
The distraught women left crying on the shore soon begin swimming in pursue the
fleeing boat, but again praying to Ameaterasu, the castaways, "took poles that were in
the boat and beat, beat the women off, for certainly the mysterious divine powers of a
divine nation are not shallow." fd':='ffZ1~t-$:'a::-:E& --C nthOk k [BX':='t$l~ O)/F}~,~O):t$ JJ~tJ'
G-t62
52 Ibid., 1014.
329
CHISHIMA ISLANDS AND EZO
While the exact location of a mythical island of woman has long been associated
with the islands ofthe Izu Peninsula, other peripheral spaces both in south near the G6t6
Islands and in the far North off the coast of Hokkaid6 have been identified as the locus
sailors' (and readers') fantasies. In fact, while this myth is certainly not unique to the
Japanese Archipelago, Basil Hall Chamberlain includes in his Aino Folk-tales an Ainu
castaway account concerning an island of women told to him by the Chief Penri in
1886.53 Furthermore, Japanese maps of Ezo-chi (Hokkaid6) from the Edo period also
occasionally identify certain small islands as "Island of Women." In fact, Edo period
map makers seem to have found the North Pacific particularly fertile seas for the re-
discovery of numerous lands from a much older world view. Not only can we find
maps locating an island of women, but also the land of dwarves, giants, and rasetu. 54
53 Basil Hall Chamberlain, Aino Folk-tales (London?: Folklore Society, 1888),37-39. The story, as told
by Penri, explains that the women of this island sprout teeth in their vaginas when the grass begins to
sprout, thus their husbands cannot stay with them. They are married to the east wind and become
impregnated by holding their skirts up to the wind. The castaways, a father and two sons from Iwanai
who went adrift while hunting sea lions, arrive on the island and taken in by the women. With the fall of
the first autumn leaf, the three men are paired with the three highest ranking women of the island and are
occupied in their new role as consorts until the following spring, when the Chieftainess of the island
explains to the father that her teeth have begun to sprout and that it is time for him to return to his home.
Not able to resist one last encounter, the father uses the scabbard of his knife as a substitute for his penis.
The Chieftainess leaves her "teeth" marks on it, and we are told at the conclusion, "All the Ainos saw the
beautiful scabbard which the chief had used with that woman."
54 For example, The Matsumae tozu identifies a NyobOshima frm~~in the Tsugaru Straights with a note
mentioning there is a source of fresh water on this island. Dates for the production of this map are
330
One of the earliest Japanese castaway accounts dealing with Ezo-chi is an account
from 1660 (7). In this text, the Seishu sen hokkai hy6chakki ~j'IHJr:i~trilt1~]OIj§c, a crew of
fiteen aboard a ship belonging to Ise Matsuzaka Shichirobei encounter a storm off the
coast of Shizuoka while transporting an annual rice shipment from Kii to Edo.55 They
find themselves on one of the Chishima (Kurile) islands and, after seven months, are
repatriated on an Ainu boat to Etorofu Island. At the conclusion of this hy6ryuki is a
somewhat tangential story that, we are told, was related to the castaways by the Ezo
people (Ainu) themselves (~~~At~lli3-$ L-{@Ui).56
Occasionally the people of Dwarf Island (!J'A~) would come to steal
soil from Ezo. But they felt threatened here and went to hide. When they
did, they lost sight of their boats. Since the route from Ezo to Dwarf
Island is 100 ri they made pots from the earth they had come to steal and
made themselves small. There are many eagles on Dwarf Island, and
unknown, but it is stamped with the seal the kokugaku scholar and map collector. Kurokawa Mayori (,w,)11
~JIiJ[JI,!f~ and ,w,)II~Jll:JIiJ4~), who lived from 1829-1909. See, Takagi Takayoshi *itt1l: Hakodate bunka
hakken kikaku 2. Hokkaido no kochizu: Edo jidai no Hokkaido no sugata wo sagaru (Hakodate:
Goryokaku Tawaa, 2001),16-17. In the first half of the 18th century Terajima Ryoan's Wa-kan sansai zue
identifies a fr:ASJ. See Takagi (2001),64. Likewise, Matsumae Ezu identifies a large island as Dwarf
Island and also notes that the island is known as Rasetsu Island. "Rasetsu," (San: rak~asa) W;t:liJ is a
Buddhist term for castration in order to avoid sexual desire. It is also a name given to malevolent
Buddhist devilsW;~IJknown to eat humans. According to Takagi, these were gendered as female. Takagi
(2001),14-15. Ezo Matsumae no zu in the Ichiritsu Hakodate Toshokan identifies a Dwarf Island JJ'A~!11J
and Woman Island fr:~!11J, with note as to their relative distances to other areas. In the Ezo kokuzu. next to
an island identified as Ratsukau shima is written "fr:~!11J, -='./~." See, Takagi (2001),20-21.
55 EHSS 1, 133-137. This kuchigaki document is signed by the captain Shichirobei and two others and
appears to be a legitimate document in this respect. However, there is no date given as to the time it was
written, and I have not been able to find any corroborating evidence to suggest this account actually took
place. While Ishii Kendo first transcribed this text into katsuji form, he was working with a version of the
document as it is found in a late Edo period anthology of castaway accounts titled, Ikoku hyochaku senwa
(in the Tokyo Kaiyo Daigaku archive). This appears to be the earliest version of this account available
today, and it may be that this account was either fabricated or rediscovered by the editor of Ikoku
hyochaku senwa or some other late Edo writer. In either case, references to this castaway account do not
find their way into eighteenth century Japanese texts listing other Ezo-related castaway incidents, such as
Mogami Tokunai's Ezo zoshi. Kudo Heisuke's Aka Ezo fUsetsukO. and Hayashi Shihei's Sangoku tsaran
zusetsu (all discussed later in this chapter).
56 EHSS1, 137.
331
when these people pass, eagles are likely to snatch them away. When a
strong wind blows, groups of ten people grab hands and go about their
business. 57
But while Edo Japanese maps of traditional Ainu lands tended to populate the
seas with islands whose names suggested populations consisting of only women, or
dwarves, demons, and other such Others of a more traditional worldview, it is important
to note that the Japanese perceived cultural superiority over Ainu remained grounded in
a relationship framed in terms of ka and i, civilization and barbarism. In other words,
the status of Ezo vis-a-vis Japan, especially in the late Edo period was less like the
uninhabited islands to the south, or even Tenjiku, and more similar to Ryukyu and
Korea, insofar that their relative position to Japan was regularly performed through
diplomatic procedure and stagecraft, and furthermore Japan's own superiority was
bolstered by rituals of tribute and gift exchange. The maps of Ezol Matsumae that
contain fantastic spaces, produce a visual model ofthe concentric circle model of
relative barbarism used to represent the ka-i model and reproduces the traditional
hierarchy of otherness, by placing the Ainu somewhere geographically between the
civilized center of Japan and the more exotic spaces of danger and disorder. But while
Japan's relationship with Ezo was envisioned through certain ideological frames of
reference that allowed for gradual zones of foreign-ness, in their relations with Russia,
it became clear that a clear border was needed to staunch the gradual encroachment of
Russians into Ezo.
57EHSS1, 137.
332
Recently Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Bruce Batten, and others working on early-
modern representations of the proto-Nation-State, have argued that the geographic
borders of early-modern Japan underwent a significant transformation in the mid-
nineteenth century from one of less clearly delineated zones or frontiers to one of lines
or boundaries. Morris-Suzuki in particular has demonstrated that this is true of cultural
identity as well as geographic or territorial identity.58 As David Howell and others have
begun to elucidate the extent of colonial development at the borders of a nation in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the role that castaways and their narratives play,
was an extremely important one. For the way in which space on the periphery of the
archipelago was conceived, passed through, and written about is a common feature of
these eighteenth and early nineteenth century hy6ryuki. It is in descriptions of sites
closer to home, on its periphery, where these texts perform important border-crossings
and inscribe the cultural and political limits of Japan and its peoples.
Kudo Heisuke, a physician from Sendai and close friend of Hayashi Shihei,
wrote in 1783 his Aka Ezo fUsetsuk6 ~1J!~l~mm~, an alarmist tract arguing that the
government should secure territory in Ezo in order to counter Russian territorial
ambitions to the area. In the introduction he writes,
Bordering Holland to the east is a country called 'Oroshiya.' The capital
of this country is called 'Musukauhiya.' What we began referring to as
'Musukobeya' here in our country is the same [place]. From the Kanbun
era (1661-1672) this country began to grow out of control (habikorite),
and during the Shotoku era (1711-1715) they came all the way to
58 See, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation (Japan in the Modern World)
(Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1998) and Bruce L. Batten, To the Ends ofJapan: Pre-modern
Frontiers, Boundaries, and Interactions (Honolulu: University ofHawai'i, 2003).
333
Kamchatka in the interior of Ezo (Oku Ezo) and ordered everyone to cross
over (mina kirishitagahetari) .. .Between Ezo and Kamchatka are the
Chishima Islands. From the Kyoho era (1716-1735), increasingly more
of these islands fell into the hands of Russians and they began building
forts and such. The people of this country [Russia] occasionally drifted
(hyoryu shite) right up to the edge of Matsumae. With the border having
been set with Holland, they expanded more than 5,000 ri eastward, and I
might add, have become one country stretching all the way to the interior
of EZO.59
His text is remarkable for the manner in which it plots the advance of Russian
colonialism into what he clearly sees as Japanese territory of Oku Ezo, as well as the
important role he assigns to both real and feigned castaway accidents in this unfolding
design. Although his introduction only refers to incidents of hyoryu in general terms,
throughout the text that follows he mentions several specific cases. In fact, the first of
several "Tales of Matsumae" (t~M ) ~~j!f) that he addresses in his text is the case of
crew of sixteen Japanese sailors led by Takeuchi Tokubei who drifted to Kamchatka in
1744.60 He continues his argument, suggesting that compiling these castaway accounts
and other accounts of Russians in Ezo-what he refers to as "Tales of Matsumae" along
with written documents from Holland are the means by which to reassert territorial
claims.6l
59 Otomo Kisaku, ed., Hokumon sosho. vol. 1 (Aka Ezo fUsetsuko. Ezo shui, Ezo soshi) (Tokyo: Kokusho
Kank6kai, 1942), 213.
60 The names of the captain and the number of crew are left out of Kud6's version of the story. I have
relied on the more detailed report found in Ezo soshi by Mogami Tokunai. See Otomo Kisaku, ed.,
Hokumon sosho. vol. 1 (Aka Ezo fUsetsukO. Ezo shui, Ezo soshi) (Tokyo: Kokusho Kank6kai, 1942),389-
391.
61 Aka Ezo fUsetsukO, Ezo shui. Ezo soshi (Hokumon sfJsho. Vol. 1) (Otomo Kisaku, ed.) (Tokyo:
Kokusho Kank6kai, 1972),211-212.
334
The attention Kudo ascribes the Chishima (Kurile) Islands is also part of a
larger discourse developing in late eighteenth century Japan. This chain of more than
thirty named islands stretching 2000 kilometers from the Nemuro Peninsula on the
extreme eastern edge of Hokkaido to the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula had
long been an important trade route for Ainu peoples, and by 1697 had become a bridge
of trade exchange between Japanese in the south and Russians in the north.62 By the
1730s Russians had moved south through the islands, establishing a fur tax system of
colonization, outposts of Russian traders and soldiers, and occasional skirmishes with
less cooperative Ainu.63 While Edo had heard of this encroachment on the part of
Russia from reports of the Matsumae domain, Kudo's focus on the islands and Russia's
presence in them was in fact submitted to the Council Elder Tanuma Okitsugu, who
subsequently ordered an expeditionary force to assembled in order to complete a
thorough. survey of the Ezo.64
One of the results of the bakufu's interest in Ezo was the Ezo zoshi ~~~1j'iJtJl:
written by Mogami Tokunai in 1790. Tokunai, who served as a primary investigator in
Tanuma's exploratory party, was surprised to meet three Russians living on Etorofu,
62 Kawakami Jun points out that the Russian discovery of these islands mentions that the natives had
porcelain, lacquer ware, and cotton fabrics from Japan. See, Kawakami Jun, "Nichi-R6 kankei no naka no
Ainu," in Kikuchi Isao, ed. Nihan na jidai shi 19, Eza shima ta happo sekai (Tokyo: Yoshikawa
K6bunkan, 2003),260.
63 In 1770 an elder from Etorufu was hunting in Uruppu when he was murdered by a Russian. The
following year, groups of Ainu from Etorofu and Rashowa islands retaliated by murdering twenty
Russians in Uruppu. See Kawakami (2003), 262-263. With an established presence in Uruppu from 1773
to 1776, using Ainu translators familiar with Russian and Japanese, Irkusk merchants known as
"Shabaarin" tried to establish trade relations with Japan via Uruppu in 1774. Kawakami (2003),264.
64 Kawakami (2003) 266-267.
335
along with other evidence such as graves, that suggested a prolonged presence.65
Tokunai's Ezo soshi, as well as Sato Genrokuro's Ezo shCti ffi~~tii'3I: both correlate
Russian expansion to the global trade of sea otter skins from Ezo to Russia to Beijing.
Sato's text even states that since Russians have been taking so many pelts, that Ainu can
not easily catch them, and thus the sea otter pelt network of trade that began in the
northern Chishima islands had come to incorporate Ainu in the southern islands and
even on the mainland of Hokkaido in areas around Akkeshi where pelts were traded for
Japanese rice, sake, and tobacco form Japan.66
Mogami's Ezo soshi, like Kudo's earlier Aka Ezo/usetsuk6, also points to
several castaway incidents in order to glean details of Russia's expansion into these
islands. Specifically, he mentions a case of two Japanese boats drifting to Ezo one in
1756 and the other in 1762.67 He also mentions incidents of Russians drifting to Ezo
and the case of a never-repatriated Japanese castaway going to Russia in 1744.68 So we
see that even before Matsudaira Sadanobu had the opportunity to meet with Daikokuya
Kodayu and Isokichi in 1792, castaway accounts had functioned as a primary source of
information regarding Russian exploitation of Ezo. What Katsuragawa Hoshu's
6S Kawakami (2993),266. See also, Aka Ezo jUsetsuko, Ezo shUi, Ezo soshi (Hokumon sosho, Vol. 1)
(Otomo Kisaku, ed.) (Tokyo: Kokusho Kank6kai, 1972),
66 Kawakami (2003),267-268.
67 Aka Ezo jUsetsuka, Ezo shUi, Ezo sashi (Hokumon sosho, Vol. 1) (Otomo Kisaku, ed.) (Tokyo:
Kokusho Kank6kai, 1972),375 and 409. References to these accounts also appear in Hayshi Shihei's
Sangoku tsliran zusetsu. See, Hayashi Shihei, Shinpen Hayashi Shihei zenshU, vol. 2, (Tokyo: Daiichi
ShobO, 1979),38-39.
68 Aka Ezo jUsetsuko, Ezo shUi, Ezo sOshi (Hokumon sosho, Vol. 1) (Otomo Kisaku, ed.) (Tokyo:
Kokusho Kank6kai, 1972),389-391.
336
Hokusa bunryaku provided was a new form suited to explaining a new hegemonic
practice based not on the ceremonial tributary! uima exchange practices between
Matsumae officials and Ainu, but a system of hegemony based on power, pelts, and
profits. The much expanded scope of Hokusa bunryaku spoke of, among other things, a
radically different notion of world history and relations between nations. For example,
in the Hokusa bunryaku (1794) we read:
Long ago the natives were fierce savages who valued only bravery and
lacked all reason. Then 100 years ago the Emperor Peter endowed with
great virtue and infinite wisdom became the incomparably heroic holy
warrior who laid claim to lands far and wide. He opened rivers, carried
out commerce, and accumulated great profits from trade so that the
country prospered. Calling on famous scholars from various countries, he
opened schools and educated the people. From arithmetic and writing to
the many industrial arts, the country made superior progress in all
technologies and revolutionized the detrimental aspects of their old
customs, changing even their habits, language, and dress as their lives
improved daily. From 1514, when the first imperial dynasty was
established, Russia became an increasingly powerful country.
Particularly during the time of Peter the Great the army grew stronger
and they conquered the NE of Sueshiya and Finland in the north and the
Turks to the south. Overtaking several strongholds at Asofu and Pyurud6
along the coast of the Black Sea, to the east they also invaded Greater
Dattan! Tartar on the Asian continent. From the desert to the Arctic Sea
all the way to the Anian Straits that forms the boundary with the
Continent of America, [this country] stretches south to north 800 ri and
east to west 1600 ri, swallowing all lands, it is now the greatest empire in
the world.69
In reading several hy6ryuki centered on these islands from the early nineteenth
century, we begin to see a distinct line emerge through what was once a linked chain of
islands that served as a conduit of Ainu trade and culture. For example, the account of
the Keish6-maru out of Nanbu that drifted to Horomushiri Island (Harumu kotan) in the
69 NSSSS5, 742.
337
northern part of the archipelago in 1803, states clearly that the island is Russian
territory (1l-1ffiHE:~~).70 Furthermore, crossing over to Kamchatka and Paramushiru
island the following year, the account states that the Ainu in Rashowa Island have taken
Russian names, customs, and adopted the Orthodox faith. 71
By 1810 skirmishes with Russians in Ezo led to a much more cautious attitude
among castaway narrative authors. In Eijumaru Rokoku hy6ryuki (1816) Murakami
Sadanosuke writes, "Having defeated France and exiled Napoleon, Russia is now the
strongest country in Europe. Aside from Japan, Kitai, and Canton the control they exert
is ubiquitous."n Likewise, in the well-circulated Funaosa nikki Ikeda Hirochika writes,
"Although now Japan and Russia are at peace with each other, earlier three Russians
were captured in Matsumae and imprisoned for three years." Furthermore, his account
also suggests a clear and undisputed border between the two countries. "The ship
anchored in the eleven ri of open water that separates the Russian island of Urutsutsu
(Uruppu) and the Japanese island of Etorofu.',73
Unlike the mujint6 of the south, the case of the Chishima Islands was not one in
which Japan wrested control of territory away from a newly arrived and fledgling
foreign colony. Instead, the Chishima Islands came to be divided between two separate
spheres of Japanese and Russian influence as both sides attempted to assert control over
70 TsukO ichiran vol. 219,441.
71 Kawakami (2003),277.
n Ayuzawa, 84
73 NSSSS5, 536
338
an indigenous populations and exploitation of their labor in the extraction of
natural resources. The tensions this produced in the form of occasional murders,
kidnappings, and other international skirmishes in the north was also dissimilar from the
Ogasawara case. While both sites demonstrate how the State came to deploy the
narratives of castaways in securing territorial claims, in the case of Ezo-chi, bakufu
preoccupations with defense against Russia, as well as ideological, commercial, and
political relations between Ainu and Wajin populations were long term factors simply
not an issue with uninhabited isles to the far south.
We have seen that the production of hyoryuki dealing exclusively with Ezo, and
in particular the Chishima Islands increased dramatically with the presence of Russians
in the mid- and especially late eighteenth century. As a final note regarding this site of
drift, we might also consider that other hyoryuki such as Funaosa nikki, whose
surviving sailors were repatriated through Ezo. While these texts had their subjects
simply passing through this space in order to return home from a much further and
foreign place, the attention given to the otherwise ambiguous zone on the periphery of
home is notable. The Funaosa nikki for example, relates 16 months adrift at sea,
encounters with westerners off the coast of California, Spanish colonial residents in
North America, and extensive coverage of the castaways' time in Sitka and other
Russian territories, but dedicates one-third (the last book) of the entire text specifically
339
to a detailed description ofEzo.74 The text populates the frontier with bakuJu
officials and outposts, Japanese trading houses and their ships, branch temples with ties
to Japanese institutions, and other territorial markers in a landscape clearly imbued with
icons of Japanese presence, if not domination. As a backdrop to the bodily
transformations and rituals of repatriation such as hair-cutting, purifying, dressing in
Japanese clothes, consumption of Japanese foods, on the one hand, and visiting of
temples and shrines, interrogations, interviews,Jumie and other vows attesting to the
truth of their story on the other, the texts at this point present the clearest demonstration
of territory and subject remade under the rubric of an emerging national identity.
Attempts by the author to emphasize clearly distinguishable cultural identities as
autonomous as the bodies of land that contain them when describing the foreign, it is
this final stage of return and boarder-crossing upon which the success of the narrative
ultimately depends.
74 This is the shortest of the three volumes and therefore is not one-third in total length. Nonetheless, we
can see that this final leg of the journey home through Ezo is a significant part of this and other late-Edo
hyoryuki.
340
TAKESHIMA AND UTSURYODO (Kr.: DOKTO, ULLEUNGDO)
Turning our attention now to the Japan Sea, we will consider the case of two
uninhabited islands that have long been contested by both Japan and Korea. While no
obviously falsified documents or diplomatic deployments of spurious texts are involved
in this territorial dispute, we shall see how bakufu efforts to compile diplomatic
documentation in the late Edo period involved also a rewriting of certain texts in order
to bolster claims to such islands. Bruce Batten has referred to this space as a "vague
belt of ocean; a maritime frontier as opposed to a boundary," and in so doing has shifted
our attention away from anachronistic definitions of national territories, toward a more
nuanced reading of subjects occupying the space between.75 In particular the distinction
he makes between frontier and boundary allows us to rethink geographically marked
difference not in terms of any clear cut Self/Other framework, but instead as a historical
process through which hard boundaries are eventually rendered. By doing so, we can
begin to account for the subtle shifts that take place during the Edo period in the ways
this space was passed through and represented.
The TsitkO ichiran iffi!frJt~J[is unquestionably the most significant attempt to
compile both castaway accounts and other documents relating to foreign relations
75 Bruce Batten, "Frontiers and Boundaries of Pre-modern Japan," in Journal ofHistorical Geography, 25,
2 (1999), 170.
341
during the Edo period.76 Under the numerous volumes relating to Chosen, are
individual reports of both official and unofficial encounters between Japan and its
immediate neighbor. However the main editor of this project-Hayashi Fukusai-did
not simply compile documents of the past as a reference for future diplomacy. His
editorial comments are immediately recognizable since he was careful to place all
commentary and extra-textual material in half-sized print. In the case of accounts
relating the experiences of Japanese castaways drifting to Korea, we may note what is
commented on and how these comments contribute to our reception of the tales. For
example, in copying accounts originally found in the Taikanroku tH~~, a record of
diplomatic missions between Japan and Korea produced by the Tsushima domain )<;t,~
in ]639, there is reference to seven fisherman who drifted to Utsuryodo ~~~~ (which
Fukusai adds, is also called "Takeshima") and the Korean Peninsula before being
repatriated to Japan in 1618. A second incident ofa fisherman from the province of
Hoki (roughly corresponding to modern day Tottori Prefecture) drifting to Korea in
1637 is likewise taken from the Yuby6 nikki MtJfJj ~ 1l2. It is clearly stated in both
accounts that these castaways were engaged in fishing in the vicinity of Takeshima
(currently called Utsuryodo in Japan and Ulleungdo in Korea) when their respective
vessels became distressed. Nonetheless, in neither of the original documentation is
Japan's territorial claim to this island suggested. While the islands of Takeshima and
76 This compilation was carried out by Hayashi Fukusai. According to an unpublished manuscript by
Makabe Jin, Fukusai began the project in 1850 and finished in 1853. Kobayashi Shigefumi suggests that
the project was begun in the years following the repatriation of Daikokuya K6dayu and the crew of the
Wakamiya maru ten years later. Hayashi Okei continued the project with his Tsuk6 ichiran zokkushu
which was completed in 1857.
342
Utsuryodo are simply listed by name in the accounts, other islands such as
Tsushima are qualified by phrases such as, "Nihon koku no Tsushima shu" ("the
province of Tsushima in the country of Japan"). Ifwe were to look only at the original
texts without paying attention to Fukusai's editorial additions we may conclude that the
islands in question were seasonal contact zones for fisherman of both Korea and the
Japanese archipelago. These documents mention fisherman from both shores taking
advantage of the rich waters in the vicinity of the islands that resulted from a confluence
of the Tsushima Current from the south and the cold Liman Current from the north.
However, we cannot simply dismiss what the editor of the Tsuk6 ichiran, in compiling
the above mentioned castaway accounts from more than 200 years before, chose to add
in the form of inter-lineary notes. By doing so, he essentially evokes a boundary or line,
where before stood a much more ambiguous and intermediary zone, thus
reterritorializing the islands in terms of national possession and the castaways
themselves in terms of national subjects.
Relying on a set of terms more common to castaway accounts from the l790s
on, the editor here anachronistically rewrites this once ambiguous space as now being
part of Japan. For example, with the first appearance of the name Takeshima in the
original 1639 text, we read in the form of an editorial note added to this castaway
account as it appears in the 137th volume of the Tsuk6 ichiran:
This island exists between our country's territory and the country of
Korea. It is said that this island was originally a Korean colony (fi(~~
~), however since there were no natives (±~O) )..]3;;) living there, Japan
(Jjs:!j!Jj) again claimed it as our own. At that time, fisherman and sorts
from countries in the nearby seas (:i5:1,%,y4ij;~) frequently crossed over to
343
carry out work incessantly. By the Genroku era an incident ('J:@ V)) had
occurred because of conflicts ($~) between those fisherman. 77
While this statement posits Japan's claim to the island based upon the fact that it
was unpopulated, the author also recognizes the geographically and historically
intermediary position between countries that the island had occupied. This fundamental
contradiction between outright possession and the more ambiguous nature of a frontier
zone, is further highlighted as the editor provides details of conditions leading up to the
Genroku period (1688-1704). As a zone of contact between fisherman from various
edges of what is today known as the Japan Sea or Eastern Sea in Korea, the conflicts
that arise on the island appear indicative of this more general abstract transformation of
space. The "incident" referred to in this note concerning the possession of the island in
question is later discussed in detail in 13ih volume of the Tsuk6 ichiran. In a separate
volume of the text devoted solely to Takeshima, Fukusai compiled several documents
exchanged between a Chosen official Yun (!j!U¥:~J10i~Jli{'1:':Cfr'i'f)and the So family of
Tsushima dating back to 1612. The earliest documents relate to a debate that was
initiated when the Lord of Tsushima claimed that, "Takeshima is an island in the
possession of Japan," ('It ~''i S *}I;~fJ': Q J:: L). The response from Korean officials
which Fukusai includes in the Tsuk6 ichiran (originally dated 1614) argues that the
island that Tsushima refers to as Iso Takeshima is in fact a Korean island known as
77 Hayashi Fukusai, Tsuk6 ichiran (kan no 135) in katsuji version Tsitk6 ichiran dai 3 (Hayakawa
Junsabur6, ed.) (Osaka: Seibund6, 1967),609.
344
Utsuryodo, and furthermore that Korean documents claim it as theirs. (l~P:fJt~pJT~l1J'
W~ J8'J~ill, t\(;f:E~ IlL Jt; 15~ 'fJt ~). 78
Following this, the "incident" or "conflict" of the Genroku period briefly
mentioned in the castaway account of the 135th volume is then explained in detail. The
documents confirm that fishermen/hunters UiJJ1m) from both Korea as well as the Otani
and Murakawa families of Hoki Province in Japan visited the islands seasonally. These
two families had received explicit permission to do so in the form of a "license for
crossing to Takeshima" (tt J8'J¥&:YiJJ:fu~'f)granted to them by the bakufu in 1625.79
However, this license was revoked in 1696 following the capture of two Korean
fishermen by the Otani and Kawamura families two years earlier.8o This is the
"dispute" referred to earlier and, according to the documents presented by Fukusai, both
Chosen and bakufu officials banned fishing in the vicinity of Takeshimal Utsuryodo
after this. However evidence suggests that neither side ceased using the site. For
example, in the Oshit mikiki goki ~~~I'I'ltJ1.Jf,~1S-*c. written sometime around 1740 and cited
by Ise Kanbe who was exiled to Oki Island, we read that in the spring, summer, and
autumn seasons Koreans visit Takeshima in order to gather abalone and other
shellfish.8! Likewise, in quoting a variant version of the castaway account titled Chosen
monogatari, Fukusai again rewrites the original text which clearly states that Japanese
78 Tsitk6 ichiran 4: 21.
79 Ibid., 23-24. See also Ikeuchi (2005), 46-48.
80 Tsitk6 ichiran 4: 23.
81 Cited in Ikeuchi (2005), 50.
345
fisherman were using these islands to fish in 1733 and 1734. In this case he adds a
note stating that the dates are mistaken in light of the events that transpired during the
Genroku period (1688-1704) just discussed. Perhaps his revisions are meant to
preclude the possibility that the bakufu's orders were not followed. While the
motivations behind his editorial decisions are impossible to determine with any degree
of certainty, we might also point to his original source which he quotes--a variant of
the Chosen monogatari (.*!j!U+~ifr)-is also somewhat suspect. Thus the emphasis
on its variant form (ibon) made by Hayashi Fukusai in the Tsuko ichiran suggests that
either he was working with a manuscript based on the published work or he was
working with an altogether entirely different text from Chosen monogatari discussed in
the previous chapter.
We have already considered how the Dattan hyoryuki of 1644 came to be
rewritten in a variety of published and unpublished forms in the eighteenth century as
shifting notions of Japan's relative position to Korea within a traditional East Asian
order began to emerge. The commercial success of texts such as Chosen monogatari
depended at least in part upon a new public fascination with Japan's immediate
neighbors (rinkoku) in the mid-eighteenth century, but earlier antecedents such as Kanei
hyoryuki-on which Kimura based a significant portion of his Chosen monogatari-are
also to be found. In comparing yet two other maps found in these texts, we can see how
the rewriting of castaway accounts also played an important role in delineating a hard
boundary in place of an ambiguous band of non-territorial space.
Map 5.1. Map Representing Waters between Japan and Korea from Kanei hy6ryitki 82
82 Kanei hy6ryitki, vol. 4 (jukusei ed.)
346
347
Map 5.2. Map Representing Waters between Japan and Korea from Chosen monogatari 83
The map titled "Chosen tokai no zu," from the Kanei hy6ryuki appears more
stylized and employs a particular "iconography of difference" in order to populate the
waters with Westerners in the upper and lower left corners, Korean fisherman off the
coast of Takeshima in the upper right corner, and Japanese fisherman off the coast of
83 Chosen monogatari, vol. 5 (jukusei ed.)
348
"Isana" or "Whale Island." 84 On the other hand, the map titled "Chosen koku
tokai no zu," from the Chosen monogatari appears much more roughly sketched and
devoid of any human signifiers by which to encode this maritime space. While the
route that the castaways took in their return to Japan is delineated in both maps, the
Chosen monogatari map contains an additional route connecting Iki-Hirado-Nagasaki
which is not shown on the earlier map. Likewise, the distances between landmasses,
while similar, are not the same. For example the distances between Tsushima and Iki
on the Kanei hyoryuki map isthirty-six ri, while on the Chosen monogatari map it is
stated as forty rio
In comparing the accounts and taking into consideration the differences, we
might assume that the author if the Chosen monogatari used a different source as the
basis for his second map ofthe seas between Japan and Korea. However a closer
examination suggests this may not be the case. In particular the description of
Takeshima is remarkably similar, even if the placement ofthe island on the two maps is
not. In the map from the Kanei hyoryuki we read of how the abalone are beyond
compare because of their large size, how the bamboo is plentiful, and how the island is
populated by cats having beautiful coats of fur but not being able to catch mice. In
looking at the castaway accounts contained in the Tsuko ichiran with which we began,
references to abalone and other natural products such as bamboo, ginseng, fish, and sea
84 See Ronald Toby, "Imagining and Imaging 'Anthropos' in Early-modern Japan," in Visual
Anthropology Review, 14,3 (Spring-Summer), 19-44.
349
lions can be found. 85 However, this reference to cats is uncommon and may be
singular among Japanese documents dealing with Takeshimal Utsury6d6. Thus it is
surprising that the Chosen monogatari also mentions that "cats with beautiful coats of
fur exist" (keiro utsukushiki neko ari).86 The similarity in the way in which the island is
described lends credence to the idea that either the Kanei hyoryuki was the source for
the map found in the Chosen monogatari or that they shared a common source that
remains unknown.
If the Kanei hyoryuki was in fact used by Kimura Riemon as a source for the
compilation of his own text, he quite consciously altered the location of Takeshima.
Unlike the Chosen monogatari, the Kanei hyoryuki places the island northwest of
Tsushima and clearly to the right of the course taken by the castaways in their
repatriation. That fact that it has been placed somewhere between Tsushima and Iki
Island, both unquestionable Japanese territories at the time, and furthermore the fact that
the Korean-looking fishermen have been erased from the map altogether, acts to
reterritorialize the island within a Japanese territorial space.
The three sites of the Ogasawara/Tori shima islands to the south, Ezo and the
Chishima islands to the north, and TakeshimalUtsuryod6 islands to the west are not the
only ones to consider. Watanabe Miki's work on Ryukyuan castaway accounts
demonstrates that Hayashi Shihei' s fourth site of concern-Ryukyu-also came to be
inscribed politically, territorially, and culturally, at least in part through Ryukyuan
85 Tsuko ichiran 4: 24-25. See also, Ikeuchi (2005), 49.
86 Chosen monogatari, 193.
350
policy regarding the care and repatriation of castaways.8? Based on what we have
considered here, it is clear that a particular textual category of late-Edo hy6ryuki was
comprised of not only reports of distant lands and foreign peoples, but other forms
suited to other desires closer to home. While in the previous chapter we saw how
certain incidents of drift were reiterated through forms of popular consumption,
accounts of the periphery were primarily appropriated and in some cases manipulated
by the bakufu in order to better secure claims to these otherwise contested sites.
87 The work of Watanabe Miki includes, "Shin dai Chfigoku ni okeru hy6chakumin no shochi to Ryfikyfi,
ichi," and "Shin dai Chfigoku ni okeru hy6chakumin no shochi to Ryfikyfi, ni," in Nanta shigaku volumes
54 (1999: Nov.) and 55 (2000: May) in which she presents an exhaustive study of early-modern
Ryukyuan castaways drifting to China. Her research demonstrates that Ryukyuan authorities used the
arrival of foreign castaways to re-enforce notions of an emerging Ryukyuan identity vis-a-vis Korea,
China, and Japan.
351
CONCLUSION
The moral earth, too, is round! The moral earth, too, has its antipodes! The
antipodes, too, have their right to exist! There is another world to discover-and
more than one! On to the ships, you philosophers!
--Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science 4: 289 1
The romantic thrust of maritime discovery as a metaphor for philosophy was
apparently too tempting for Friedrich Nietzsche, yet his calls for a morality of the globe
that transcends the inherent perspectivism of National Histories and his openness to a
multiplicity of worlds is particularly appealing today. For nineteenth century Europe,
as for nineteenth century Japan, so much of what was radically new or only vaguely
imaginable arrived first by sea. For Nietzsche and Japanese castaways alike, the ship
(in one case metaphorical, in the other quite material) was the vessel by which they
embarked into unknown waters. But the parallel has its limits. We must keep in
mind that the nature of the castaway's discovery is ostensibly accidental, having been
I Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (Bernard Williams, ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001),163
352
initiated by contingencies of the wind and waves. In fact, for the castaway and other
subjectivities of the beach, nothing is discovered as much as it is revealed. It so
happens that as I near completion of one stage ofthis research on late-Edo castaway
narratives, the sea and winds conspire to draw me away. For it just so happens that
this summer, up and down the Oregon coast (less than a half day's bicycle ride away)
the contingencies of the sea have once again revealed the hulls of old ships and other
relics of history. The sands have shifted and this summer tourists flock to that liminal
band of sand to catch a glimpse of jetsam last seen by their grand parents' generation.
I have resisted the bicycle ride and a day of digging in the sands, in order to
instead uncover textual relics of a cultural practice of inscribing the experience of
drifters at sea. This "discovery" of a formalized textual category of Edo period
hy6ryuki, if it is to be called a discovery at all, is in many ways also accidental and
unintentional. Much like the long-buried hulls just recently reemerged from the sands,
hy6ryuki from before Katsuragawa Hoshu up to the present, have repeatedly gone
through cycles of burial only to be rediscovered and reiterated. The possibility of
overseas drift and subsequent repatriation is in many ways antithetical to the dominant
and entrenched historiographic paradigm of sakokuron and accompanying ideas that
early-modern Japan was had either an active engagement with, or even knowledge of
the outside world. Nonetheless, there have been particular moments when these
353
stories of drift attracted the attention of readers during both the Edo period and later.
K6dayu and Isokichi's repatriation from Russia spawned intellectuals to collect, read,
anthologize, and write hy6ryuki in the early 1800s. Ishii Kend6 compiled the largest
printed collection of hy6ryuki to date by the mid-Meiji period, at the same moment
these texts were being rediscovered as historical documentation. During the Pacific
War, scholars such as Yoshioka Nagayoshi, Sonoda Kazuki, and even the novelist Ibuse
Masuji were once again reiterating the stories ofEdo period castaways. Likewise,
since 1980s hy6ryuki have once again reemerged as a topic of both academic
conferences and more popular literary and cinematic consumption. These moments
when hy6ryuki have once again become visible also happen to be times of geopolitical
shift and the beginnings of new spatial imaginaries. Ishii hoped to demonstrate some
essential Japanese spirit unique to the archipelago through his interest in these stories of
maritime catastrophe and homecoming. In short he had elevated Matsudaira's
nameless castaway heroes to the level of national heroes of another time. On the other
hand, by the time of the war years the Nation-State had unambiguously extended its
territorial claims to the continent, and thus academic study ofthe Japan's past relations
with Manchuria and other protectorates within the Greater Asian Co-prosperity Sphere,
came to be discovered in Edo period hy6ryuki. Likewise, while it is tempting to
indulge in the romance of discovery, my own research has been guided by a particular
354
set of contingencies in this "era of globalization." In short, I am not the first to
discover the castaway upon the beach. But unlike previous discoveries of the
castaway, ours takes place at a time when the notion of national identity continually
collides with a much more efficient identity of the global consumer. In other words,
an important difference between previous moments of discovery and this endeavor has
to do with the ideological underpinnings ofthe Nation and national identity. As I read
and think about these texts, the discursive formations of national identity, as they are
inscribed through Shinkoku, Rangaku, and Kokugaku discourse, are assumed from the
beginning. The ability to recognize the narrative and textual aspects of these hy6ryuki
as a cultural form that in turn projected and produced a national body in the subject of
the castaway is also historically conditioned. In his essay on shipwreck as metaphor of
western philosophy and literature, Hans Blumenberg points to the second book of
Lucretius's cosmic poem in which the poet, "imagines observing, from the safety of
shore, other people who are in peril on the storm-tossed sea: 'e terra magnum alterius
spectare laborem. '" Blumenberg concludes, "Clearly, the pleasantness that is said to
characterize this sight is not a result of seeing someone else suffer but of enjoying the
safety of one's own standpoint."z I question whether my own proclivities for reading
2 Hans Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm ofa Metaphor for Existence (Steve Rendall,
trans.) (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997),26.
355
these accounts as discursive capitulations toward an emerging national subject, as
simply an attempt to enjoy the safety of my own standpoint as someone who finds
himself equally uncomfortable with Japanese and American manifestations of
nationalist discourse, and most at home somewhere between one coast of the Pacific
and another. In this sense, my "discovery" seems accidental at best and self-serving at
worst. But as a project marked by false starts and incorrect assumptions, the
conclusions to which I now come are also the result of innumerable contingencies. In
short, there are other ways in which this investigation has led to accidental or
unintended findings.
When I began this project, I expected to find eight or maybe ten major Edo
period castaway accounts on which to focus my research. I soon realized that over the
course of 230 years (from 1640 to 1870) extant hy6ryuki texts number in the hundreds,
if not thousands. This is especially true if we include in our count, kuchigaki and more
diffuse forms such as kabuki and puppet theater; oral storytelling performances (kami
shibai); single-sheet kawaraban prints; shrine, temple, and other public displays (kaich6
and mise mono); and even shrine plaques (ema) and other memorials. I have resisted
referring to hy6ryuki as a "genre," precisely because the stories themselves demonstrate
a remarkable ability to cross over into other forms, for other reading audiences. I first
identified a lineage of detailed and encyclopedic hy6ryuki that were initiated formally
356
with the Hokusa bunryaku and Kankai ibun and ideologically by colonial encroachment
of Russia into the North Pacific and borderlands of Ezo. The "Nativist Studies,"
"Dutch Studies," Confucian scholars, and other intellectuals of the late-Edo period, who
served as translators of world geography, western science, and international relations, as
well as inventors of an emerging global and national discourse, busied themselves
collecting and writing accounts that were framed by an aesthetic of objectivism and
detail manifested as factual and informed reports. These accounts project particular
geographic and ethnographic visions of the world beyond the seas; inscribe a cultural,
political, and mythic notion of "Japan;" which in turn, served to envision this new world
of the Pacific. Having identified this particular formal manifestation of hy6ryuki as
having taken place between 1790 and 1860, I chose early on in this project to focus
upon that seventy-year period, falsely assuming that these encyclopedic texts comprised
the only major hy6ryuki form of this time period. Only afterward, was I able to see
other concurrent formal developments taking place with other hy6ryuki forms. Other
writers during this somewhat arbitrary timeframe turned instead to older Edo period
castaway accounts and rewrote them in more popillar forms, for much larger audiences.
Taking incidents of drift from the early-Edo period as the subject of their rewritings, the
geographic imaginary of these other hy6ryuki forms fused traditional iconographies of
difference and a center-periphery paradigm with other more recent developments in
357
diplomatic and geographic knowledge.
Likewise, as there were accounts translating a colonized Pacific, as well as
stories reinterpreting older others centered in the waters on the other side of the
archipelago, there was also an important group of texts that took as their subject sites
much closer to home in a peripheral zone surrounding the archipelago. This third
category of hy6ryuki which were written throughout the Edo period came to re-inscribe
the broad band of maritime space known as the "near seas" (3!iiifJ:, opposed to oki #)
consisting of several topographies, including mujint6 (the uninhabited island),
nyogogashima (the island of women), Ezo and Chishima (the frontier zone ofthe north),
and sites of seasonal fishermen and hunters that became ambiguous only once the space
came to be contested.
At first glance, it might appear that this new way of seeing the sea, and by
extension the world, rendered older accounts logically suspect or insignificant, and
therefore opened them up to reinterpretation and fictionalization. But in fact these
overlapping visions of the world-be they based on the latest western maps, an archaic
Buddhist-inspired Tenjiku, an East Asian ideology of civilized center and barbaric
periphery, or even spaces from older myths and fantasies-all existed and circulated
simultaneously. It is not that one worldview simply replaced another, but that they
engaged each other, always attempting to make sense of the new, based on previously
358
accepted forms of knowledge. So long divided by the incommensurate
methodological boundaries that posit a clear distinction between shiryo or "historical
documentation" on the one hand, and bungaku or "literature" on the other, I have come
to see these texts on a spectrum of difference ranging from the more bureaucratic and
pragmatic form at one end, and the more literary and seemingly entertaining texts at the
other end. In doing so, we can begin to grasp a significant textual category that cuts
across generic forms. These textual crossovers take place on both the formal level and
the ideological level, and represent an historical cultural category of hyoryuki texts.
Pointing to similarities the Chosen monogatari shares with Edo period yomihon
texts, Hamada Atsushi called the former shosetsu (frequently translated as "novel"),
while he argued that the older Dattan hyoryuki stood as hyoryuki.3 Above the Chinese
characters for these two terms he added phonetic script (jurigana) that reads "fiction"
and "nonfiction," respectively. While Chosen monogatari is neither shosetsu, nor even
"fiction," we can imagine the difficulties that Hamada faced in categorizing and
comparing such a texts, if only because it has been a central aspect of this study.
While he clearly saw formal differences between the two texts, he grossly
mischaracterized the later Chosen monogatari.
3 Kimura Rizaemon, ChOsen monogatari (Kyoto Daigaku Bungakubu Kokugogaku Kokubungaku
Kenkyushitsu, eds.)(Kyoto: Kyoto Daigaku Bungakkai, 1979),2. [Fukusei ban with Introduction by
Hamada Atsushi].
359
J.M. Coetzee, in a castaway narrative of his own, writes:
Without desire how is it possible to make a story? It was an island of
sloth, despite the terracing. I ask myself what past historians of the
castaway state have done-whether in despair they have not begun to
make up lies.4
While his account is itself a discovered tale, retold (that ofRobinson Crusoe), he
too seems to identify a particular tension between the real and the imaginary that so
often informs these texts. Coetzee recognizes the guiding force of all
narrative-desire-to be at the heart of his own narrative of drift, but he also points to
the primal drive directing the narration of history. For Coetzee and Edo period
hy6ryuki authors alike, their texts embody a methodological conundrum and highlight
the nexus of two modes of investigation insofar as history can never escape narrative
just as narrative is itself fundamentally historical.
Likewise, in a castaway novel of his own, Umberto Eco asks,
But is there anything more uncertain than the Histories we read, wherein if
two authors tell of the same battle, such are the incongruities revealed that
we are inclined to think they write of two different conflicts? On the
other hand, is there anything more certain than a work of fiction, where at
the end every Enigma finds its explanation according to the laws of the
Realistic?
He concludes, "An Idea [fiction] insidiously antithetical to the first [History], for
in this way the invented story will be superimposed on the true story."s It is here, in
4 J.M. Coetzee, Foe (New York: Viking, 1987),88.
5 Dmberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before, William Weaver, trans. (London: Vintage, 1998),368.
360
the image of a palimpsest that we find another model (other than on a spectrum) by
which to understand these texts. The iterability of these texts, that is, the layer upon
layer of retelling, allows us to see over time how hy6ryuki come to be reread, rewritten,
and reinterpreted as vehicles for radically different visions of the world.
While the Edo period kuchigaki form functioned as an important means of
regulating the littoral porosity of the political body on the part of the bakufu, both
scholarly and more ribald forms of later hy6ryuki served to regulate the cultural body.
The subject of the castaway, cast into an international context ofother others, returns
home, only to be inscribed as "Japanese." The notion of "re-patriation" suggests a
return to the familiar, but in fact, the castaway returns with a new identity, a new sense
ofthe world, and most importantly a new sense of home. In some ways, the act of
repatriation is anything but a return to the old, and instead the embodiment of an
imminent identity or one that lies just beyond a literal horizon, but also the horizons of
though and imagination. The transformative experience of drift, marked by both
rituals of repatriation and the more performative elements found in these narratives, are
ultimately grounded in new spatial visions ofthe world, the Nation, and Self and the
Other.
Looking at these texts on a spectrum of formal difference, we can also see a
general trend over the course of the Edo period towards a multiplicity ofhy6ryuki forms
361
associated with various spatial discourses. In discussions of spatial difference in
Japanese history-whether the focus is on the shift from medieval to early-modem
Japan, or early-modern Edo to modern Meiji-the tendency is to over-generalize a
radical epistemological break based upon an either/or logic that ultimately cannot
account for a multiplicity oftopographies.6 It is no coincidence that frequently these
studies focus on either the origins or the last gasps of the bakufu. For example, in his
discussion of pre-modern spatial consciousness ('~rFl9~~), Matsuda Osamu points to
"topographies of daily life" (eptjJ:i3"J ~ 1tt13~), and contrasts them with more exceptional
topographies (?F ~ 1t~t13~) comprised ofthe "hidden space" (~~h~rFl9) of devils C*),
mountain people (f1JA), goblins (.7C~/pJ), and wandering mendicants (Jm.).7 For Matsuda,
these hidden spaces and the bodies that occupied them were of a radically different
dimension and type, compared to the topography of the everyday, but by the late
sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries he argues, "Early modernity [read 'Edo period']
came to decisively rejectthis medieval spatial consciousness," C=:. (7) J:: ') it ep -tlt~"J~rFl9~
6 Certainly others, less interested in generalizing the epochal character of history, have also
problematized this model. For example, Jeffrey Hanes, arguing that the Meiji Nation-State was defined
by centralized control over time and space, also acknowledges the struggles between that centralized
control and peripheral forces. See Jeffery E. Hanes, Contesting Centralization? Space, Time, and
Hegemony in Meiji Japan," in Helen Hardacre and Adam L. Kern, eds. New Directions in the Study of
Meiji Japan (Leiden: Brill, 1997) 385-485.
7 Matsuda Osamu, Edo itan bungaku nooto (Tokyo: Seidosha, 1993), 15-16.
362
~~ii'i-tltl:::tov\-c~7E~~ 1::~7E 2: n {) .)8
This examination of late-Edo hy6ryuki suggests that at least some Edo writers,
and by extension readers, "decisively reject[ed]" neither hidden space, nor the older
iconographies of difference, but instead adapted them to new spaces (now hidden
beyond the waves, but visible and imaginable through cartographic and narrative texts)
and new bodies. It is in this manner that I speak of multiple worldviews circulating
simultaneously.
This is not to say that newer visions of the world and nation did not also come to
be established in part through hy6ryiuki. In conclusion, we must note that this
examination of late-Edo hy6ryuki is just a small slice of a much more complex process
by which stories of drift came to function on an ideological level. A more complete
picture would require not only an exan1ination of earlier Edo period accounts, but also
an examination of how Chinese, Korean, Ryukyuan, and other traditional neighbors
managed drift on diplomatic, cultural, and ideological levels within an East Asian
context. Likewise, we might look forward to later iterations and reiterations of the
castaway into the Meiji period and beyond. Finally, a more expansive, if not complex
analysis of hy6ryuki must include a direct engagement with another persistent and
powerful narrative, namely the cultural and political establishment of a modern Japan.
8 Ibid .• 19.
363
In theory, regulation of littoral border crossing became a monopoly of the baku/u
through the implementation of maritime prohibitions and the establishment of particular
protocol for handling both humans and objects that washed ashore. However, this is
not to suggest that the late-Edo baku/u in someway wielded the centralized hegemony
so often identified with the Meiji period Nation-State of Japan. While the baku/u
demonstrated nearly full control of how the castaway was repatriated, they did not have
the ability to stem the proliferation of textual forms that ultimately resulted from any
given repatriation. When we consider that many late-Edo castaways had their
lengthiest and most detailed accounts written by domain scholars interested in
advancing their own regional reputations, we might begin to consider the castaway as a
floating signifier whose story was never simply his, but also never limited to baku/u
control either. In this sense, the image of a compound-state (baku-han seid6 ~MfI1IJ1WJ)
is perhaps a fairly reasonable means by which to represent the political entity of
Tokugawa Japan, even if multiple narratives of a cultural and a divinely sanctioned
"Japan" often times superceded more localized boundaries of early-modern Japan.
This study is simply one in a long line of "discoveries" made possible by the
castaway. It began as a critical interrogation ofthe idea that Edo Japan was a
culturally and politically "closed" geo-body. The perspective of the castaway and the
texts he leaves behind suggest a different story---one of frequent, and ostensibly
364
accidental contact with the outside world on the part of the castaway-but also one of
active engagement with that world on the part of the writers and readers of hy6ryuki.
While the ideological implications of sakokuron have been made partially visible since
at least the 1970s, it remains a persistent historical condition by which to constitute the
traditions of contemporary Japan. While castaways and their accounts have had their
day in the sun at different times in the past, under a dominant discourse of isolationism,
these accounts remain too often buried in the sands. If we for a moment consider these
incidents of Edo drift as historical fact (which they are just as much as they are aesthetic
or textual), that can be substantiated through hy6ryuki as well more traditional historical
documentation such as temple records or diaries of the Nagasaki Bugyo, the notion of a
perfectly isolated country incubating its sources of tradition unfettered by foreign
influence becomes untenable. To borrow from Eco, the Sakokuron narrative at certain
times has come to be "more certain than fiction," and as such, the "enigmas" of drift are
placed under erasure. What is called for is a new paradigm for talking about the early
modern moment of Japan. Both the notion of sakoku, and its teleological extrapolation
of seeing enlightenment, civilization, and modernity as a strictly Meiji phenomena tend
to perpetuate a hierarchical order of development between Japan and the West; blind us
the many unofficial contacts and engagements (either through encounters or texts) with
the outside world; and ultimately limits our ability today to conceive of anything but a
365
stunted and backward past. What is called for, is a methodology that cuts across
traditional disciplines to account for the practices of the past that are rendered invisible
by paradigmatic assumptions of the present. In this regard, I hope that this study has
directed us to a new "moral antipode," by uncovering a medium by which late-Edo
Japanese participated in, witnessed, and interpreted a Pacific and global theater. On to
your ships!
366
APPENDICES
Appendix A: Selection of Edo Castaway Incidents and Relevant Hyoryiiki
Yr.l
mo.
Origin, ship name, Site oflandfall
and crew
Sites visited Return Partial Listing of
Accounts
2
3
4
5/
1644
11/
1668
III
1719
12/
1752
Echizen, 3 ships
belonging to
Takeuchi Fujizaemon
of Shinpo Village
Crew 01'58
Bishu, Ono Village
Crew of 15
Crew 01'12
Sannosuke and 14
others
3 boats to Siberia
and were rescued
by indigenous
peoples, later
sabotaged?, only
15 survive attack.
Drifted to Battan
and enslaved by
indigenous
peoples. Killed
and used for
fertilizer once
they could not
work. Survivors
built boat and
escaped to other
island.
Drifted to Tori
Shima until
another ship from
Edo also drifted
to island.
Together, 20
returned using
lifeboat of 2"d
ship
Drifted to Luzon
Island and
brought to Manila
by Christians,
because 2 groups
returned
separately,
bakufu suspected
discrepancies and
learned
Sannosuke had
lied about
Christianity.
Became onlv
·North Pacific
. Beijing
· Korea
· Battan Island
r:Iltill:9IJSJ
W ~t.
illJ
.Tori Shima
· Philippines
· S. China (Jp
mj)
15 returned through
Tsushima in 1646
II returned Gota
Islands in 1670
3 returned through
Hachijo Islands in 1739
Sannosuke returned in
1755, following year 4
more returned @
Nagasaki
1ft1/i.!J.i~ifrE~c
Jbk~l1rE1ic
!ji)jj((f!I&J1iB-
~OO!I&J~,!j­
~MJiY,i~l1rE~c
JIIll~1lt
N.:HI:k!l!fHJtlt,ii~l1rE
-{tj:
~A~U VJ JiffOOz
t O)#o~,*1±{~
~ ifI 1:{~f,:{1
Jpilll"3 l) R1'H J
1i1f***
JpiIllJiY,i"3 l) g*i~
!lJ1i1f***
367
documented
execution of
castawav
5 91 Shima i'f$A Landed in Taiwan .Taiwan 3 returned in 1759 @ ;tHI~a~it!i~~B;1i
1757 after 150 days of
· S. China <tlli Nagasaki
Crewof6 drift during which J'I'i,]¥fffi /Flffi)
time 2 died. I
other died on
Taiwan.
6 101 Chikuzen (jt~A Drifted to .Mindano Mag. returned 1771 @ 1¥frlUcOO
1764 Mindano Island,
· Borneo Nagasaki Ilj;,:mtn7(~!jo/J~·
Magotar6/Magoshichi enslaved by
· Jakarta ~~::h3F~
and 19 others indigenous
·S. China jj\";mt7(~~B-
peoples. Mag. jj\";jcii!l!
sold to Chinese,
and later to
Dutchman
7 II/ Hitachi ~!fgA Drifted to Annan · Vietnam Bought boat and 4 *1¥fOOjj\";mt!jo/J~
1765 returned in 1767. Met ~A*1¥f~jj\";mtNc
Crewof6 crew of 3 from another
castaway Japanese ship
(f:t15A) at *-* and so
7 were repatriated @
Nagasaki.
8 121 Ise tEfl~A Drifted to · Russia 3 were returned in 1792 itt!~'~
1782 Amchitka and
· North Pacific through Ezo. Koichi @15!jo/J~B-
Daikokuya K6dayil, rescued by died upon arrival. ~~iiljJIJ[ZNc
Isokichi and 15 others indigenous ~j§ill':OOjj\";~NC
peoples and
Russians
9 1/ Tosa t.t~{~-tJ!!Ji Drifted to Tori 'Tori Shima ChOhei was sole ~AillJ~mt~c
1785 Shima Ogasawara survivor, until he met
ChOhei and 3 others Isles another castaway crew ,~illJ!jo/J~B-
of II in I787(ijE Il1I if'Ji)
followed by a 3'd ft3r11i:~i5
castaway crew of 6 (f:t
sA) who drifted to the ~AillJ~~i5
island in 1790.
Together, they built a
boat and 14 reulrned
through Hachiio Islands.
10 51 Okushil i'f'8A Drifted to · Russia 4 return in ffijliHlOO
1793 Aleutian Island
. England 1804@Nagasaki itillm':$
Tsildayil and 15 and rescued by Southern ;@. j§ill':wxr jj\"; 1mNc
others indigenous Africa
peoples and Canary
Russians Islands
. Brazil
.Hawai'i
II 91 Okuriku **A Drifted to · Vietnam 9 returned in 1795 @ i¥filIDiBC
1794 Vietnam S. China, Nagasaki
Crew of 16 Macao,
Canton
'Saho
12 1/ Osaka frlji'fA Rescued at sea by . Hawai'j 2 return in j!:'HI ~tj; it*jj\";mt
1806 American ship
.Macao 1807@Nagasaki ii!I!
Zenmatsu and 7
. Canton
others
· Batavia ~~j~mt'J~OO~
368
13 11/ Setsu ~%JL Drifted to . Kamchatka 6 brought to Kunashiri ~*m;:~i)\";¥ilEllfJ:r,:
1810 Kamchatka
· Russia In 1812, Kyfiz6
Kyfiz6 and 15 others (amputated foot) sent to
Hakodate in 1813.
14 12/ Satsuma 7l<~JL 6 drifted to Chishima 3 returned through Ezo 7l<~JL~oo¥~¥ilE~E
1812 Harama Kotan in Islands with l~*JL survivors
Crewof25 Chishima Islands .Kamchatka
after 10 mos.
Drift.
15 10/ Bishfi 1il'*JL Rescued off the North 2 return in 1816 through f,yd;& S ~E
1813 coast of CA by America Ezo
Jfikichi and 13 others The Forrester .Alaska S*A:B0L~mE
.Kamchatka ,h,lTf!JZJJjJJiff 00 0):•
16 12/ Okuriku tEf3t±JL Drifted to Palau .Palau 7 were returning from ""'-7*!jo/}1ffi-
1820 Islands, and 8
. Thailand? China on 2 Chinese
Crew of 12 sent to Manila
. Manila ships. Chinese ships met /~ '7 '/ i)\";mE1l'C
(Thailand?)
· Macao, Saho storm and became
castaway. 7 returned @
Nagasaki, but I died.
17 12/ Okuriku !l!l!~JL Drifted to Battan ·Philippines II returned in 1828 @ !l!l!~JL}j!:f$t1iffoo ~E
1827 Islands
·llileJ'i'lJl1' Nagasaki. TJ+I*:lJiXtt~5i)\";
Crew of II Some accounts report mEllE
being saved by Chinese
ship at sea, others state
they visited Christian
country
18 8/ Bizen tEf31J JL Drifter to Battan · Philippines 14 returned in 1831 @ tEf31J JL,I:l§ fti~mE 1=1
1830 Islands Macau, Nagasaki :r,:
Crew of 19 Canton, Saho
19 10/ Bishu 'i'.lirnlJL Rescued by North 'the three kichis' were @Jt}!i:-~
1832 Makah and turned America on board the Morrison
Otokichi, Iwakichi, over to Ft. . Hawai'i in a failed attempt at {thl~im~ <=n
Kyfikichi and II Vancouver
· England repatriation@Edo and O)-'f-ffJt
others
· South Africa Satsuma in 1837
Macao,
Canton,
Singapore
.Ryukyu
20 11/ Higo J1':iIU8 Drifted to ·Philippines 3 tried to return on the Letters by Jusabur6
1835 northern coast of
. China Morrison in 1837, and ShOz6
Sh6z6, Jusabur6, Luzon Jusabur6 died in 1853,
Rikimatsu, and I Rikimatsu returned to ,*1J JLi)\";imllE~
other Japan in 1855
369
21 9/ Etchil fr:j!fA Rescued at sea by .Hawai'i 6 return through Ezo in 1'~:Ji
1838 James Lover 'Ohotsk 1843
Jir6kichi and 10 whaler
· Alaska a~*!Jo/.JllB-
others
i~mEA{jzJ!lBi'i!Jo/.JllB-
a~~li~§~
22 II/ Okuriku CPi'iA Drifted to Chichi Ogasawara All 6 returned through /J,~jl'd~mE~~
1839 Is. (Ogasawaras) Isles Hachij6 Islands
Crewof6 and with the help
of foreign colony,
were able to
repair their ship
23 1/ Tosa ~ v!f,Yd Drifted to Tori- . Hawai'i 3 returned in 1851 [j§l;{jzJ!l[lJ i~mE~~
1841 shima where they
· United States through Ryukyu i~mE7J{jzJ!lBHn)j~
Manjir6 and 5 others stayed for a year
. Ryukyu i~mEi\f~
before being ~~U~~
rescued by an i~B;;Ill1'i'American whaler i~'J!f~*
24 10/ Setsu :7kfl;tL Rescued by a . Mexico 2 returned in 1843, 3 *~Ai~mE r:l 'i'
1841 Spanish trading
. Hawai'i returned in 1845 @ J1H1Jt*~1ll1
Hatsutar6 and 12 ship, but 9 of 13
. Macao Nagasaki tJJ:*J!lB ~mE§~
others were marooned in
'China m7~~rll
Baja, Mexico ~~PJ~§5
ij[~t'11st
25 1/ Awa (Tokushima), $ Drifted to Tori Is. 'Tori Is. 1845ij=.l'::'iflr'~-c'11 A ~'J'!'I'I$'£A~mE~c
1845
'£A Where they
stayed for I mo. GEi~'J!f§~1ll1
Crew of II Before being
rescued by the @~Jt~'j[
whaler
Manhattan
26 2/ Okuriku 'f-~A Rescued by Returned with crew GE~'J!f~~1ll1
1845 American whaler cited above
Crew of II Manhattan @~Jt~'j[
27 1/ Kishil ~~A Rescued by · Kamchatka 5 returned in 1851@ *~HI00* OO~mE~~
1850 American whaler 'Hawai'i Nagasaki 7 returned
Crew of 13
· Alaska in 1852 through Ezo ~iJ1EA'd~'i'
. China
28 9/ Setsu %:J:J1L Rescued by an North 10 returned in 1854, 3 [~~J i)l";mE"~
1850 American ship America mentioned returned later
Hikoz6, Iwakichi, . China 7" J 1) :h~iiiU3f~
Sanpachi, and 14
others nUI'1 A* 00 iJl'(mE frf>
*iJC
29 4/ Echigo 1J'jiJ- Sole survivor California, ? ? Argus Ship Log
1851 rescued by
Jiltar6 and 12 others American whaler
30 8/ **A . Taiwan J:.m~Jt~~
1868
. China
Crew of35+
370
A 10/ Harima Ship abandoned ·SEAsia Returned @ Nagasaki ~9;1J1tr3(~~~~
1626 {=tit lj:.~ Mtfi 1.9; in SE Asia and on Dutch ship in 1628
1J1tr returned on @JiJJt-1' 252~
Crew of80~ foreign ship
371
Appendix B: Edo Castaways to Russia
Year and Castaways and no. of Length Site of landfall Return Accounts
route crew of drift
1 1695 Dembei and 14 others 7 mos. Kamchatka Did not return
Osaka ---+
Edo
2 1710 'Sanima' and 9 others ? Kamchatka Did not return
Kishu ---+
Edo
3 1728 S6za, Gonza and 17 6 mos. Kamchatka Did not return
Satsuma ---+ others
Osaka
4 1744 (l200::P) ~~jL 6 mos. Chishima Did not return .~~.f,'i-1R
Nanbu ---+ Takeuchi Tokubei and Islands ·~~1j'[itJl:
Edo 17 others
5 1783 (lOOO::P) 'l$~ jL 8 mos. Aleutian Islands 3 @ Nemuro in ·~t~lIJ~
Ise---+Edo K6dayu, lsokichi, 4/1792 · ~l:~J/;1IJ
Koichi and 14 others
·~B:1b1JJE;L lle
6 1793 (800::P) :;f'f-gjL 6 mos. Aleutian Islands 4 @ Nagasaki '~m$f;1IJ
Senda ---+ Tsildayil and 15 others in 111804 ·~tj2I~*
Edo '1:-1!!lllli:~~mclle
7 1803 (582::P) ~f~jL 4 mos. Chishima 6 returned by 'imM:-JE, ~319
Hakodate Crew of 14 Islands, themselves ·f*13JHt lie, ~7
---+Edo Kamchatka through Etorofu
in 311806
8 1810 (lIOO::P) to::gjL 2.5 Kamchatka Returned ·imM:-JE
Hy6go---+ Heisuke and 15 others mos. through ·~j!§'lIIi:~~mcllJ'!=
Edo Kunashiri
(Chishima) in 9/
1812. 7 returnt
to Hakodate in
10/1813
9 1813 (1200::P) 7k~jL 10 Chishima 3 are repatriated '~m*2r,f\
Satsuma---+ Kizaemon and 24 mos. Islands off coast of ·1:-j!§'lIIi:~mcllc
Edo others Etorofu in 7/ 'im~Jt-JE
1816
1 1813 (l200::P) ~*jL 17 Californ ia coast 2 return with .tf',jjjt S ~e
0 Edo ---+ Jilkichi and 13 others mos. crew above · S *A:};);:' ~-'?mt
Nagoya n1TfllZllJJ 1l1'I 00 OJ *
1 1832 (350::P) ]itijL 4 mos. Hawai'i 3 are repatriated ·x**~c
1 Esashi ---+ Crew of8 through Etorofu 'l"f~~
Edo in 7/ 1836
1 1838 (650::P) jjt~jL 6 mos. Rescued by an 6 repatriated 'lf~
2 Hakodate Jir6kichi and 10 others American through Etorofu · a"HJV1&.11l)!i-
---+Edo whaler in 5/ 1843 '10zR~s!J&Jll)!i-
1 1850 (950::P) x~jL 2.5 Rescued by an 7 return @ '~B:~~
3 Edo---+ Crew of 13 mos. American Shimoda, 5 .~~~*
Kishft whaler return @
Nagasaki in
1852
372
Appendix C: Kanbun Introduction to Bandan ~~~ (1849)
Long ago in the days of Jin (-'I.f), a fisherman happened to discover a village in a peach
forest whose residents knew only peace. Telling people his story, half believed it and
half had doubts, and in the end they could not clearly distinguish what was true and
what was false. It is the same with me now hearing this castaway's story, and I cannot
help but think that I am like someone from the days of Jin. This castaway is about forty
years old, his face a dark rusty color, and he is magnificent and superior. He has a good
memory and eloquent tongue. It has been twelve years since he became cast away,
however he relates various foreign countries' customs and facts with his stories and
drawings that are vivid and trustworthy. Particularly concerning products and devices,
he can offer very detailed dimensions. However, there are more than a few
discrepancies between his account and the knowledge of scholars of Western Learning.
But all things have their youth an age and even the most ancient of things must undergo
revolution (1El1fi). Even though he actually visited the places he speaks of and bases his
accounts on what he saw and heard, some will refuse to believe and instead say that he
is wrong and that the Western Learning scholars must be right. I only met the castaway
five or six times, but when I did I was sure to prepare ink and paper in order to record
his stories, and in the end produced three volumes and have called it "Bandan." Even if
we acknowledge that there are many pointless words, redundancies, and difficult parts,
we must also admit that because novelty is spreading throughout the world it may prove
helpful. Truly, it was my great wish from long ago to read 10,000 books and travel
10,000 rio Yet while this castaway is merely a lowly sailor, he has wandered to distant
lands abroad, seen and heard the strangest things, and so it isn't that he is not grand.
There is no one whose heart, upon hearing his story, will not be charmed. However, for
me even now I gush with special feelings. Those people moved to that utopia in the
peach forest to escape tumultuous world, but they simply shut the door to their cave in a
clump of mud for five hundred years while political disturbances came and went,
beginning with the Han, and later the Wei and the Jin, they were unaware of dynastic
transitions as they lived in retreat from the world. Suddenly hearing what was actually
taking place in the world from a fisherman there was surprise and suspicion, and even
though the Jin had doubts about the story of the Peach grove, it should have been clear
that there was a far superior way. Currently, the many countries in the five continents
throughout the world fight like a cloud and a concealed tiger, some are considered
empires ('rff), and some are considered kingdoms (:E), and all the countries, strong and
weak, are lined up and there is no peace. However our country alone in the middle of
the great ocean is independent and does not engage with others. For two hundred years
virtuous enlightenment has reigned and the people have happily enjoyed great peace
373
and cannot even imagine the turmoil of other countries. With peace a daily affair, it is
not that we choose to enjoy the benefits of a Peach grove. Therefore, when I hear the
castaway's story what I feel is that actually the people of the Peach Grove were such
[like Japan] and the people of Jin were such.
374
Appendix D: Dictionaries and Lexicons in Edo Period Hyoryuki
Account (year written) Languages Relative
Length/Contents
1) Ikoku monogatari Japanese,~anchu, Set up as a comparison
(1644) Peking between languages of
Dattan and Peking, with
only foreign readings
written injurigana
above kanji. Numbers,
food, animals, and
approximately 30 other
words.!
2) Echizen bune Same as #1. Similar to #1?
hyoryuki (1646? Kanei
23 nen)
3) BishU Ono mura june "Batan" Numbers and 42 other
hvoryu ikken (1668) terms.3
4) Jusanya-maru "To no kotoba" 14 terms.4
Taiwan hyoryuki (1754)
5) Annan koku hyoryu "Annan kotoba" Numbers and 127 other
monoflatari (1767) wurds:'
6) ChikushU "Tenjiku no kotoba," Numbers: 1-10,100,
Karadomariura "Tojin no kotoba" 1000, 10,000.
Magoshichi Tenjiku Castaways claim to
banashi (1770) have naturally (shizen
I Ikoku hyoryuki shU (Arakawa Hidetoshi, ed.) (Tokyo: Yoshikawa K6bunkan, 1962), 13-15.
~ NSSSS5, 568-569.
3 NSSSS5, 557.
4 EHSS1, 251.
5 EHSS2, 275-277; Cf. NSSSS5, 596-597.
375
ni) learned these
through trade.6
7) lchiyo-maru FukushU "T6koku nite kikioboe Numbers and 124
hyoryuki (1782) soro gokotoba words.7
aramashi"
8) Hokusa bunryaku Japanese-Russian Significant number of
(1794) (subdivided into 17 entries comprising the
topics) entirety of volumes 10
and 11.8
9) lsokichi monogatari Japanese-Russian While not as extensive
(1794) as #8, the dictionary
takes up approximately
1/3 of the entire text.9
10) Kanton hybsen zakki "Kanton jin kotoba" Numbers and 71 other
(1796) words. to
11) Nanpyoki (published Annan Numbers and brief list
in 1798) of terms.1I
12) HyofUtan (1801) "Kuronb6" and "T6jin" 25 terms and phrases,
plus numbers and
months (for Tojin
only).12
13) Kankai ibun (1805) Japanese-Russian Significant number of
(subdivided into 12 entries comprising the
topics) entirety of volume 8.13
14) Oroshiya no kotoba Japanese-Russian The entire text is a
(probably printed and lexicon that was
6 NSSSS5, 661.
7 EHSS2, 464.
8 NSSSS5, 804-823.
9 EHSS3, 134-137.
10 EHSS4, 545-547.
11 EHSS2, 312-313.
12 Kinsei hy6ryCtki shu (Arakawa Hidetoshi, ed.) (Tokyo: Hosei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 1969),97-98.
13 Kankai ibun: Honbun to kenkyu (Sugimoto Tsutomu, et aI., eds.) (Tokyo: Yasaka Shobo, 1986),236-
259.
376
sold at the exhibition of separately released and
his goods in Nagoya in sold by Jfikichi. 14
1819)
15) Nankai kibun "Kuronbo yakugen" and Contains short list of
(published in 1820) "Tokyaku yakugen" words in Chinese and a
shorter list of
"Kuronbo" words. Also
has three "Kuronbo"
songs transliterated into
kana.15
16) Kansei hyoryuki Japanese-Russian Contains numbers and
(1822) less than 50 terms.16
17) KishU Kuchikumano Japanese-Spanish Spanish is over 9/10 of
hyoryu (no) hanashi Japanese-Chinese total list, with only 32
(1843) (subdivided into five Chinese terms.17
topics)
18) Amerika shinwa Japanese-Spanish More substantial than #
(1844) (subdivided into 15 2Ys
topics)
19) Ruson koku A mix of "Tokoku," Only numbers are listed
hyoryuki (1845) "Igirisu," "Manera" for each language, the
(Manila), and remaining terms are not
"Kajibara" distin.2;uished.19
20) AshU sen KohO- Japanese-American Includes numbers but
maru hyoryuki (1845) (Includes American very limited lexicon (36
pronunciation of words). Reflects limited
Japanese place names.) time sailors spent
onboard the
Manhattan.2O
14 Manuscript in Meiji University Central Library. Tokyo.
15 EHSS2, 246-249.
16 Manuscript in Meiji University Central Library.
17 NSSSS5. 462-463.
18 EHSS4, 326-340.
19 Manuscript copy in Meiji University Central Library archive; EHSS4, 250-252; and NSSSS5. 576.
20 EHSS4, 438-439.
377
21) Tokei monogatari Japanese-Russian- The entirety of the 9th
(1849) American-Sandwich volume. Along with #8,
Island one of the most
With Cantonese extensive dictionaries in
addendum Edo hyoryuki.21
(sub-divided into 12
topics and also indexed
by kana.)
22) Toka kibun (1850) Japanese- mostly Comprising second half
Spanish of 5th volume.22
(Subdivided into 15
topics)
23) Toyo hyokyaku Japanese-American- Comprising one of three
danki (1851) Oahu (subdivided into 7 volumes?3
topics)
24) Kaigai ibun (printed Japanese-Spanish Significant portion of
in 1854) (subdivided into 13 the third volume?4
categories)
25) Kisha sen Beikoku Japanese-American Less than 50 words and
hyoryuki (1854) phrases.25
26) Nagase murabito Japanese-American Approximately 200
hyoryudan (1855) (with a note stating that entries?6
American (Amerika
kotoba) is the same as
English (If?irisu dozen)
27) Banshajin beikoku Japanese-English The English comprises a
hyoryu shimatsu (1855) Japanese-Chinese large section half way
through the text. The
Chinese is limited and
21 Manuscript copy in the Maeda Sonkeikaku Bunko archive, along with Ishiguro Senhiro's Kokugaku
lexicon; NSSSS5, 174-215.
22 NSSSS5, 409-413.
23 NSSSS5, 610-613.
24 I have seen numerous copies of this text in archives and at a used-book store in Kanda, Tokyo. Can be
seen at Waseda University Library and Tokyo Kaiyo University, as well as the Doshisha Main Library.
See, http://Iib.s.kaiyodai.ac.jp/library/bunkan/tb-gaku/hyoryu/hyoryu.html.
25 EHSS5, 247-248.
26 NSSSS5, 686-688.
27 EHSS5. 430-434, 453.
378
comes at the very end of I
the text?7
379
Appendix E: Complete Translation of Tokubei Tenjiku monogatari
~~~J(~~m (1707) 28
In Takasago from the Province of Harima there is a man called Tenjiku Tokubei.
Currently he is a priest who goes by the name of Soshin and lives in the Kamishio
district of Osaka. When this Soshin was young he crossed over from Japan to Tenjiku
and, remembering the seas and land, he wrote it down and then returned home. In this
year 1627 [later editor writes "1707"] he is 89 years old and has proceeded to write
down his story. This will surely be considered an old man's tale and as a "tale" it has
been entrusted to a frivolous brush. [However, this Tokubei] is still now alive?9
Captain Tenjiku Tokubei of Takasago in Harima, from the age of 15 went to
Tenjiku and there are two or three writings that cover the routes and descriptions of the
sea and land between Nagasaki and China, China and Tenjiku that have been completed.
18 Tenjiku is often glossed as "India," however there is significant geographical dissonance between these
two terms. Tenjiku is perhaps better understood in terms of its central position in a particular Buddhist
cosmology represented in Go Tenjiku zu (fig. I). Tenjiku was frequently divided into five (and sometimes
sixteen) smaller countries and was said to comprise the larger part of the continent of Jambu-dvfpa or
"The Whole World." The birthplace of the Buddha and center of this worldview was commonly marked
by a vortex in the north-central mountains of this land mass and a central lake from which four major
rivers flow. See Muroga & Vnno, "The Buddhist World Map in Japan and its contact with European
Maps," in Imago Mundi, vol 16 (1962),49-69.
This translation is based on the document reproduced in (Ishii Kend6 Korekushon) Edo hy6ryuki s6shU,
dai ikkan (Yamashita Tsuneo, ed.)(Tokyo: Hy6ronsha, 1992),487-504. This is the definitive version of
the text in print and is based on the work of Ishii Kend6, who compiled and transcribed the text into
printable form based upon multiple hand written documents. He notes textual variants parenthetically, but
unfortunately only identifying them with the ambiguous betsubon ("alternate text.") This translation
relegates most of these variants to footnotes, however when the variant is minor and provides clarity it is
occasionally included in the main text. Ishii also occasionally adds editorial commentary, which is
preserved in the main text in brackets. I am most grateful for the assistance and time of Stephen Kohl
who kindly read through this translation for me and assisted me with the various ambiguities of the text.
19 Although the form of this document invokes the genre of monogatari or "tales" as a model, it is also
very indebted to the genre of setsuwa or "didactic legend." See EHSSI, 488. In fact these two genres are
not exclusive, See Princeton Companion to Japanese Literature, 346. It is important to point out that
unlike the formulaic beginning of both setsuwa and monogatari (~Ii.11;', ~11;', etc.), this text makes an
interesting adaptation by instead claiming that the source of the narrative is still alive. (~I=fffrtft V) Later
Edo period castaway accounts also insist on this affect of verisimilitude by emphasizing the source of the
text coming from an eye witness account. This generic development in castaway accounts may be related
to this adaptation of older literary genres, but it also must be considered in terms of the legal status of the
speaker in later accounts and the fact that their stories are also refracted through the genre of interrogation
reports or kuchigaki.
380
It is said that since in the past, merchants from Japan were permitted to carry out
trade with Tenjiku, Suminokura Yoichi, Chaya Shirojiro, Hirano Heijiro, Kagoya,
Beniya, and folks of this ilk became official Tenjiku traders. I, Tokubei, was a
merchant captain working under Suminokura Yoichi and chartered by the ship captain
Maebashi Kiyobei departing Nagasaki on my way to Tenjiku at age 15.
From Nagasaki to the Island of Women and the Island of Men is 96 ri,30 to
Takusanku [later editor writes "Takasago, Taiwan"] it is 650 rio This country called
Takusanku is 750 ri in length and in the open waters 13 rPl from the port serving the
CapitaeZ there are the two islands of Ukura and Token. From here it is directly south of
Japan.
Going west 650 ri from Takasanku, I saw the entrance to Canton and its port
city of Amagawa [later editor writes, "Port of Ama, Macau"], whose depth is 980 hiro.
It is so deep that we had a hard time dropping anchor. The star called the 6 kurusu
[later editor writes, "The Southern Cross"] rises in the south and from this place one can
also see the North Star. With a clock [i.e. "compass"] you can determine the directions
and navigate the seas. From this place you can see both the "Big Cross" and the "Little
Cross.'>33
When we came to the place called the border of Hyo 300 ri south of Amagawa,
we had reached the limits of Nankin.J4 From here, going west 300 ri, we saw the peaks
of Toronka in Kochi [Koshi].J5 This was the birthplace of the Great Dharma Patriarch.36
30 The Isles of Women and Men are part of the common geographic imaginary of the Edo period. For this
translation distances, weights, lengths, and monetary values are kept in the original units. Rough
conversions can be done based on the following equivalencies:
1 ri==36 chO==3.927 km, 1 ken==6 shaku==I.818 m, 1 hiro==5 (6) shaku==I.515 m (1.818 m), 1 koku=lOO
shO==lOOO go==180.39l I.
31 Alternate text reads, "20-30 ri."
32 Alternate text includes, "the entrance to the capital is called 'Keifun'."
33 The terms Okurusu and shokurusu are literally translated as "Big Cross" and "Little Cross" respectively.
Stephen Kohl suggests that this is a confusion with the Big and Little Dippers.
34 Alternate version says, "Tonkin."
35 This is the old name for the area of current day Hanoi.
36 Yamashita Tsuneo concludes that this must be the Five Mountains area near Hoinan in Central Vietnam.
See EHSS 1,488.
381
From here we sailed south 400 ri?7 where there is an island called Hokontoro of
Kabocha [editor adds, "Cambodia"]. After sailing northwest 800 ri we came to the
country of Makata [editor adds that this is a kingdom that existed in central India] and
the mouth of the RyQsa River. We were 3,800 ri from Nagasaki?8
3 ri up the Ryusa River in the country of Shamu [Siam] is castle called
Hantehiya?9 At this place we transferred to a smaller hayabune boat and presented the
vermilion seal we brought from Japan to the king40 of the Kingdom of Makata.
27 ri up river from Bantehiya there is a castle.41 Long ago at this site, KQkai and
Monju engaged in a battle of wisdom. 25 ri up river from here is a Capital called
Daikai (::ferm). From here we were 75 ri from the mouth of the Ryusa River.
At the temple known as Tehiyatai42 there are the remains of the home of the
Great Buddha disciple Sudatta that later became the home of the King of Siam.43
From Tehiyatai, we passed through the town for 7 ri where there were three
temples that are each 20 ri 10ng.44 However, the distance of "7 ri" is in fact 42 ch6 by
Japanese measurement standards.45
37 Alternative text we reads, "There is an island called 'Kuwar6' in Chanba [later editor adds that this is a
kingdom that existed in southern Vietnam that was destroyed in 17th century]. From here we sailed south
400 ri.")
38 It seems that Makata (also written, "Makada") may in fact be the old Indian kingdom of Magadha. It is
in fact nearly impossible to be sure of where the narrator is talking about, since he continually confuses
distances, directions, and place names. It seems likely that if the captain Tokubei (after becoming the
priest S6shin) in fact wrote this story, he would have relied on navigational maps in existence at the time
to explain a more accurate geography. 1 think it is more likely that the author of this text is someone with
no firsthand experience of either Southeast Asia or the Indian subcontinent. His claims to firsthand
authority are more likely a narratival strategy in order to reaffirm a geographically inaccurate Buddhist
cosmology that existed before the knowledge of maritime travel replaced it.
39 Alternate text reads, "Bandebiya." Yamashita has determined that this place is the merchant shipping
offices for the capital of Siam, Ayutthaya. According to Yamashita, the Ryusa River is in fact the
Champraeya River. See Edo hyoryuki soshu, dai ikkan, 488.
40 Alternative text reads, "Capital."
41 Alternate text identifies this castle as "Bankoku." Furthermore, the alternative text(s) read(s), "A
further 20 ri up river is the castle called Korihisara. At this place is the Seirin Temple on Keikurii
Mountain."
42 Alternate text reads, "there is a building."
43 Alternative text reads, "~::Ii":::E."
382
One of the temples has erected a standing Buddhist statue as its central holy
image and this temple faces East. There is also a statue of the Buddha of Nirvana and
this temple faces North. [That is, the] head points toward the North with the face turned
toward the West,46
The thickness of the pinky finger of the sleeping Future Buddha is more than 3
ken and we can certainly guess [its size]. With fifteen people standing hand in hand
they would barely encircle one-third of one of the pillars of this temple. Inside the
enshrining temple there are three sections, each 8 ken in width. This distance is known
as "one temple ch(j" ( L.!\=>lP¥:IlIT).
Today, they say that these temples have a relic buried in a mound and the
venerable Buddha himself erected the three aforementioned images. The Buddhist
offering at memorial services for the dead is gold leaf. Since they apply it to both the
images of the Buddha and the temple itself, you can see the Golden Buddha. These
three temples are tremendous. With the height of 20 ri, you can see them47 from the
seas off the country of Makata. Although there are many tall mountains in the interior
of this country that cannot be seen from the sea, you can see the three temples. The
temples serve as a marker for navigation and ships sail by its beacon. Those things
called mountains pale in comparison.
Forty ri upstream from the capital there is a mound called Ryojusen.48 It is one
ri high and eight ch(j wide and 16 ch(j in length. At this place you can see a huge
boulder. On this Rock Mountain a sermon was given by Shakamuni. High on that rock
is the Buddha's wash basin.49 On the 42 ri route that runs between the capital and
44 Alternate text reads, "there were 3 Buddhist temples." Yamashita suggests that this temple complex is
in fact Angor Wat, however this seems to contradict his earlier assumption that the Ryusa River is the
Champraeya. (See note #11).
45 Alternative text reads, "originally one Japanese ri was equal to one chao For the temples that are 20 ri in
length, each ri of a foreign country is six eM."
46 Alternate text reads, "There are three sacred images of a standing Buddha, a sitting Buddha, and a
sleeping Buddha. The standing Buddha faces East, the sitting Buddha faces North, and the face of the
sleeping Buddha faces West."
47 Alternate text adds, "for a continious 67 ri."
48 This mountain, Ryojusen, is the famed "Vulture Peak," where the Buddha was said to have expounded
many sutras. It is actually located in central India, however it seems that our narrator has once again
confused his geographies.
49 Alternate text reads, "a statue of the Buddha, his footprints, and a wash basin."
383
Ry6jusen there is a market held between the third month and the end of the fourth
month.50 Forty-three ri up river, there is a giant rock called zazenseki [Meditation
Rock]. This rock is thirty-two ch6 high and hangs out over the middle of the Ryusa
River. Above this rock are various [statues of] Buddhas sitting in meditation therefore
it is called Zazenseki. On that rock there is a temple of various Buddhist statues.51
Inside this temple there is the venerable image of a meditating Shakamuni. Two
ri down river from the Zazenseki is the mouth of the Ganges River.52 The length of the
Ganges River is about 1,200 ri.
Heading towards the interior on the Ryusa River, up river about seventy ri there
is the capital called Okai. Although we took a junk to this point, from here on we were
forbidden to go any further. With transportation not a possibility, we transferred to a
small boat and went further up river. Asking someone who was familiar with the routes
up and down the Ryusa River, [he said,] it had been eight years since he had gone up
and down the river, and although he had done it, it was best not to travel up river to
Tandoku Mountain. There appear to be innumerable routes to the interior and they are
long going.
Going to Chaya, Rokukon, and Hitsuhira, about 800 ri from the capital53 there is
a place called Shakatai.54 This place produces various leather products as well as shark
[skin] and other goods. Until this point we were still in the country of Makata, however
to the SW is barbarian country of Tsuritogisu [Portugal???]. In the NW direction is
Oranda [Holland], Igirisu [England], Nuisukuwanniyoro [???], and the country of
Dattan.55
50 Alternate text adds, "This is the so-called, 'Eight Day Market of Tenjiku'."
51 In alternate text this sentence begins, "Aside from hanging out over the Ryusa River."
52 Although he uses the characters for the Ganges (t]jil]"JII) here. In an alternate text he phonetically writes,
"Konga." ''The river is called the Konga River and it branches off and flows East." A separate alternate
text includes, "This place is at the branch down river in KabOcha [Cambodia]."
53 Alternate text reads, "in the SW direction." The text seems to make a very large geographical jump here
and begins to describe a completely different area. It is impossible to determine based on the text whether
this is information gleaned from firsthand experience or not.
54 Alternate text adds, "From this place leaving Suwau and Kyara, it is another 900 ri in the SW direction
to a place called Jagatara [Jakarta]."
55 The narration of this geography may be based on the colonial outposts in Asia that these western
countries laid clam to, or it may actually refer to the European countries themselves. Since S6shin does
not include any distances here" it seems he could in fact be referring to the very distant European
countries themselves. It is important to note that unlike later Edo period castaway accounts which often
384
There are leaves of the Tarayau tree growing around the mountain of Ryojusen.
[Editor explains that this is a reference to the leaves of the Tara tree, upon whose leaves
are inscribed the teachings of the Buddha.] Every year one cart load [of leaves] is
exported. They have some of these leaves at JUrinji Temple in Takasago.56 An old
priest at Tehiyatai asked us to get one of these leaves of the Tarayau tree on which the
disciples at the time of Buddha's life used to transcribe the Buddha's sermons. The
elder priest asked for one leaf and because this man was the father-in-law of Kinoshita
Rokubei - the overseer of the dorm belonging to my employee Maebashi Seibei - we
offered this to the temple. This Rokubei is Japanese and he is lord under the king
here.57 In Japan his rank is [equivalent to] Dainagon.
I left for Tenjiku on the 16th day of the 10th month of Kan'ei 3 (1626), departing
from Fukuda in Nagasaki. In the following year on the 3rd day of the 3rd month in the
year of the rabbit (1627) I arrived at Hantehiya on the Ryusa River in the country of
Makata in Central Tenjiku. We stayed here through the rest of the year and on the 3rd
day of the 4th month of our 3rd year, the year of the Tiger (ed., Kan'ei 5) (1628), we
departed from the mouth of the Ryusa River in the country of Makata. The 11 th day of
the 8th month of that year we returned to Nagasaki.
Going to Tenjiku we were on a karabune ship with a crew of 397 sailors
belonging to SuminokuraYoichi that was 29 ken in length and 9 ken wide. Afterwards,
we borrowed a ship belonging to the person called YOSU58 of Holland and returned.
[Editor notes that this is the Dutchman Jan Josten who drifted to the shores of Bungo in
the island of Kyushu as a sailor on board the ship Liefde in the spring of Keicho 5
(1600). He gained the trust of Tokugawa leyasu and served as a diplomacy and trade
advisor and received permission to build a mansion in Edo, the traces of which remain
today in Chuo-ku, Yae-shfi. However, it seems that Tokubei's record confuses Jan
Josten with the English captain of the Liefde, William Adams. Furthermore, this dates
the account as having taken place roughly 30 years before the dates given. I believe
that Isshii's assumption that this is a reference to the Liefde incident (because Josten's
name is mentioned) is suspect. It seems more likely that he was told he was on a
"Josten ship" by a foreign crew who assumed Tokubei would understand that it was a
Dutch ship. For one, Tokubei mentions the Dutch House in Edo as "Yosa yashiki"
focus heavily on descriptions of empire and colonial relations, Tokubei's story seems to be completely
void of this vocabulary.
56 Alternate text reads, "Nagasaki."
57 Alternate text adds, "his stipend is 300 koku, in Tenjiku."
58 Alternate text reads, "Yayosu."
385
(Josten's mansion), and his place in Nagasaki (which is more likely a Company House).
Secondly, documentation of the Lie/de that I have looked at does not mention
repatriating the crew of a Suminokura ship.] Yosu has a mansion in Nagasaki and,
receiving 1000 koku from Japan, he also has a mansion in Edo called the Yosu Yashiki.
Ichizaemon59 of Nagasaki calls the Dutch ships, "saobune." Our ship had a crew of 384.
At that time I was 19 years old and 21 years old returning home. We left Fukuda,
Nagasaki on the 14th day of the 11 th month. We landed in the country of Makada of
central Tenjiku on the 18th day of the 2nd month ofthe following year. On the 18th day
of the 8th month of the next year we arrived in Nagasaki.
Hanrigase (JJ~1J~~) [Rapids of 10,000 ri] is the boundary between Nankin and
Tonkin. The border of Hyo and the border of Hanrigase are lined up perfectly to make
a single boundary. The narrow point of these rapids is 15 rio At the end of the
Hanrigase is the entrance to the Buddhist temple/Jagatara [Jakarta].6o
Within the territory of the country of Makata is the long, hellish Enra wo uro
road of Santome. From the capital it is in stages of 1000 rio To Santome [Sao Thome]
is 3000 ri where they trade textiles, leather goods, and other things. It is extremely hot
here.6l In all seasons, people needing to get around will use carts to do so. If you
happen to fall from the carriage you will become burned and mummify.
In Makata there is a fruit called a yashi [literally "palm," but clearly a coconut]
that is similar to a large Japanese pear. Breaking the yashi in half we find 4 go of water.
This water is said to counteract several poisons. This would be convenient for Japanese
in order to prepare medicines. They fill each yashi half with about three go of rice, and
using this as their measure, sell it for a silver coin. They sell it in quantities of sixty62
cups and each of these silver coins buys approximately 18 shoo
59 "Captain Bit6to" precedes Ichizaemon's name in an alternate manuscript.
60 There is some ambiguity as to what is at the end of these rapids. Ishii's text places "Buddhist temple"
in the main text and relugates the alternate reading of "Jagatara" in parenthesis. Considering the
orthographic similarities between !J~ tJ~t'::? and C;~ tJ~t.:'; .we can perhaps understand the source of this
confusion.
Alternate text also adds, "However, these rapids flow 3,400-3,500 ri from the NE to the SW."
61 Alternate text reads, "Tenjiku is a land of scorching heat." If Soshin is in fact referring to the port of
Siio Thome, he would them be on the West coast of the Indian subcontinent and has made yet another
vast geographic jump in his narrative.
62 Alternate text reads, "six."
386
Kyara [Sandalwood] Mountain is in Chaya, central Tenjiku. It is called Kyara
Mountain of Rokukon. This place exports many things.63
In the country of Makata as well, there is a forest called Mt. Kyara. From the 8th
month64 they begin to strip the bark on the upper part of the trees and by the 3'd month
of the following year they designate the poor quality wood as jinmanahan, and the good
quality wood they call kyara.
There are many coral balls [jewels] at the mouths of the Ryusa and Karaka
Rivers. Furthermore, we went to the gates of the capital of Tonkin since there are also
to be found in the Tokaku River.
There are no pines in the country of Makata. They have trees called shitan,
kokutan, and sendan. There are also other various plants here.6s However, there is also
something like bamboo but thinner. The core is hollow, about the width of the small
finger. It grows exactly one shaku between joints. These are used as flooring in smaller
houses.66
These people are taller than the Japanese.67 Men shave below the ears,68 and
their heads are done up in the keshi bozu style of Nankin. [Bald except for the very
top.] Women and children use sandalwood oil, putting this oil on their bodies and hair,
which they part down the middle.69 They wear something that looks like a one-piece
pair of pants.70
Men have short swords called hitsutoku similar to kaifu fisherman's knives.
63 Alternate text reads, "Aside from this place, Luson and Cabocha are also major exporters."
64 Alternate text reads, "3rd month."
65 Alternate text reads, "There is lots of bamboo, called giant bamboo. It is 4 or 5 shaku thick."
66 Alternate text adds, "Houses here are usually built two stories high. Since it is such a hot country, they
build a raised floor and live on the second floor. They open up a place underneath. For roofs they use tiles
but there are also reed roofs. They use Chinese mats for tatami since they are cool."
67 Alternate text adds, "They look very high class from birth."
68 Alternate text reads, "Hairs on their head are hung down with the ends cut."
69 Alternate text reads, "Their hair hangs down just as is. Their hair and nails look normaL"
70 Alternate text reads, 'The front comes down and is bound to make an underbelt in the back like jittoku
clothing. The women wear courtly dress that hangs across the shoulder."
387
Men both high and low wear crowns. The higher-ranking folks wear their
crowns with silver tassels and the lower ranks wear brass.
All those who take holy orders must avoid passing through any street in which
women are passing through. In order to use such a road, the men first wait [for the
women to pass] and then coming out into the road, recite the word, "chaka" ten times.
They can then pass on the road. Chaka is the word for Shakamuni.
The laity, when seeing a Japanese, place their hands together and offer a pray,
saying chaka. More than anything, this is a sign of respect?]
From the 3rd or 4th month until the 6th or 7th month it gets slightly cooler,
however it is exceptionally hotter than the heat of Japan. From the 8th or 9th month until
the 3rd or 4th month it is much warmer than it is in the summer [in Japan]. Depending on
the day, one can shower two or three times in a day.
The white silver here haijukigin or uses ash-blown silver.72 Japanese silver is
only 75% in value [by comparison]. The ash-blown silver is cut to the weights of one
monme one bu, or two bu five rin. It is equivalent to a Chinese kaku coin. On the ryo
coin it is deeply embossed so they do not have to weigh them. They also have zeni
coins similar to Japan.
As for rice, it is harvested three times annually in the third, sixth, and tenth
months?3 The first and the last harvests are not taxed?4 They do not collect the straw of
the rice?5 The ears of the plant are cut off and stored as such, and they do the same
with the second harvest. They make straw bags by folding over rattan and sewing it
together. One bag holds 4 or 5 masu each. They do not have straw bags made of rice
stalk, neither do they have rope made of rice stalks. Rope too is twisted from shaved
71 Alternate text adds, "Eating is called kinkafuiyatohamirai."
72 This seems to be a reference to a specific smelting process, however the translator is unclear as to
details.
73 Alternate text reads, "they harvest three times a year, the first planting is in spring during the first
month. Afterwards, the second planting sprouts up [on its own] from the tufts of cut stalks of the first
planting."
74 Alternate text adds, "Taxes are paid with best rice from the middle harvest of the sixth month."
75 Alternate text reads, "The grass is cut and disposed of. The rice is stored in something resembling an
untreated cask."
388
rattan. The heights of the rice stalks are 5 hiro for the first harvest, 4 hiro for the
second harvest, and about 3 hiro for the third harvest.76
There are many varieties of four legged beasts, including tigers, elephants, boar,
lions, and Chinese deer. The king of this country keeps (an) elephant(s) in a special
stable made for them.77
Since there are no cows, even peasants keep water buffalo much like they do
cows in Japan, and use them to pull carts. Horses here are slightly smaller that the
horses in Japan. There are no monkeys?8
Jakau dogs [Jackals?] are hunted with guns and their bodies are placed in
vessels and buried. Afterwards, they are dug up and sold. Because of such a disgusting
practice, [Tokubei] said the people of Tenjiku are hateful people. There is also an
animal called a hyo [leopard] that looks a lot like ajakau dog. Since they are good for
nothing, they are abandoned. That is why they say, "the death of hyo," in Japan.79
In the Ryusa River there are various types of fish.80 There are lots of serpents
whose faces are as large as Japanese cow faces with the exception of horns. They are 7
or 8 ken long, but occasionally get up to 13 or 14 ken. When it is sunny in the
afternoons, they climb up on sand bars in the Ryusa River and take naps while snoring
loudly. The people of this place take long sticks and often go to the place where these
serpents nap and, with the tip of the sticks, will hold them down and immediately bind
up the beasts with the stick. Hanging them from the stick, they capture them alive,
76 Alternate text adds, "There is no wheat, millet, or similar grain, but they do have soy beans and other
lentils." In a separately cited alternate text we find the following description, "melon and eggplant are
always plentiful and taste similar to those in Japan. The melons are exceptionally delicious however there
are no white melons. The eggplant grow year round and are like trees, so they climb these trees with
ladders to harvest them."
77 Alternate text reads, "Prodding them with pitchforks, the elephants are led around. The scars on the
elephants faces are healed if they see the starts at night. During war, large elephants are lined up in a
Seiro formation."
78 Alternate text adds, "Beasts calledfttnt6 are similar to Japanese mountain dogs and kill people."
79 This seems to be a mistake on the part of the author. "The death of hy6," is in fact a reference to the
Chinese History o/the Five Dynasties and the phrase ~-J~';¥;'&:. The idea expressed by such a phrase is that
a leopard leaves behind its beautiful coat after it is dead, and it is used as a reference to someone whose
name lives on after death. See K6teiban Shin Kan- Wa jiten (Taishilkan shoten).
80 Alternate text specifies, "carp, crucian carp, striped bass."
389
bring them back home, cut them up, and sell them for profit. They have four legs and
the scales are about the size of a koban coin.8' They are of a blackish blue color.
There is a person named Mobei from Japan who came to Tenjiku twice. On his
second trip he had wrapped two or three of these Rain Dragon scales in some nose
papers and boarded the ship. At the mouth of the Ryfisa River they were not able to
budge an inch, upon which the captain of the ship determined that among those on
board someone was in possession of either the bones or scales of a Rain Dragon. He
would have to quickly dispose of them in the river while a search was being conducted
among the crew [for the culprit], otherwise even after several months, the ship would
refuse to move as long as they could not find any contraband on board. They would
begin to fight among themselves thinking that one of them had concealed something on
their persons. Although they had all boarded the ship in the morning, by noon they
were still stuck, and since none of them were to leave the ship, this man called Mobei
secretly took all three scales from his pocket and disposed of them. Immediately the
boat took off. I heard this story from Mobei himself. It is because of the power
invested in the Rain Dragon, that they can only be captured alive [and later] cut up and
sold in pieces. It is very difficult to dismiss this story completely, [since] the depth of
the Ryusa River at its center is 75 hiro, and I was told that there are places that are 100
hiro.
Children who bathe in the waters of the Ryusa River will set up weirs and swim
within these enclosures. If one of them happens to be caught by a Rain Dragon, a priest
from Hiyatai will be summoned. If he writes something [a magic talisman] for them
and floats it down the river, it will cause the snake to be stunned so they are able to
catch it.
The fact that the serpents of the Ryusa River do not have horns is because of the
Buddha sermon, so now they have no horns.
The houses here all keep peacocks as they do chickens [in Japan].82
If a phoenix is flying through the air, they become frightened and flee indoors. They
allow this because the Phoenix is said to eat peacocks.
There are also kites and crows. The kites have the same coloration as the kites
in Japan, however the crows, instead of being black, are completely white.
81 Koban coins varied in size over the Edo period. The coin size referred to here is probably about 6 cm x
3.5 cm.
82 Alternate version adds, "The feces of these birds is poisonous to humans, so they discard it outside."
390
In Tenjiku there is a man named Yamada Jinzaemon red. Chosei] who is the
leader of one of the provinces of Siam. It is said that he received a seal for official trade
from Japan and that this Jinzaemon was originally a clerk serving one of the teachers in
the Daikan in Yamada, Ise in Japan. On a trip to Edo he paid a visit to Musashi where
he ran into some trouble, was met with an interrogation and escaped to Nagasaki where
he boarded a ship to Siam. Going to Siam, he was asked by the king to fight various
battles, and having achieved various exploits, became son-in-law to the king and an heir
to royal power.
Yamada Jinzaemon is called the Nayakakuhon.83 This Nayakakuhon is a general
in charge of a province. This rank is nanfu84 and is equivalent to the Minister of the
Left.
The population is primarily made up of warriors and great land barons85 working
to protect the Emperor.
In those days, the commercial products sent from Japan included mosquito
netting, umbrellas, fans, lacquer ware, guns, bronze, tools, swords, long knives,
however this is now strictly forbidden by Japan.86
In those days, we would return from Tenjiku with thread, fabric, medicines,
fragrant woods, and shark that we bought.
The Captain of Suminokura Yoichi, Maebashi Kiyobei did business with Osaka
shioya [salt merchant].87 At that time, the great elders of Osaka included Hamaya,88
83 Alternate text reads, "Oyakakuhon."
84 Alternate text reads, "Ojf1."
85 According to alternate text, these barons are in charge of tens of thousands of ch6 each.
86 Alternate text reads, "In particular umbrellas, netting, and fans comprise the majority of cargo because
Japanese paper is so thin and strong."
87 Alternate text names the Osaka shioya merchant as "D6kun."
88 Alternate text adds, "Yodoya."
391
Koan led. :;:*], Otukaya,89 Shinsai led. 1L,'fti] and Shioya Doi.90 I was hired by Capt.
Kiyobei and in this capacity I went to Tenjiku.91
We had a crew of eighty in our SumikuraYoichi vessel. Questioning folks
familiar with the sea routes from Nagasaki to Nanban, Holland, and various other places
we chose this crew. Altogether there were 317 hired hands [in the ships that we set out
with.t2
Taian
Ta'an
Doten
Sahon
Ahon
First,
Second, and
Third Points
Tekko
Kakitsuke
= refers to the person in charge of steering
= refers to the person in charge of raising the sails
=refers to the person in charge of the anchor
= refers to the person in charge of funerals
= refers to the person who can adroitly climb the mast
= refers to the housers in charge of the three ropes
and three sections of the ship
= refers to the person in charge of loading the cargo
= purser
1. Inya 2. Arasu 3. Teresu 4. Kuwatoro 5. Shinku 6. Sein 7. Seiku 8. Obira 9. Nobi
10. Ten 100. Tehen 1000. Raki 10,000. Han
The quantitative terminology is as it is written.
Names of the Places in Tenjiku
Tonkin, Kochi, the birthplace of Daruma, Chamuba, Luson, Hyanwa, Kabocha
These are the Five Imperial Capitals.93
Chachiu, Fukuchiu, Chinchiu, Chinmou, Kou no kuni, Kantou, Nankin
These are the seven capitals.
89 Alternate text adds, "Yanami."
90 Alternate text adds, "D6kun."
91 Alternate text adds, "I was hired as a clerk for Kiyobei and recruited 80 crew members."
92 Alternate text adds, "Among the crew officials, those dealing with the mast, rudder, and anchor are
determined as specific sub-ranks."
93 Alternate text adds, "Kfikai was at the place called Urihisara. At this place is the Seirei Temple on
Mount Keikuwai."
392
Those having received official permission to trade with Tenjiku:
Suminokura Yoichi, Chaya Sshirojiro, Hirano Heijiro, Goto, Kagoya, Beniya--
These six are from Kyoto
Miji Heizo, Takagi Sakuyuemon, Orandaya Yosu-- Nagasaki
Yamada Jinzaemon-- Tenjiku
When I first left for Tenjiku the Nagasaki Magistrate was Takenaka Uneme.
From this year, Hoei 4 [1707], it has been 74 years since I left. At age 84 I took the
tonsure and the priestly name Soshin. I am now in my eighties and last year committed
myself to attaining the graces of the gods.94
Osaka Shioya-machi
Soshin
94 Alternate text reads, "At the time I left for Tenjiku, the Nagasaki Magistrate was run by Takegaku
Uneme. In H6ei 4 I was 96 years old. At 88 I took the tonsure, and the name S6shin. I live in Osaka
Kamishio machi. "
393
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Selected Manuscripts and Other Unpublished Materials
Meiji University Central Library, Tokyo
Dattan hy6ryuki
Funaosa nikki
Chikyu bankoku zusetsu
Ajia Amerika taishizu
Kansei hy6ryuki
Luzon koku hy6ryuki
Gonaimitsu m6shiage s6r6 hy6ryu ijin ikken
Shimaya Ichizaemon mujint6 he noriwatari oboegaki
Mujint6 t6kai Karabune no gi tsuki tomegaki
Hy6ryuno oboe
Sendai sen Roshiya koku hy6ryu kikigaki
T6 shu mono ikoku hy6ryu itashi s6r6 kuchigaki utsushi
Chikyu bankoku zusetsu
Iwase Bunko, Aichi
Hy6ryu yume monogatari
416
Tokyo University Shiryo Hensanjo, Tokyo
Bandan
Doshisha University, Kyoto
Hy6ryuki
Meriken hy6ryuki
Kaihy6 ibun
Kankai ibun
Funaosa nikki
Yoshitoku Bunko, Tokyo
Kawaraban with Manjiro Story
Maeda Ke Sonkei Kaku Bunko, Tokyo
Tokei monogatari
"Tokei rnonogatari j 0 kanazuke narabi insho"
Tokei kanki
Gotokei no kenj6 yurai narabi y6h6 no oboe
Hokkaido University
Kaib6 okusoku
Matsumae shuppan hy6ryu banashi
Hy6ryu nin oboegaki
Hy6ryu nin kikigaki utushi
Oshu Matsumae ry6 hy6ryunin Mj6 no utsushi
Sendai hy6ryunin kuchigaki
Tosabur6 hy6ryu banashi
Kyuz6 Roshiya koku hy6ryu kikigaki
"Nernuro ryo no tsuke no uchi ikitarafushi he ikokusen torai hyoryunin clorno sashioki
taihan tsukarnatsuri soro gi rnoshi agesoro kakitsuke"
Kyoto University
Tenjiku Tokubei ki
Ch6sen monogatari
National Diet Library
Oshu zakki
T6sa no mono mujint6 hy6ryuki
Kankai ibun
Ogasawara jiki
417
Tenri University, Tokyo
Peregrinations
Kokuritsu Rekishi Minzoku Hakubutsukan, Chiba
"Map of Asia" by Abraham Ortelius
Waseda University, Tokyo
Meriken hyoryuki
Hyoryu shimatsu ki
"Onoe Kikugora ichidaiki"
"Oroshiya jin shaho no zu"
Funaosa nikki
Oroshiya no kotoba
University of Hawai'i, Honolulu
Hyoryuki
Hyoson kiryaku (microfilm)
The Bishop Museum, Honolulu
Bandan
Leiden Univeristy, The Netherlands
Chosen monogatari
Tokyo Kaiyo Univeristy On-line Archive
http://lib.s.kaiyodai.ac.jp/library/bunkanltb-gaku/hyoryuki.html
Ikoku hyochaku senwa
Others
Kohl, Stephen, translator. The Captain's Diary. Unpublished translation of Funaosa
nikki.