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The Shogun's Reluctant Ambassadors: Japanese Sea Drifters in the North Pacific
A fascinating study of 11 groups of Japanese merchant sailors who were pulled out to sea by strong currents and cast adrift on foreign shores.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
287 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1991
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June 19, 2020
6/19/20 - Would like to re-read.
***
An interesting, easy to read, informative book ... a link attached. Recommended for fans of Shogun, and for folks living near North America's Pacific coastline.
https://mikedashhistory.com/2010/12/1...
quote from link:
"First, a few words of clarification. The loss of ships on the eastern coast of Japan was nothing new. The area has always been subject to strong currents and storms, particularly in January, at the height of the northeastern typhoons; hence it has always been a dangerous area for shipping. In the northern parts of Japan there are currents that push ships towards the mainland of Asia, and onto Chinese and Russian territory. Any ship sailing along the eastern coast, meanwhile, risked being caught in a storm; if she was blown offshore and disabled she would soon find herself caught in what Japanese mariners call the kuroshio – the “black stream” – a strong trans-oceanic current, flowing slowly east at the rate of that varies from 10 miles to about 36 miles a day, which is the Pacific equivalent of the Gulf Stream. The kuroshio flows from the coast of Taiwan north to Japan and then swings east, where it merges with the North Pacific current; for a ship caught in it, the next stop would be the Aleutian Islands, or the American coast between Vancouver and Los Angeles.
The lethal pull of the kuroshio did not matter so much when the Japanese were building strong, ocean-going ships during the dakokai jidai, the “age of great voyages” during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. [Eiichi pp.21-4] After 1635, however, when the Shogunate imposed its policy of national isolation, all existing sea going ships were destroyed and it became illegal to build any more such capable vessels. From about 1639, Japan was restricted to small, fragile coastal boats that were deliberately designed to be practically impossible to sail across great oceans. These vessels generally had no proper navigation gear, only one mast, and were designed with square sterns (which caught the wind and made them difficult to steer) and large square stern-rudders that frequently snapped in heavy seas, features that combined to make them especially vulnerable to rough weather. Dismasted, they were quickly rendered helpless, and would drift slowly eastwards until they encountered land. [Brooks pp.7-8]
What made the ships survivable was their cargoes. The tribute paid by Japan’s more distant provinces to the Emperor and the Shogun in Edo was generally remitted in rice, and – Japanese roads being frequently impassable in winter – that rice was generally sent by sea. That meant that the crew of a crippled vessel adrift on the Pacific often had an almost limitless supply of food to sustain them. Yes, scurvy remained a fatal problem, and the crew still required a good measure of luck to catch sufficient rainwater; there are many records of Japanese ships reaching the American coast apparently abandoned, and of boarding parties discovering the crew all dead. But in an equal number of cases at least a handful of sailors survived months of despair and privation, to begin extraordinary adventures."
A Japanese junk under sail (image not copied)
The earliest known record of a sea drifter dates to 1617, when an abandoned Japanese ship appeared off Acapulco,(1) in Mexico, though it seems far more likely than not that other early instances went unrecorded because the cargo vessels in questions went ashore somewhere much further north, in areas then inhabited only by native tribes. The historian WE Braden has noted the existence of Hawaiian records that may indicate the arrival of one or two Japanese ships, crewed by at least five survivors, on the islands as early as 1258, and has suggested it is plausible that the appearance of Japanese sea drifters may account for some of the more perplexing and unique features of Hawaiian culture. [Braden pp.76-87] And the anthropologist George Quimby goes much further, suggesting that “some thousands of disabled vessels reached American shores during the first 17 centuries of the Christian era,” and positing that they were the sources of iron blades unearthed by archaeologists on the Northwest coast of the USA, in areas where there are no known sources of iron. [Quimby pp.7-15]
(1) note, the Manila Galleons sailed past Japan for about 250 years, when returning to Mexico with silk ...)
The Manila Galleon
"There are, indeed, enough records of known sea drifts for some sort of analysis of them to be useful. Of the documented cases summarised by Brook, 27 involved junks that were encountered while they were still at sea – sometimes in mid-ocean, sometimes only a few miles from shore – while 33 were records of ships that crossed the Pacific to wash up on a foreign shore. Of the latter, eight were stranded in the Aleutians, six in Kamchatka, two in Hawaii and the remainder on the coast of mainland North America. Some of the ships had been adrift for as long as one and a half years – the record period seems to have been 17 or 18 months – but, even so, some of the crews had survived; a total of 222 living crewmen were recorded. [Braden pp.78-9n; Plummer p.235]
There is no room here to describe more than a handful of representative cases, but even these convey something of the astonishing toughness and adaptability of the men who crewed the sea drifters. Take the case of Jirokichi, whose ship the Cho-ja maru was caught in a storm of the eastern coast in November 1838 while on her way to Edu with a cargo of kombu (a variety of seaweed used in the wrappings of sushi) and tuna. “The ropes holding down the sail snapped, and the crew lost control… The mast was cut down and much of the cargo was jettisoned. The men were forced to work all through the days and nights in spite of the icy wind and driving snow.” [Plummer p.122]"
***
An interesting, easy to read, informative book ... a link attached. Recommended for fans of Shogun, and for folks living near North America's Pacific coastline.
https://mikedashhistory.com/2010/12/1...
quote from link:
"First, a few words of clarification. The loss of ships on the eastern coast of Japan was nothing new. The area has always been subject to strong currents and storms, particularly in January, at the height of the northeastern typhoons; hence it has always been a dangerous area for shipping. In the northern parts of Japan there are currents that push ships towards the mainland of Asia, and onto Chinese and Russian territory. Any ship sailing along the eastern coast, meanwhile, risked being caught in a storm; if she was blown offshore and disabled she would soon find herself caught in what Japanese mariners call the kuroshio – the “black stream” – a strong trans-oceanic current, flowing slowly east at the rate of that varies from 10 miles to about 36 miles a day, which is the Pacific equivalent of the Gulf Stream. The kuroshio flows from the coast of Taiwan north to Japan and then swings east, where it merges with the North Pacific current; for a ship caught in it, the next stop would be the Aleutian Islands, or the American coast between Vancouver and Los Angeles.
The lethal pull of the kuroshio did not matter so much when the Japanese were building strong, ocean-going ships during the dakokai jidai, the “age of great voyages” during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. [Eiichi pp.21-4] After 1635, however, when the Shogunate imposed its policy of national isolation, all existing sea going ships were destroyed and it became illegal to build any more such capable vessels. From about 1639, Japan was restricted to small, fragile coastal boats that were deliberately designed to be practically impossible to sail across great oceans. These vessels generally had no proper navigation gear, only one mast, and were designed with square sterns (which caught the wind and made them difficult to steer) and large square stern-rudders that frequently snapped in heavy seas, features that combined to make them especially vulnerable to rough weather. Dismasted, they were quickly rendered helpless, and would drift slowly eastwards until they encountered land. [Brooks pp.7-8]
What made the ships survivable was their cargoes. The tribute paid by Japan’s more distant provinces to the Emperor and the Shogun in Edo was generally remitted in rice, and – Japanese roads being frequently impassable in winter – that rice was generally sent by sea. That meant that the crew of a crippled vessel adrift on the Pacific often had an almost limitless supply of food to sustain them. Yes, scurvy remained a fatal problem, and the crew still required a good measure of luck to catch sufficient rainwater; there are many records of Japanese ships reaching the American coast apparently abandoned, and of boarding parties discovering the crew all dead. But in an equal number of cases at least a handful of sailors survived months of despair and privation, to begin extraordinary adventures."
A Japanese junk under sail (image not copied)
The earliest known record of a sea drifter dates to 1617, when an abandoned Japanese ship appeared off Acapulco,(1) in Mexico, though it seems far more likely than not that other early instances went unrecorded because the cargo vessels in questions went ashore somewhere much further north, in areas then inhabited only by native tribes. The historian WE Braden has noted the existence of Hawaiian records that may indicate the arrival of one or two Japanese ships, crewed by at least five survivors, on the islands as early as 1258, and has suggested it is plausible that the appearance of Japanese sea drifters may account for some of the more perplexing and unique features of Hawaiian culture. [Braden pp.76-87] And the anthropologist George Quimby goes much further, suggesting that “some thousands of disabled vessels reached American shores during the first 17 centuries of the Christian era,” and positing that they were the sources of iron blades unearthed by archaeologists on the Northwest coast of the USA, in areas where there are no known sources of iron. [Quimby pp.7-15]
(1) note, the Manila Galleons sailed past Japan for about 250 years, when returning to Mexico with silk ...)
The Manila Galleon
"There are, indeed, enough records of known sea drifts for some sort of analysis of them to be useful. Of the documented cases summarised by Brook, 27 involved junks that were encountered while they were still at sea – sometimes in mid-ocean, sometimes only a few miles from shore – while 33 were records of ships that crossed the Pacific to wash up on a foreign shore. Of the latter, eight were stranded in the Aleutians, six in Kamchatka, two in Hawaii and the remainder on the coast of mainland North America. Some of the ships had been adrift for as long as one and a half years – the record period seems to have been 17 or 18 months – but, even so, some of the crews had survived; a total of 222 living crewmen were recorded. [Braden pp.78-9n; Plummer p.235]
There is no room here to describe more than a handful of representative cases, but even these convey something of the astonishing toughness and adaptability of the men who crewed the sea drifters. Take the case of Jirokichi, whose ship the Cho-ja maru was caught in a storm of the eastern coast in November 1838 while on her way to Edu with a cargo of kombu (a variety of seaweed used in the wrappings of sushi) and tuna. “The ropes holding down the sail snapped, and the crew lost control… The mast was cut down and much of the cargo was jettisoned. The men were forced to work all through the days and nights in spite of the icy wind and driving snow.” [Plummer p.122]"
May 2, 2018
An unexpected story of the North Pacific, how 19th century Japanese sailors got blown across the ocean, and landed in the Pacific Northwest. The stories of these "sea drifters is full of curiosities, the encounter of lost Japanese sailors with native Americans interesting just for curiosity's sake, as well as the possibility that others have been blown across this ocean in centuries past.
The scholarship is good and the writing good enough . . . the author isn't as taken with the wonder of such this story as I am -- these are Japanese Robinson Crusoes in a way -- but no matter. This book is the authority on this subject.
The scholarship is good and the writing good enough . . . the author isn't as taken with the wonder of such this story as I am -- these are Japanese Robinson Crusoes in a way -- but no matter. This book is the authority on this subject.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews