Drifting Toward the Southeast “The Story Five of Japanese; A very Handsome Tails. Dated Oct. 26, 1852. John Mung.” The English-language title page of Hyoson Kiryaku is written by Manjiro and signed using his alias, John Mung. –Rosenbach Museum & Library Drifting Toward the Southeast The Story of Five Japanese Castaways A complete translation of Hyoson Kiryaku (A Brief Account of Drifting Toward the Southeast) As told to the court of Lord Yamauchi of Tosa in 1852 by John Manjiro Transcribed and illustrated by Kawada Shoryo Translated by Junya Nagakuni and Junji Kitadai With a Foreword by Stuart M. Frank Translation © 2003 Junya Nagakuni and Junji Kitadai All rights reserved. © Spinner Publications, Inc. New Bedford, Massachusetts 02740 Printed in the United States of America ISBN 0-932027-59-8 (cloth) ISBN 0-932027-56-3 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kawada, Shoryo, 1824-1898. [Hyoson kiryaku. English] Drifting toward the southeast : the story of five Japanese castaways : a complete translation of Hyōson kiryaku / transcribed and illustrated by Kawada Shoryo ; foreword by Stuart M. Frank ; translated by Junya Nagakuni, and Junji Kitadai. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-932027-59-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 0-932027-56-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. United States--Description and travel. 2. Nakahama, Manjirō, 1827-1898. 3. Japan--History--Restoration, 1853-1870. I. Nagakuni, Junya, 1939- II. Kitadai, Junji, 1932- III. Title. E166 .K2513 2004 952’.025’092--dc22 2003021031 Contents Acknowledgments / Credits ………………………………… 6 Foreword Manjiro: A Portrait of the Castaway as a Young Man by Stuart M. Frank …………………………………… 7 Preface by Junya Nagakuni…………………………………… 10 Hyoson Kiryaku Transcriber’s Notes …………………………………… 17 Book One ……………………………………………… 23 Book Two ……………………………………………… 55 Book Three ……………………………………………… 75 Book Four ………………………………………………109 Epilogue The Legacy of Manjiro by Junji Kitadai ……………………………………… 125 Appendix …………………………………………………… 136 Bibliography ………………………………………………… 141 Index ……………………………………………………142 Acknowledgments / Credits The publishers and translators would like to thank the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, the Millicent Library in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, the Sumiyoshi Shrine in Osaka, Mr. Kiichi Matsuoka of Kochi City, and the Kochi Prefectural Museum of History for the use of their Hyoson Kiryaku manuscripts. We are grateful for the support of the Japan Society of Boston, the Consulate-General of Japan in Boston, the Kochi City Library, and the New Bedford Whaling Museum/Kendall Institute. Translators / Authors Copy Editors / Proofreaders Junya Nagakuni Stuart M. Frank Junji Kitadai Takiji Tanaka Takashi Sugita Editors Dianne Wood Joseph D. Thomas Tamia Burt Junji Kitadai Marsha L. McCabe Contributors A & A Seafood, Inc. Production Christopher Benfey Jay Avila Ruth Caswell Andrea V. Tavares Clarence Cross Milton P. George Tracy A. Furtado Cyril Moreno Jim Grasela Derek Ellis Peter Grilli Anne J. Thomas Judith Guston Walle Hargreaves Grant Support Yasuo Komatsu Luiz Family of Dartmouth Acushnet Foundation Charles Momeny Community Foundation of Southeastern Arthur and Cheryl Moniz Massachusetts — Rainy Day Fund Hiroshi Nakahama Crapo Foundation Claire Nemes Fairhaven/New Bedford–Tosa Shimizu Keiten Okamoto Sister City Committee Kikuko Ohno Fairhaven Arts Council Peckham Rental Center, Inc. Furthermore Foundation Gerald and Ayako Rooney LEF Foundation Hayato Sakurai Massachusetts Cultural Council Yumi Tanaka Michishige Udaka Masumi Ueta Norihiko Yasuoka 6 7 Foreword Manjiro: A Portrait of the Castaway as a Young Man by Stuart M. Frank, New Bedford Whaling Museum anjiro was not the only castaway to return to Japan after a protracted sojourn in the West, nor even the first to return brimming with enthusiasm for superior American whaling methods. Nor was he the first to promote the introduction of these methods in Japan. Already, in 1843, the castaway Jirokichi, who had been rescued by the Nantucket whaleship James Loper five years earlier, had returned to “that double-bolted land” with news of Yankee whaling, but without result. Jirokichi was evidently not as convincing as Manjiro would be almost a decade later, and the Tokugawa government was not yet ready to listen. Meanwhile, other such castaways who dared trickle in from analogous rescues—those who were not executed or imprisoned—were generally ignored. Nor was Manjiro the only Japanese who possessed intimate knowledge of potentially useful Western technologies prior to the opening of Japan in 1854. In the mid 19th century, with the blessing and encouragement of the Shogunate and local daimyos, who were eager to introduce Western technology, there were a considerable number of scholars studying the Dutch language and Dutch texts in schools in various parts of Japan. One of these was young Yukichi Fukuzawa— the future founder of Keio University in Tokyo— who by 1854 was already reaching across the sea to harvest Western ideas, studying Dutch at Osaka and Nagasaki, first as a student, then as a teacher, then as headmaster and guiding spirit in such schools. Fukuzawa, along with Manjiro, was a member of the first Japanese diplomatic mission to the West in 1860. He became an avid promoter of American ethics and American technology in Japan—including American whaling methods—and his school of transcription and translation has been called the real cornerstone of Keio University. Early along, by the time of the Treaty of Five Nations (1859), which opened the port of Yokohama to foreign trade (Shimoda, Hakodate, and Nagasaki were already “open” on a limited basis), Fukuzawa had already mastered written Dutch and was rapidly conquering written and spoken English, which he had immediately recognized as the necessary lingua franca of learning and trade in the emerging internation- alist environment. He crossed the ocean several times, visiting America and Europe, gained a practical knowledge of several European languages as well as Chinese and Korean, and became a leading light of ethical, intellectual, and methodological advancement in Japan. No, Manjiro was neither the first nor the only, but his experience and his unique accomplishments went deeper than the others, and his persuasive powers must have been considerable. Moreover, his contributions were unique. Fukuzawa was a theoretician, an admin- istrator, and an intellectual. Manjiro was a sailor, an artisan, and a hands-on practical man. He not only had been abroad but had really lived abroad for an entire decade during his formative 6 7 years. He attended school and church in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, lived with an American family in American home-and-hearth style; and was gainfully employed, rewarded, and pro- moted for his skill in several trades. Moreover, as Junji Kitadai points out in his Epilogue, quoting from Moby-Dick, “a whale-ship was [Manjiro’s] Yale College and [his] Harvard,” as it had been for Melville and for Ishmael. For it was on two voyages at sea, in the John Howland as a callow castaway and in the Franklin as a mature young professional, that Manjiro received his “degree” in Western ways. His postgraduate education was in the gold fields of California, where he developed the stamina and the resolve to return with his companions to Japan. When he finally did return, it was in a sophisticated Western seagoing craft under his own command. His homecoming was one not of a simple fisherman but of a seasoned practitioner who had succeeded at four practical trades—sailor, whaleman, cooper, and prospector—with skills that would be useful to him later. As a sailor, he knew enough celestial navigation to teach it and promote its use in Japan, and he was already accustomed to ocean tempests and seasickness. He was thus able to func- tion competently when, in 1860, Japan’s first diplomatic mission, of which he was a member, encountered a debilitating gale on the high seas. Whether or not the story be apocryphal of Manjiro having saved the ship through his competence and level-headedness when most others were disabled by the storm, he must have contributed more than his fair share as the only Japanese on board who had actually made a sea voyage—in fact having traversed the Atlantic and crossed the Indian and Pacific oceans several times. His attempts to introduce American whaling methods in two outings of the Japanese schooner Ichiban-maru were failures, although evidently not because of any shortfall in Manjiro’s seamanship. As a whaleman, Manjiro had his first, unwitting apprenticeship as a boy aboard the John Howland. By the time of the Franklin voyage he was already functionally literate in English, had studied navigation, was steeped in the whaling lore of New Bedford and Fairhaven, and had almost two years at sea on the John Howland to recommend him. Possibly because of his still- young age, possibly because of lingering racial prejudice, he was shipped out on the Franklin as steward—a not inconsiderable post, in any case, as it paid better than a common foremast hand and entailed responsibility for provisions and stores as well as for meals and accommodations in the aftercabin. As steward he would nevertheless have pulled an oar in a whaleboat and been very much a part of the crew. When the captain fell ill and had to be removed, there followed an inevitable reshuffling of the hierarchy of command. The chief mate advanced to captain, the other mates each moved up a slot, and one of the boatsteerers (harpooners) was promoted to fourth mate—thus creating a vacancy in the responsible, professional post of boatsteerer. In true Yankee fashion, the crew elected the man they most wanted for boatsteerer—a post in which skill, courage, and steadfast- ness would contribute to their livelihoods and where any lack of skill, courage, and steadfastness would cost them money, risk their lives unnecessarily, and prolong the voyage. The man they chose was Manjiro.1 While Manjiro did not complete the requisite seven-year apprenticeship to qualify him as a bona fide journeyman cooper, his training in making tight barrels for the 8 9 whaling trade would have been an advantage in later endeavors.