“The Hojun-Maru was not the ‘first’ but was, in fact, one of 100 known Asian drift boats that have crossed the Pacific accidentally. (The last one to arrive came ashore on the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1987, empty.)” – Daniel Wood, The Tyee
For most of us in the United States, no ocean current is better known than the Gulf Stream. It begins in the Gulf of Mexico, flows up the eastern seaboard, then crosses the Atlantic to Europe. Its warm waters help regulate temperatures across two continents. There’s an equivalent current in the western Pacific Ocean as well. It flows past Taiwan and along the eastern coast of Japan before turning toward the Pacific. It’s known as the Kuroshio Current. The name is a Japanese word that means “black stream” – because the current is much darker than the surrounding waters – the result of lower amounts of organic material at the surface.
The Kuroshio is the biggest current in the western Pacific. It begins off the coast of the Philippines, where a current that flows westward across the Pacific splits in two. The Kuroshio forms the northern branch. It travels almost 2,000 miles before it begins moving away from land. The current is strongest from May to August, with a smaller surge in winter. A recent study found that at its peak, it can be up to 50 miles wide, and flow at three or four miles per hour. Its average surface temperature is about 75 degrees Fahrenheit – several degrees warmer than the surrounding ocean. That helps keep southern Japan relatively warm. Over the centuries, the Kuroshio has carried many ships away from Japan. An extension of the current has then ferried some of them to Hawaii or even North America – a journey that began in the Gulf Stream of the Pacific. Kuroshio Current Jan. 3, 2016 By Damond Benningfield https://www.scienceandthesea.org/program/201601/kuroshio-current]]
Did Ancient Drifters ‘Discover’ British Columbia? Legends and bits of evidence tell a story of Asians arriving here long, long ago … by design or by chance. ~ Daniel Wood, 3 Apr 2012, TheTyee.ca
“As the tide creeps over the sand flats, estuaries and beaches of the Pacific Coast, from the northern Alaska Panhandle to the southern reaches of Baha California, it brings ashore the flotsam of the Pacific that – on occasion – hints at extraordinary travels and a mystery of historic proportions. Amid the kelp, in decades past, hundreds of green-glass fishing floats would arrive intact on the Vancouver Island coast, having ridden the powerful Japanese Kuroshio Current in year-long transits from Asia. On rare occasions, entire ships would arrive – like the derelict, Hokkaido-based, 54-metre squid-fishing boat located recently 260 kilometers off Haida Gwaii archipelago, part of the estimated 5 million tons of debris headed this way from the 2011Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
Even more rarely, ‘ghost ships’ would carry survivors of this slow drift, men who spoke Chinese, or Japanese. Such was the case of the Hyojun Maru (sic) that was left rudderless in a typhoon off Japan and drifted for 14 months before being washing up in 1834 on the Cape Flattery headlands. It contained three living sailors. It is, in fact, one of 100 known Asian drift boats that have crossed the Pacific by accident. (The last one to arrive came ashore on the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1987, empty.)
No one knows the source of early iron implements in the Pacific Northwest – where iron was unknown; or the origin of the 100 Asian plants and human parasites that suddenly appeared in Latin America a few millennia ago; or the recently revealed linguistic similarities between early Chinese-Tibetan and Mayan words. How did the bones of chickens – an Asian fowl from Samoa – get into a prehistoric American garbage pile? What explains the unmistakable links between Japanese and New Mexico Zuni First Peoples’ blood type, religion and language? These Asian influences appear to have arrived abruptly within the past 1,500 years.
Where does coincidence end and ‘fact’ begin? Were Asian watercraft crossing the Pacific long before Europeans crossed the Atlantic? The first clues to this supposition may have been reports from Bella Coola (Central B.C.) fishermen of glass Japanese fishing floats entangled in their nets. Could it be that the east-flowing ocean currents that were bringing Japanese fishing floats to Bella Coola also ‘accidently’ carried primitive vessels across the Pacific from Asia?
David Burley, chair of Simon Fraser University’s Department of Archeology, admits, “People moved from west to east across the Pacific. If the Polynesians hit tiny Easter Island [off Chile] – and they did – they had to hit South America. If they got to Hawaii – and they did – they got to the Pacific Northwest.” There are Ainu totem poles from northern Japan, he adds, that are almost identical to West Coast totem poles. There’s old Polynesian bark cloth that’s identical to native cedar cloth here. “
Maybe it’s time to follow the old myths, like the native myths of people arriving long, long before the appearance of the first Europeans. Like the Chinookan myths repeated to a boy named Ranald MacDonald.
The story starts when a disabled coastal trading vessel off central Japan drifted across the Pacific Ocean and “beached” on the Olympic Peninsula coast in early 1834 . . . The Hojun-Maru, with a crew of 14, set out on October 11, 1832 from the port of Onoura on the southeast coast of Japan, laden with a cargo of rice and porcelain. The ‘junk’ was caught in a typhoon, stripped of its rudder, and carried out to sea. After drifting for about 14 months across 5,000 miles of ocean, Hojun-Maru washed ashore. The precise location is unknown, but evidence points to Cape Alava, about 20 miles south of Cape Flattery, adjacent to the ancient Makah fishing village of Ozette. Left alive were the ship’s navigator, Iwakichi, age 28, and two apprentice cooks, Kyukichi, age 15, and Otokichi, age 14. Like most of the rest of the crew, they were from the village of Onoura, then a port city, now a beach resort. Their names are known in part because of a memorial erected by their fellow towns-people shortly after their ship disappeared. The three survivors promptly encountered a group of Makah seal hunters. Neither the Japanese nor the Makah would have had any idea that the other existed. Japan had been sealed off from the rest of the world for more than 200 years, and the Makah had had only limited contact with European fur traders. In any case, the Makah took command of the situation and claimed the sailors as captives.
Cape Alava on the NW coast of WA – could this be the beach where the Hojun-Maru castaway?
The Makah reportedly retrieved a number of items from the beached ship. [Fragments of ceramic bowls believed to have been on the Hojun-maru were later found on Makah land at Cape Alava.] Alexander C. Anderson, an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company, reported meeting a group of Indians at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1834 who “produced a map with some writing in Japanese characters; a string of the perforated copper coins of that country; and other convincing proofs of a shipwreck”. But the Hojun-Maru apparently broke up and sank before much could be salvaged from it.[i]
A few days ago we received the somber news that Richard “Dick‟ Slagle, one of the original pillars in the story of Ranald MacDonald, died peacefully at home in Republic, Washington on February 9, 2021 at age 101. Those FOM members who traveled with us to Republic and then on to Toroda were lucky enough to meet Mr. Slagle in 2018 at the Ferry County Historical Society Museum in Republic, when the Friends of MacDonald celebrated our 30th anniversary. 数日前、「私の父親で、ラナルド・マクドナルドのストーリーを語る上で初期の重要人物の一人であったと思われるリチャード ‶ディック‟ スレーグルは、去る2021年2月9日にワシントン州リパブリックの自宅で101歳の人生を全う、安らかに永眠しました」という訃報を娘さんのジィ―ン・ディレーニー夫人から受け取った。FOM創立３０周年記念行事の一環としてラナルドの墓参にトロダへ行ったFOMメンバー有志一行は、その途中リパブリックへ寄り、フェリー郡歴史協会博物館で幸運にも、スレーグル翁と握手、歓談、共に記念撮影をする事ができた。それは２０１８年８月２２日の事だった。
In the last sentence of his daughter’s message to us, she wrote the following: “I do want to share, however, the one thing I’ve realized in recent days is that my Dad, Dick Slagle, had many layers of commitment, and he left us all with a huge gift of meaning, continuity, and connection. I’m very thankful for that.” As you read through this message, we know you, too, will come to appreciate her words. ジィ―ン夫人は彼女の手紙の最後に次のように述べて居る。「最近悟った事で、皆さんとシェアーしたい事ですが、 父、ディック・スレーグルは、生前この世に幾重にも及ぶ約束事や関りを持ち、それらの意義、継続性、更には多くのコネという偉大なギフトを残して行きました。私はその事に深く感謝しています。」と。 このニューズレターを読む事によって、読者の皆さんも彼女の言葉をより良く理解する事でしょう。
Dick was born to Elizabeth and J.W. “Jesse” Slagle on July 4, 1919 – joining his 9-year-old brother Maury. Younger-brother Dave was born in 1921. [The family had lost four-year-old Eleanor in 1917.] Dick’s mother, Elizabeth, came to Republic as an elementary school teacher in 1904, and his father, Jesse started the Republic Drug Store that same year. They were married in 1909. Elizabeth was from St. Clair, Missouri, and Jesse was from Franklin, North Carolina. ディックは１９１９年７月４日に、母エリザベスと父J.W.“ジェッシー”スレーグルの間に生まれ、９歳年上の兄モウリ―に加わった。 弟のデイブは1921年に生まれた。[家族は1917年に4歳の妹エレノアを失った.] ディックの母親のエリザベスは1904年に小学校の教師としてリパブリックに来て、父親のジェシーは、同じ年にリパブリックで薬局を始めた。二人は1909年に結婚。エリザベスはミズーリ州セントクレア出身で、ジェシーはノースカロライナ州フランクリン出身でした。
Dick loved Republic and all the surrounding mountains. He had many adventures with his close friend Johnny Anderson, and explored the hills to the west of town with Jack Summerville. He delivered The Spokesman-Review and knew where everyone lived in town. His first job was working for the Forest Service, and he became an Eagle Scout. Dick graduated from Republic High School in 1937. In 1942, Dick graduated from Washington State College (now WSU) in pharmacy, spent the summer on White Mountain lookout, and was soon drafted into the Army. He was stationed at Camp Grant in Salt Lake City, Utah, then Rockford, Illinois, and was transferred to Normandy, France in September of 1944 (after D-day). In France, he worked as a pharmacist in a tent hospital unit of 3000 patients near Lison, and worked at hospitals in Metz, Rouen, and Liege, Belgium. 50 years later in 1994, he was able to travel back to those locations in France with his nephew, Tom. Dick worked with his brother Maury in the Republic Drug Store for 40 years. He married his wife Helen in 1951. Jack was born in 1953, and Jean in 1955. After Helen’s death, Dick married Ruth in 1998. ディックはリパブリックとその周辺のすべての山々を愛していた。親友のジョニー・アンダーソンと多くの冒険をし、ジャック・サマービルと一緒に町の西の丘を探検した。彼はスポークスマン・レビュー紙を配達していたので、誰が町のどこに住んでいるかを知り尽くしていた。彼の最初の仕事は林野庁で、ボーイスカウトではイーグル・スカウトになった。ディックは1937年にリパブリック高校を卒業。1942年に、薬学でワシントン州立大学（現在のWSU）を卒業、夏をホワイトマウンテンの山火事見晴らし台で過ごし、その後すぐに陸軍に徴兵された。彼はユタ州ソルトレイクシティのグラント基地へ、次にイリノイ州ロックフォード基地に駐屯し、1944年9月（D-dayの後）にフランスのノルマンディーに移送された。フランスでは、リソン近郊の3000人の患者からなるテント病院で米陸軍薬剤師として働き、ルーエンのメッツとベルギーのリエージュの病院でも働いた。（５０年後の） 1994年に、ディックは甥のトムと一緒にフランスのそれらの場所に旅行で再び訪れる事ができた。ディックは兄のモーリーとリパブリックのドラッグストアで40年間働いていた。彼は1951年に妻のヘレンと結婚、息子ジャックが1953年に生まれ、娘ジィーンは1955年に生まれた。最初の妻ヘレンの死後、ディックは1998年にルースと再婚。
Dick loved to travel, enjoyed Curlew Lake, and was refreshed by getting out into the Colville National Forest, and he was dedicated to the conservation of the Kettle Range. At home, he loved to read, and was always happy to have a cat on his lap. He was a person of faith, and a member of the Presbyterian Church. He understood the value of preserving local history and was a founding member of the Ferry County Historical Society. He was the local weather observer for the National Weather Service for 50 years. ディック・スレーグル翁は旅行が大好きで、カールー湖を楽しみ、コービル国有林に行ってリフレッシュし、ケトル山脈の保全に尽くした。 家では読書が大好きで、その際、彼の膝の上に猫が居るのは常だった。 彼は信心深く、長老派教会の信者だった。 彼は地元の歴史を保存することの価値を理解し、フェリー郡歴史協会創設メンバーの一人だった。 スレーグル翁は約50年間、国立気象庁の地元の気象観測者でも在った。
In lieu of flowers, FOM suggests a contribution may be made to:
I first met Mr. Akira Yoshimura in the autumn of 1988 at a meeting of the Friends of MacDonald in Tokyo. I had read Umi No Sairei (Festival of the Sea) and was fascinated to hear him speak of the countless trips he had made to Nagasaki to gather materials for that book. I suggested that I thought it would be a good idea to translate this work into English. There were several reasons for this. First of all, putting the text into English would make it available to an extended audience. Secondly, at that time the only account of Ranald MacDonald’s adventure in Japan was his autobiography – which was necessarily limited to what MacDonald himself had personally seen and experienced. Festival of the Sea provides a much broader context for MacDonald’s story by showing us how it appeared from a Japanese perspective. Yoshimura’s work also concludes with an extended account of the career of Moriyama Einosuke, MacDonald’s star “pupil”. This establishes the true value and legacy of MacDonald’s experience in a way that Ranald MacDonald himself never knew.
After that initial meeting with Mr. Yoshimura, time passed and in 1997 Jo Ann Roe published Ranald MacDonald: Pacific Rim Adventurer, which began to put MacDonald’s experience into a broader context. In 2003 Frederik L. Schodt published Native American in the Land of the Shogun: Ranald MacDonald and the Opening of Japan. In this work, he provided much more context and relied on numerous Japanese sources including Umi no Sairei, but still, we see the story primarily from Macdonald’s perspective. I felt that Yoshimura’s work provided an important counterpoint perspective, so I undertook to make a translation. I wrote to Mr. Yoshimura, and with his encouragement, I did make a rough translation, but life intervened and I never did accomplish more than a rough draft. Then Mr. Yoshimura died and the project languished. In 2017, however, Mr. Sekikawa Natsuo invited me to participate in a symposium at the Yoshimura Akira Memorial Library. I was unable to do so, but Mr. Sekikawa’s enthusiasm inspired me to go back and revise my earlier draft of the translation and bring it to completion.
Yoshimura Akira was born into a merchant family in the downtown (Nippori) section of Tokyo. From an early age, however, he was more interested in literature than in business. Through his college years and beyond he wrote and published stories, and in the late 1950s and 60s several of his works were nominated for the prestigious Akutagawa Prize [a Japanese literary prize awarded semiannually for the best work of fiction by a promising new Japanese writer]. Although he was never awarded that prize, his reputation was firmly established in 1966 at the age of thirty-nine with the publication of The Battleship Musashi (Senkan Musashi). In this work he pioneered a new genre, what has come to be called “documentary fiction”. He collected detailed information from historical records and from interviews with people involved to explain the significance of the construction of the Battleship Musashi. In the process of describing the building of the ship, he also created an essay on the nature of modern war. His insight was that, engaged in modern, all-out war, the Japanese people had to use everything in their power to try to prevail. The symbol for that effort was the Battleship Musashi. In the end, of course, it was a failed effort, but nevertheless it was a valiant and committed effort which reflected the dedication and commitment of the Japanese people as a nation. That was what Yoshimura celebrated in his work.
Although Yoshimura continued to write fiction with contemporary settings, he is primarily known for his history-based documentary fiction, and from 1980 on his interest turned to late Edo-period Japan. Since he could not interview the participants in the events he dealt with, he thoroughly researched the diaries, letters, and other documents pertaining to his subject. He made repeated trips to the site where events took place to the point where he could even actually describe the weather at the time and place certain events occurred. We might way that even though he was writing fiction, he included as little fiction as possible in his works. Yoshimura hinted at a possible reason for this: in a middle school composition class, he once wrote an essay entitled “My Father’s Hand” – and although his father was alive and well at the time, in the essay he described his father’s body laid out in a coffin. On the back of his father’s hand was a large mole, which he caressed with his fingertips. He wrote that this was the first time he had experienced the sensation of touching his father’s skin – as the eighth of none sons his father had never taken him by the hand and he had therefore never had the opportunity to touch his father’s skin. Yoshimura’s teacher thought this was an excellent essay and read it aloud to the class, but when his father read it he was furious, shouting, “You have written something here which has no basis in fact!” Perhaps it was from this experience that Yoshimura showed such devotion to getting the ‘facts’ right.
In his historical fiction, Yoshimura often wrote about those who had been overlooked in historical accounts. Frederik Schodt has described Ranald MacDonald as “a man who did an extraordinary thing and then fell through the cracks of history”. In this sense MacDonald was a prime subject for Yoshimura’s pen. Moriyama Einosuke, who figures prominently in Festival of the Sea, is another case in point. Having proven himself as Japan’s most accomplished interpreter of English, Moriyama played a crucial role in crafting the Bafuku’s (Shogunate) first treaties with all the other countries of the world. Moriyama negotiated with Commodore Perry, and later with Townsend Harris, but he also negotiated treaties with all the other European countries that demanded a role in the opening of Japan. In the 1850s and 1860s, Moriyama was virtually the only person who knew both sides of the equation – what a treaty said in English and what it said in Japanese. Both sides relied on him to ensure that they agreed on the same things. He continued with his work under enormous pressure, for truly the destiny of the Japanese Nation was on his shoulders. Once the new Meiji government took power, Moriyama disappeared from sight until Yoshimura redirected our attention to him. Moriyama’s disappearance from the scene was only partly due to the fact that the new Meiji government wanted its own interpreters, not those of the old Tokugawa government. It was also the case that Moriyama was simply burned out by the time the regime change too place. Some historians have held Moriyama responsible, unfairly in my opinion, of having led Japan to agree to ‘unequal treaties’. Indeed, those treaties he helped negotiate were unequal, but they also protected japan from being colonized by one or more of the Great powers, yet the indignity of the treaties rankled and some blamed Moriyama. So for many reasons Moriyama had been largely ignored by historians until Yoshimura illuminated his crucial role in the opening of Japan.
We see something similar in the case of Hori Tatsunosuke, another interpreter and contemporary of Moriyama, about whom Yoshimura wrote in his historical novel Kurofune. Hori is known to history as the first Japanese to have a meaningful encounter with Commodore Perry’s squadron. He stepped aboard the Susquehanna and uttered three words in English: “I speak Dutch.” Hori was recognized as a man of competence as an interpreter of Dutch, but he had the ill luck to be stationed in Edo during the winter of 1848-49 and so was unable to receive tutelage in English from Ranald MacDonald. Throughout his career he was overshadowed by Moriyama who, thanks to MacDonald, had a greater facility in Spoken English and was able to consort more comfortably with foreigners. So, Hori experienced frustration and embarrassment, but he persevered, and in the end was able to make the transition to the new Meiji government which Moriyama did not (could not) do. And Hori compiled a Japanese-English dictionary – which Moriyama had begun to do but had not completed. Hori also became a respected teacher of English, an endeavor Moriyama rarely had time for. In Yoshimura’s telling, perseverance paid off for Hori and in his own way had made a meaningful and lasting contribution to the opening of Japan. But he, too, has been largely forgotten. Yoshimura recognized this and clarified Hori’s role in history.
One of the hallmarks of Yoshimura’s historical fiction is the celebration of those forgotten figures who, through their dedication and perseverance, have made meaningful and lasting contributions. Certainly we see this in Festival of the Sea where Ranald MacDonald had the courage and determination to wade ashore alone in a country where foreigners were forbidden to set foot, and in Moriyama, who stood exposed and alone as Japan’s spokesman to the other nations of the world. These were remarkable men who did remarkable things, and Yoshimura Akira was the bard who brought their stories to life. ~ S.K.
*** Associate Professor Emeritus, Japanese Literature; Asian Studies, East Asian Languages. Stephan Kohl has published extensively on Japanese literature.
A symposium entitled “Japan’s Diplomatic Relations Began with Drifters” was held at Yui no Mori Arakawa in Tokyo on July 17, 2017. Panelists included Mr. Frederik Schodt, author of ‘Native American in the Land of the Shogun’, and Tokyo- based author/scholar Ms. Sen Ishida; the moderator was author Natsuo Sekikawa, board member of the Japan Writers’ Association. Page 3 is a write-up of the symposium from the ‘Weekly Dokushojin’ publication; Mrs. Yumiko Kawamoto’s report on the symposium can be found below. The following is a flyer that was circulated for this event:
５０－１）1 階ホールで盛大に行われた。文芸協会の web 上の「お知らせ」には「鎖国下の日本に、外国語を習得しようと、また、翻訳を試みようとした人がいました。手探りで学ぶ困難さ、そして異文化への強い憧れと知識欲。吉村昭作品の『海の祭礼』『冬の鷹』に描かれた時代と人を、吉村記念文学館があるゆいの森あらかわで語り合います。（シンポジウムは日本語で行います）」という文面がある。一般参加者にはわかりやすい説明文である。
I first met Mr. Akira Yoshimura in the autumn of 1988 at a meeting of the Friends of MacDonald in Tokyo. I had read Umi No Sairei (Festival of the Sea) and was fascinated to hear him speak of the countless trips he had made to Nagasaki to gather materials for that book. I suggested that I thought it would be a good idea to translate this work into English. There were several reasons for this. First of all, putting the text into English would make it available to an extended audience. Secondly, at that time the only account of Ranald MacDonald’s adventure in Japan was his autobiography – which was necessarily limited to what MacDonald himself had personally seen and experienced. Festival of the Sea provides a much broader context for MacDonald’s story by showing us how it appeared from a Japanese perspective. Yoshimura’s work also concludes with an extended account of the career of Moriyama Einosuke, MacDonald’s star “pupil”. This establishes the true value and legacy of MacDonald’s experience in a way that Ranald MacDonald himself never knew.
