I'll set my foot on board of a ship and sail all over the sea

[teenybuffalo]

First seen on Tumblr earlier today: Utsuro-bune, the urban legend/folktale of a "hollow ship" that washed ashore in 1803 on the coast of Hitachi province in Japan. Illustrations here. There are several different versions reported by historians and ethnologists of the 1800s; the details that remain constant are these

Comments

[teenybuffalo]

Me too, eh? I wish Reza Baluchi would find some more useful or efficient thing to do with all his daring.

[sovay]

She also has a box, which she will not open or set down. No one gets a chance to see what's inside. She speaks a language no one understands, and after some time and repeated failures at communication, she goes away in the hollow ship again.

That's wonderful. I'd never heard this story before; thank you.

[teenybuffalo]

We aims to please. It's the total lack of good explanation for anything that makes me think this is based on a real incident. If it was either rooted in local superstition, or made up as a short story like "Peter Rugg, the Missing Man" (the Boston answer to the Flying Dutchman) there would be some explanations or justifications. But there aren't. We are left hanging.

[asakiyume]

And if it **is** based on something historical, it really ought to be ferret-out-able. i'm hopeful....

[alexx_kay]

+1

[nineweaving]

O my! That's a fabulous mystery.

Nine

[teenybuffalo]

Yes! It's great! Your imagination can go any direction!

[asakiyume]

I'll have to ask wakanomori what he knows about this legend!

[teenybuffalo]

Do! And please tell me if he has ideas.

[asakiyume]

Remarkably, he said although he'd come across the story, he didn't get any further in his researches than you did before he got distracted by other things. Maybe now he'll dig further....

[teenybuffalo]

At least we have another person who's heard of it! So we're past the risk of its being a modern myth someone inserted into Wikipedia with false evidence.

[moon_custafer]

Rereading your posts while home with a cold. It occurs to me that given Japan's policies at the time, the villagers' seemingly inhospitable behaviour was probably fear of what the authorities would would do to both them and the mysterious woman if she were discovered.

[teenybuffalo]

Huh, I hadn't even thought of that. I take it you're talking about the exclusionist attitude that nothing outside Japan is really legitimate? Was it the sort of thing where if you're caught with foreign stuff or people that you'll be beheaded?

[moon_custafer]

Pretty much. A fishing crew who were swept out to sea and picked up by a New England whaler had to continue with them, because the captain was afraid to try and return them. He took them on to Hawaii and set them up there, except the youngest, Manjiro, who he'd more or less adopted as his son by that point. Manjiro spent some time in New England, joined the crew of another ship, later participated in the gold rush, and eventually saved up enough to buy his own boat, track down his comrades in Hawaii, and try to get back to Japan. they were arrested upon arrival, but the authorities also knew Manjiro was a valuable source of information, so they had him dictate an account of his experiences which was immediately banned, but secretly read by everyone in the government. Eventually he was released, made a samurai, and kept around as their diplomat and expert on all things Western. He did eventually go on a diplomatic mission to the US and got to meet up with the captain again. I don't know why this is not yet a movie.