I'll set my foot on board of a ship and sail all over the sea
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.
A hollow vessel washes ashore. It's not like a ship; it's variously compared to a rice pot or an incense burner. It seems to be watertight, made of strange materials, and banded with "fine iron" (possibly steel?). When people investigate, they find that inside is a young woman, under five feet tall, clothed in an unknown style of garments made of fine fabric, with long hair of a red or blonde color, possibly shading to white at the ends or extended with white fur or fibers. She has some water and provisions with her. 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.
I like everything about this. It's like a UFO story with a ship instead of a flying saucer. Everything is unanswered. What's in the box, to coin a phrase? The most elaborate story version has an elder speculate that it's the head of the man she loved, who was executed for her sake. Then again, there's a similar story about a Wake-hime ("Princess Wake") who brought the silkworm from China in a hollow ship all by herself, so maybe it's silkworm caterpillars. What do her clothes look like? Is she wearing powdered white hair like Marie Antoinette, or has she bleached her hair white, or braided it with animal fur? Where the hell is she from, and what language is she trying to speak, and who made that damn hollow ship and why was she inside it? And why would she ever get back into it?
In one version the people who find her put her back into the hollow ship and push her out to sea again, because they think it is her fate. In another, her fate is not revealed. The wiki article has a line about the Wake-hime version, where she stays, gets married, and becomes the founder of the Kawano dynasty. That one's the most upbeat, but it also has explanations and justifications and is much less eerie as a result.
I love finding stories like this that I've never heard before! It doesn't fit neatly into any category--you can't exactly call it a folktale, a historic incident or an urban legend. Mostly, I just want her to be okay and get where she is going safely.
Maybe all our ideas about her being a Danae-like victim of a terrible punishment are off base. Maybe she's a daredevil like Reza Baluchi, whose story I located by Googling "floating hamster wheel guy." Back in 1803 there wasn't really a Coast Guard to pull her over and yell at her, so she could have bobbed around in her absurd little floating incense burner boat to her heart's content.
A hollow vessel washes ashore. It's not like a ship; it's variously compared to a rice pot or an incense burner. It seems to be watertight, made of strange materials, and banded with "fine iron" (possibly steel?). When people investigate, they find that inside is a young woman, under five feet tall, clothed in an unknown style of garments made of fine fabric, with long hair of a red or blonde color, possibly shading to white at the ends or extended with white fur or fibers. She has some water and provisions with her. 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.
I like everything about this. It's like a UFO story with a ship instead of a flying saucer. Everything is unanswered. What's in the box, to coin a phrase? The most elaborate story version has an elder speculate that it's the head of the man she loved, who was executed for her sake. Then again, there's a similar story about a Wake-hime ("Princess Wake") who brought the silkworm from China in a hollow ship all by herself, so maybe it's silkworm caterpillars. What do her clothes look like? Is she wearing powdered white hair like Marie Antoinette, or has she bleached her hair white, or braided it with animal fur? Where the hell is she from, and what language is she trying to speak, and who made that damn hollow ship and why was she inside it? And why would she ever get back into it?
In one version the people who find her put her back into the hollow ship and push her out to sea again, because they think it is her fate. In another, her fate is not revealed. The wiki article has a line about the Wake-hime version, where she stays, gets married, and becomes the founder of the Kawano dynasty. That one's the most upbeat, but it also has explanations and justifications and is much less eerie as a result.
I love finding stories like this that I've never heard before! It doesn't fit neatly into any category--you can't exactly call it a folktale, a historic incident or an urban legend. Mostly, I just want her to be okay and get where she is going safely.
Maybe all our ideas about her being a Danae-like victim of a terrible punishment are off base. Maybe she's a daredevil like Reza Baluchi, whose story I located by Googling "floating hamster wheel guy." Back in 1803 there wasn't really a Coast Guard to pull her over and yell at her, so she could have bobbed around in her absurd little floating incense burner boat to her heart's content.