Currents, Castaways, and Political Maneuverings

The Tokugawa government’s determination to regulate everything involved with the sea ironically helped speed along its own political collapse during the 1850s and 60s in no small part because of its restrictions on ship size. The rigid Tokugawa codes attempted to force Japanese fishermen and sailors to remain within a tightly drawn perimeter around the country’s islands yet created a terrible byproduct: an unprecedented number of castaways. Increasingly restrictive amendments to already stringent rules meant that ever-smaller boats got tossed out easily into the open ocean. Countless fishermen became “lost at sea,” not necessarily drowned but stranded on remote islands and rocks — often uninhabited — unable to build new boats for lack of materials let alone communicate with anyone at home. Meanwhile, the American and European whaling industries generated a wholly new kind of push into the seas around Japan, with New England’s whalers leading the pack, heading for what maps of the day called the “Japan Grounds” and the Arctic Ocean. As the number of these ships grew off Japan’s coasts, they increasingly encountered stranded Japanese fishermen. The shogun’s laws forbade the Japanese men’s return to Japan. Ultimately these rescued castaways as well as several foreigners castaway on Japan’s shores — accidentally and not — became much more than curious finds: they would prove instrumental sources of knowledge to inform the so-called “opening” of Japan.

This paper will discuss three cases and their ramifications to US-Japan relations then and now.