The Legend of Utsuro-bune
Historical sources
The best known versions of the legend are found in three
texts:
Toen shōsetsu (兎園小説 'tales from the rabbit
garden'), composed in 1825
by Kyokutei Bakin. The manuscript is today on display
at the Mukyū-Kai-Toshokan at Machida (Tokyo prefecture).
Hyōryū kishū (漂流紀集 'diary and stories of the
castaways'), composed during
the Edo
period in 1835 by an unknown author. It is today on display at the
library of the Tenri
University at Tenri in the Nara
prefecture.
Ume-no-chiri (梅の塵 'dust of the apricot'), composed in 1844
by Nagahashi Matajirō. It is
today on display at the private library Iwase-Bunko-Toshokan (岩瀬文庫図書館)
at Nara.
All three books contain very similar stories, thus they seem
to have the same historical origins. The book Toen shōsetsu contains
the most detailed version.
Legend
Toen shōsetsu
An old man from the village said, "This woman could be
a princess of
a foreign realm, who married at her homeland. But when she had an affair with a
townsman after marriage, it caused a scandal and
the lover was killed for punishment. The princess was banned from home, for she
enjoyed lots of sympathy, so she escaped the death
penalty. Instead she might have been exposed in
that Utsuro-bune to leave her to destiny. If this should be correct,
the quadratic box may contain the head of the woman's deceased lover. In the
past, a very similar object with a woman was washed ashore on a close-by beach.
During this incident a small board with a pinned head was found. The content of
the box could therefore be the same, which would certainly explain why she
protects it so much. It would afford lots of money and time to investigate the
woman and her boat. Since it seems to be tradition to
expose those boats at sea, we should bring the woman back to the Utsuro-bune
and let her drift away. From human sight it might be cruel, but it seems to be
her predetermined destiny." The fishermen reassembled the Utsuro-bune,
placed the woman in it, and set it to drift away into the ocean.
Ume no chiri
On March 24 in 1803, at the beach of 'Harato-no-hama' (原舎浜) in the Hitachi
province, a strange 'boat' was washed ashore. It reminded the witnesses of a
rice cooking pot, around its middle it had a thickened rim. It was also coated
with black paint and it had four little windows on four sides. The windows had
bars and they were clogged with tree resin. The lower part of the boat was
protected by brazen plates which looked to be made of iron of the
highest western quality. The height of the boat was 131,1 inches and its
breadth was 212,9 inches. A woman of 20 years was found in the boat. Her
body size was 4,92 feet and her skin was white as snow. The long hair
dangled smoothly down along her back. Her face was of indescribable beauty. The
dress of the woman was of unknown style and no one could recognise it. She
spoke an unknown language. She held a small box no one was allowed to touch.
Inside the boat two unusually soft carpets of unknown style and fabric were
found. There were supplies such as cake, kneaded food and meat. A beautiful
decorated cup with ornaments no one could identify was also found.
Similar traditions
There are several further documents about Utsuro-bune
sightings in Japan, for example 'Hirokata Zuihitsu' (弘賢随筆?) and 'Ōshu
Kuzakki' (鶯宿雑記?). In 2010 and 2012 two
rare ink printings were found and investigated by Kazuo Tanaka. They contained
stories about Utsuro-bune with very similar content to that of the Hyōryū
kishū, although they claim a different location for the events: 'Minato
Bōshū' (港房州) (harbour of Bōshū).
Other legends
concerning Utsuro-bune
A well known Japanese legend is that of the origin of
the Kawano dynasty.
In the 7th century, a fisherman named 'Wakegorō' (和気五郎?) from Gogo
island found a 13-year old girl inside a Utsuro-bune drifting at sea.
He brought her to land, where she told him that she was the daughter of
the Chinese emperor and
that she had been forced to flee to escape her stepmother. The fisherman named
her 'Wake-hime' (和気姫?) ('princess Wake')
and raised her, before she married an imperial prince of Iyo
province and gave birth to a son named 'Ochimiko' (小千御子?), the ancestor of the
Kawano dynasty. A part of this folk tale held that she was responsible for
bringing the first silk cocoons
to Japan. Princess Wake is still worshipped at a certain Shinto shrine in the
village ofFunakoshi, Go-Go island.
Interpretations
Historical investigations
The first historical investigations of the Utsuro-bune
incident were conducted in 1844 by Kyokutei Bakin (1767–1848). Kyokutei reports
about a book called Roshia bunkenroku (魯西亜聞見録 'Records of seen and heard
things from Russia), written by Kanamori Kinken. The book
describes traditional Russian clothes and hairstyles and mentions a popular
method to dust hair with white powder. It also mentions that many Russian woman
have natural red hair and that they wear skirts, similar to that of the lady of
the legend. Based upon the book, Kyokutei concludes that the woman of the
Utsuro-bune incident could have been of Russian origin. He writes that the
stories are similar to each other, as they differ only in minor descriptions
(for example, one documents says "3.6 litres of water", another
says "36 litres of water"). He also questions the origin of the
alleged exotic symbols found in and on the boat. Because he is convinced that
he saw similar signs on a British whaler stranded shortly before his writing,
Kyokutei wonders if the woman was a Russian, British or even American princess.
Furthermore he expresses his disappointment about the drawings of the
Utsuro-bune, because they obviously do not fully match the witness descriptions.
Modern investigations
Further investigations of the Utsuro-bune incident were
exercised in 1925 and in 1962 by ethnologist and historian Yanagida Kunio. He
points out that circular boats were never anything unusual in Japan since early
times; only the western-like details, such as the windows made of glass and the
brazen protective plates, make the Utsuro-bune look exotic. He also found out
that most legends similar to that of the Utsuro-bune sound alike: Someone finds
a strange girl or young woman inside a circular boat and rescues the stranded
or sends her back to the ocean. Yanagida also points out that the eldest
versions of Utsuro-bune describe humble, circular and open log-boats without
any dome atop. Yanagida assumes that the details of the brazen plates and
windows made of glass or crystal were added because sceptics would question the
seaworthiness of a humble log-boat on the high seas. A steel reinforced
Utsuro-bune with glass windows would more easily survive travelling on the
ocean than a humble log-boat.
Dr. Kazuo Tanaka (田中 嘉津夫),
Japanese professor for computer and electronics engineering from Gifu
University at Tokyo (東京), investigated the original scripts in 1997. He
considers the popular comparisons of the Utsuro-bune with modern UFO
sightings to be far-fetched. He points out that the Utsuro-bune of the legends
never flies or moves on its own, nor does it show any signs of extraordinary
technologies. It simply drifts motionless on the water. Tanaka concludes that
the tale of the Utsuro-bune was a literary mixture of folklore and
imaginations. He bases his assumptions on the 1925 investigations of the
Japanese historian Yanagida
Kunio, who had also studied the tales of the Utsuro-bune.
Dr. Tanaka himself found out that the locations
"Haratono-hama" and "Harayadori" are fictitious. To
make the anecdote sound credible, the author designated the beaches as personal
acreages of a Daimyō named Ogasawara Nagashige. This daimyo actually lived
during the Edo period, but his acreages were placed at heartland and it seems
sure that Ogasawara never had any contact with the fishermen of the Pacific coast.
The Ogasawara clan served the famous Tokugawa dynasty,
who held power over the most north-eastern part of Japan until 1868 and their
main acreages were placed in the Hitashi province, geographically very close to
the eastern beaches. Tanaka finds it very odd that an incident of such alleged
importance was commented on in the curatorial documents, since strangers
leaving the shore had to be reported at once. But the only remarkable incident
during the late Tokugawa dynasty happened in 1824, when a British whaler was
stranded at the north-eastern coast of the Hitachi district. Tanaka also found
out that, during the rulership of the Tokugawa clan, the Ogasawara family and
the Tokugawa started mapping their territories and acreages. And both names of
"Haratono-hama" and "Harayadori" are missing. They also do
not appear on the maps of the first complete mappings of whole of Japan in
1907. If the name of a village, city or place had changed in history, this
would have been noted in some curatorial documents, but it is not. Tanaka
thinks it rather unlikely that important places such as
"Haratono-hama" and "Harayadori" actually could have been
forgotten in records.
The peculiar European appearance
of the woman, the upper part of the Utsuro-bune and the unknown writings lead
Tanaka and Yanagida to the conclusion that the whole story was based on the
historical circumstance that people of the Edo period totally encapsulated
Japan against the outer world. To bedizen a stranded woman with European
attributes showed how much the peoples were afraid of bad cultural influences
from the western world, especially North America and Great Britain. The story
of the Utsuro-bune is significantly constructed in a way that makes the tale
sound incredible at one site, but self-explaining at the same time (the woman
and her craft are sent away so no one could ever consult her personal).
Furthermore Tanaka and Yanagida point out, that the people
of Edo period shared great interests in paranormal things such as poltergeists, will-o'-the-wisps, ball
lightnings and monsters, so it would not be surprising to find stories of
exotic boats like the Utsuro-bune.
In his conclusions, Tanaka points to the difficulty in the
correct reading of the place names. In modern transcriptions, the Kanji 原舎 have
to be read as Harasha. But in Toen Shōsetsu the signs are
written in Kana and
they have to be read as Hara-yadori. In Ume no chiri they are
written in Furigana making
the place to be named as Haratono-hama. Alternatively, the kanji
for Haratonocould be read as Hara-yadori. According to Tanaka’s
investigations, the transcription of 原舎ヶ浜 in the Hyōryū Kishū as
"Harasha-ga-hama" is therefore a typo based on a misreading and
should originally be read as "Haratono-ga-hama". Thus, all writings
describe the same place. Tanaka also points out that the word Utsuro means
"empty" or "abandoned" and that the word Utsubomeans
"quiver"
and describes the bags in which hunters and archers once
carried their arrows. But both words also describe old, hollowed tree trunks
and branch holes of sacred trees. The wordFune/Bune simply means
"boat". Altogether, the word Utsuro-bune means "hollow
ship".
Ufological
In Ufology, the legend of the Utsuro-bune has been described as
an early case of a documented close encounter of the third kind,
something based upon alleged similarities between the drawings of the vessel
from the Edo period and 20th century descriptions of flying
saucers. Some Ufologists think that the Utsuro-bune could have been some
kind of unidentified submarine object (USO). In addition
UFO-believers point to the mysterious symbols which were allegedly found on the
object and which regularly appear as addenda within the depictions. They are
said to show stunning similarities to the symbols seen at the Rendlesham Forest Incident in
England. Furthermore Ufo-believers point to the ominous box, which was
jealously guarded by the woman. They suspect the box to be some kind of
extraterrestrial device. Finally, they discuss about the appearance of the
woman and her unusual dress. The assumptions of any historian and ethnologist
about those items are repeatedly ignored.
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