Nakahama Manjirō (中濱 万次郎
Nakahama Manjirō, 1827-1898), also known as
John Manjiro, was one of the first
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese people to visit the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and an important translator during the Opening of Japan.
During his early life, he lived as a simple
fishermanA fisherman or fisher is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish. Worldwide, there are about 38 million commercial and subsistence fishermen and fish farmers. The term can also be applied to recreational fishermen, and may be used to describe both men...
in the village of Naka-no-hama,
Tosa Provinceis the name of a former province of Japan in the area that is today Kōchi Prefecture on Shikoku. Tosa was bordered by Iyo and Awa Provinces.The ancient capital was near modern Nankoku...
(now
Tosashimizuis a city located in Kōchi, Japan.As of 2008, the city has an estimated population of 17,232 and a density of 64.7 persons per km². The total area is 266.54 km².The city was founded on August 1, 1954....
,
Kōchi Prefectureis a prefecture of Japan located on the south coast of Shikoku. The capital is the city of Kōchi.- Geography :Kōchi Prefecture comprises the southwestern part of the island of Shikoku, facing the Pacific Ocean. It is the largest but least populous of Shikoku's four prefectures...
). In 1841, 14-year-old Nakahama Manjiro and four friends (all brothers, named Goemon, Denzo, Toraemon, and Jusuke) were fishing when their boat was wrecked on the island of
Torishima, literally meaning "Bird Island", is an uninhabited volcanic island at the south end of the Izu Islands in the Pacific Ocean, adminstered by Japan.-Geography:...
.
Nakahama Manjirō (中濱 万次郎
Nakahama Manjirō, 1827-1898), also known as
John Manjiro, was one of the first
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese people to visit the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and an important translator during the Opening of Japan.
Voyage to America
During his early life, he lived as a simple
fishermanA fisherman or fisher is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish. Worldwide, there are about 38 million commercial and subsistence fishermen and fish farmers. The term can also be applied to recreational fishermen, and may be used to describe both men...
in the village of Naka-no-hama,
Tosa Provinceis the name of a former province of Japan in the area that is today Kōchi Prefecture on Shikoku. Tosa was bordered by Iyo and Awa Provinces.The ancient capital was near modern Nankoku...
(now
Tosashimizuis a city located in Kōchi, Japan.As of 2008, the city has an estimated population of 17,232 and a density of 64.7 persons per km². The total area is 266.54 km².The city was founded on August 1, 1954....
,
Kōchi Prefectureis a prefecture of Japan located on the south coast of Shikoku. The capital is the city of Kōchi.- Geography :Kōchi Prefecture comprises the southwestern part of the island of Shikoku, facing the Pacific Ocean. It is the largest but least populous of Shikoku's four prefectures...
). In 1841, 14-year-old Nakahama Manjiro and four friends (all brothers, named Goemon, Denzo, Toraemon, and Jusuke) were fishing when their boat was wrecked on the island of
Torishima, literally meaning "Bird Island", is an uninhabited volcanic island at the south end of the Izu Islands in the Pacific Ocean, adminstered by Japan.-Geography:...
. The American whaler ship
John Howland (with Captain William H. Whitfield in command) rescued them and, at the end of the voyage, dropped four of them in Honolulu; however Manjiro (nicknamed "John Mung") wanted to stay on the ship. Captain Whitfield took him back to the United States and entrusted him to James Akin, who enrolled Manjiro in the Oxford School in the town of
Fairhaven, MassachusettsFairhaven is a town in Bristol County, Massachusetts, in the United States. It is located on the south coast of Massachusetts where the Acushnet River flows into Buzzards Bay, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean...
. The boy studied English and navigation for a year, apprenticed to a
cooperCooper may refer to :* Cooper , a maker of barrels-Populated places:In the United States:* Cooper, Lake County, California* Cooper, Monterey County, California* Cooper, Iowa* Cooper, Maine* Cooper, Minneapolis, Minnesota...
, and then, with Whitfield's help, signed on to the whaler
Franklin (Captain Ira Davis). After whaling in the South Seas, the
Franklin put into Honolulu in October 1847, where Manjiro again met his four friends. None were able to return to Japan, for this was during Japan's period of isolation when leaving the country was an offense punishable by death.
When Captain Davis became mentally ill and was left in Manila, the crew elected a new captain, and Manjiro was made First Mate. The
Franklin returned to
New BedfordNew Bedford is the name of various cities:*New Bedford, Illinois*New Bedford, Massachusetts, the most populous New Bedford**New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park*New Bedford, New Jersey *New Bedford, Ohio*New Bedford, Pennsylvania...
in September 1849 and paid-off its crew; Manjiro was self-sufficient; he had $350 in his pocket.
Manjiro promptly set out by sea for the
California Gold RushThe California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was discovered by James Wilson Marshall at Sutter's Mill, in Coloma, California. News of the discovery soon spread, resulting in some 300,000 men, women, and children coming to California from the rest of the United States and...
by ship. Arriving in San Francisco in May 1850, he took a steamboat up the
Sacramento RiverThe Sacramento River is the longest river entirely within the state of California. Starting at the confluence of the South Fork and Middle Fork of the Sacramento River, near Mount Shasta in the Cascade Range mountains, the Sacramento flows south for , through the northern Central Valley of...
, then a train into the mountains. In a few months, he made about $600 and decided to find a way back to Japan.
Return to Japan
Manjiro arrived in Honolulu and found two of his companions were willing to go with him. (Toraemon, who thought it would be too risky, and Jusuke, who died of ailment, did not voyage back to Japan.) He purchased a whaleboat, the
Adventure, which was loaded aboard the bark
Sarah Boyd (Captain Whitmore) along with gifts from the people of Honolulu. They sailed on December 17, 1850 and reached Okinawa on February 2, 1851. The three were promptly taken into custody, although treated with courtesy. After months of questioning, they were released in Nagasaki and eventually returned home to Tosa where Lord Yamauchi Toyoshige awarded them pensions. Manjiro was appointed a minor official and became a valuable source of information.
In September 1853, Manjiro was summoned to
Edo, literally: bay-door, "estuary", ), also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...
(now known as
Tokyo, officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan and is located on the eastern side of the main island Honshū. The twenty-three special wards of Tokyo, each governed as a city, cover the area that was once the city of Tokyo in the eastern part of the prefecture, totaling over 8 million people....
), questioned by the shogunate government, and made a
hatamotoA was a samurai in the direct service of the Tokugawa shogunate of feudal Japan. While all three of the shogunates in Japanese history had official retainers, in the two preceding ones, they were referred to as gokenin. However, in the Edo period, hatamoto were the upper vassals of the Tokugawa...
(a samurai in direct service to the
shogunThe Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the and the , was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city, Edo, which now is called Tokyo...
). He would now give interviews only in service to the government. In token of his new status, he would wear two swords, and needed a surname; he chose
Nakahama, after his home village.
Service as hatamoto
Manjiro detailed his travels in a report to the Bakufu, which is kept today at the Tokyo National Museum. In 1853, when Commodore
Matthew PerryMatthew Calbraith Perry was the Commodore of the U.S. Navy who compelled the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854.-Early life and naval career:...
's
Black ShipsThe Black Ships was the name given to Western vessels arriving in Japan between the 15th and 19th centuries...
arrived to force the opening of Japan, Manjiro became an interpreter and translator for the Shogunate and was instrumental in negotiating the
Convention of KanagawaOn March 31, 1854, the or was concluded between Commodore Matthew C. Perry of the U.S. Navy and the Empire of Japan. The treaty opened the Japanese ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to United States trade, guaranteed the safety of shipwrecked U.S. sailors; however, the treaty did not create a basis...
.
However, it appears that he did not contact the Americans directly at that time.
In 1860, Nakahama Manjiro participated in the
Japanese Embassy to the United States (1860)The Japanese Embassy to the United States was dispatched in 1860 by the Tokugawa shogunate...
. He was appointed translator on board
Kanrin MaruKanrin Maru was Japan's first sail and screw-driven steam corvette . She was ordered in 1853 from the Netherlands, the only Western country with which Japan had diplomatic relations throughout its period of sakoku , by the Shogun's government, the Bakufu...
, Japan's first screw-driven steam warship, purchased from the Dutch. Due to Japan's former policy of isolation, the crew had little experience on the open ocean, and during a storm, her Captain Katsu, Admiral Kimura and much of the crew fell ill. Manjiro was put in charge and brought the ship to port safely.
In 1870, during the
Franco-Prussian WarThe Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between France and Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria...
, Manjiro studied military science in Europe. He returned to Japan by way of the United States. He was formally received at Washington D.C., and he took advantage of this opportunity by traveling overland to
Fairhaven, MassachusettsFairhaven is a town in Bristol County, Massachusetts, in the United States. It is located on the south coast of Massachusetts where the Acushnet River flows into Buzzards Bay, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean...
to visit his "foster father", Captain Whitfield. Eventually, Manjiro became a professor at the
University of TokyoThe , abbreviated as , is a major research university located in Tokyo, Japan. The University has 10 faculties with a total of around 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are foreign. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano...
.
Legacy
Manjiro apparently used his know-how of western shipbuilding to contribute to the effort of the Bakufu to build a modern Navy. He translated
Bowditch's American Practical NavigatorThe American Practical Navigator written by Nathaniel Bowditch, is an encyclopedia of navigation. It serves as a valuable handbook on oceanography and meteorology, and contains useful tables and a maritime glossary...
into Japanese, and taught English, naval tactics and whaling techniques. He allegedly contributed to the construction of the
Shohei MaruShōhei Maru was Japan's first Western-style warship following the country's period of seclusion. She was ordered in 1852 by the government of the Shogun to the southern fief of Satsuma in the island of Kyūshū, in anticipation of the announced mission of Commodore Perry in 1853.The ship was...
, Japan's first post-seclusion foreign-style warship.
Manjiro was married three times and had seven children. In 1918, his eldest son, Dr. Toichiro Nakahama, donated a valuable sword to Fairhaven in token of his father's rescue and the kindness of the town. It continued to be displayed in the town library even during World War Two.
Among his accomplishments, Manjiro was probably the first Japanese to ride a railroad, in a steamship, to officer an American vessel, and to command a trans-Pacific voyage.
There is a great statue of Manjiro Nakahama at Cape Ashizuri, on
Shikokuis the smallest and least populous of the four main islands of Japan, located south of Honshū and east of the island of Kyūshū. Its ancient names include Iyo-no-futana-shima , Iyo-shima , and Futana-shima...
. In Fairhaven, the Manjiro Historic Friendship Society is renovating William Whitfield's home to include a museum dealing with the Manjiro legacy.
See also
- Hasekura Tsunenaga
Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga was a Japanese samurai and retainer of Date Masamune, the daimyo of Sendai....
, the first recorded Japanese to reach the American continent, in 1614
- Otokichi
was a Japanese castaway originally from the area of Onoura near Mihama, on the west coast of the Chita Peninsula in Aichi Prefecture.- Biography :...
, a famous Japanese castaway to the United States, ten years before Nakahama Manjiro
- Einosuke Moriyama, another translator in the negotiation with Perry
- Ranald MacDonald
Ranald MacDonald was the first man to teach the English language in Japan, including educating Einosuke Moriyama, one of the chief interpreters to handle the negotiations between Commodore Perry and the Tokugawa Shogunate.-Early life:MacDonald was born at Fort Astoria, in the Pacific Northwest of...
, the first teacher of English in Japan
- Shimazu Nariakira
' was a Japanese feudal lord of the Edo period, the 28th in the line of Shimazu clan lords of Satsuma Domain. He was renowned as an intelligent and wise lord, and was greatly interested in Western learning and technology...