Otokichi's Long Trip Home

While most of the major powers of western Europe spent the 17th,
18th, and 19th centuries racing around the world carving out
empires for themselves, Japan felt threatened by the influx of
foreigners and ended up spending this period as one of the most
reclusive nations on the planet. In the 1630s, a series of
proclamations closed the country’s borders, marking the beginning
of the period now known as sakoku (‘locking the country’) or
sometimes kaikin (‘sea-restriction’). Non-Japanese-citizens
were not permitted on Japanese soil; potential violators were
warned that they would be subject to capital punishment. Only a
small amount of trade with China, Korea, and the Netherlands was
permitted, and the Dutch were restricted to Dejima, an artificial
island in the harbour at Nagasaki. Nor were Japanese citizens
allowed to leave Japan. Even the construction of long-range ships
was illegal. These measures remained in place well into the 19th
century. But occasionally a group of Japanese citizens left Japan
by mistake. Smaller ships were still permitted under sakoku
since they played an indispensable role in the transportation of
goods and people, and once in a while unpredictable forces of
nature would drag one of these vessels away from the coast of
Japan. In the autumn of 1832, for instance, a cargo-ship known as
the Hojunmaru was transporting rice and porcelain to Edo
(now Tokyo) when it ran into a storm and was blown off-course. The
15-metre-long ship was left far from shore without a rudder or a
mast, meaning that there was no way to steer it. All that the crew
could do was let their vessel drift on the ocean until they
happened upon either another ship or a useful bit of land. For one
of them in particular – 14-year-old Yamamoto Otokichi – this would
prove to be only the beginning of a decades-long accidental
circumnavigation of the globe.