Have you ever heard the account of the Utsuro-bune — the Hollow Ship — that appeared off the coast of Japan in the early 1800s?
Today, drawing from all the old records, I want to take you back to that beach. You are there with all your fishermen friends when something round and utterly bizarre drifts in from the sea. You haul it ashore and peer through its clouded windows. There inside, you see a woman, again, completely foreign to you: her clothes, her hair, her language. She’s also holding onto a mysterious box that she refuses to let go.
So what happens? To her craft, to the box? to her? I’ll tell you the whole story on today’s show.
Intro:
Hey hey this is Thersa Matsuura and you’re listening to Uncanny Japan. The place where I talk about all the more obscure parts of Japanese culture. Be it weird creatures, interesting superstitions, or creepy tales. This is all the fun and fascinating stuff I dig up while doing research for my writing.
Also, I’m taking a quick and much-needed field trip/vacation to Hokkaido. Very short, but I’m planning on squeezing every drop of wonder from every single waking hour. I will not sleep. Patrons, I’ll share bunches with you. I wish I could share the ice cream. But you’re going to have to wait.
Also, hey, look at me, two episodes in one week. Go, Terrie! Since we’re still basking in the light of the disclosure-themed shows, I wanted to revisit the old episode I did on the Utsuro-Bune — the Hollow Ship. So here, take my hand, let’s drift back in time.
Pod
Imagine you’re a fisherman back in 1803 on the Hitachi coast, Japan. It’s February 22nd to be exact, around midday. There’s a cold wind blowing off the water. You stand up having just finished hauling in and coiling the rope after the morning’s catch. The skin on your palms is raw. Salt stinging every cut. Your back and shoulders ache, and the sea-spray dampness has already found the inner layers of your thick padded and patched work coat. You stretch your stiff muscles, use one fist to lightly pound your lower back.
To your left the nets rasp as they’re pulled across the sand, to be shaken and spread out to dry. Someone is shouting at a younger boy go get the netting needle so he can mend a hole he’s just spotted.
To your right, a dozen other fisher-friends bend over woven baskets, sorting the catch, silver fish-bodies flipping around, flashing in the sunlight. The men laugh, in good spirits about the day’s catch. One worries about the clouds on the horizon, predicting a turn in the weather.
A small fire crackles. Gulls circle and cry out overhead. Several crows hop around the two men gutting the fish to be cooked for your midday meal. Your hungry, cold, but you’re also concerned about weather, too.
You put a hand up to your brow and look out to sea. Waves chop and glitter. Then you spot something dark in the distance. At first you think it’s driftwood. But it’s too big for that. Wreckage? But it’s too round for that. It rises and falls with the waves. You squint. One of the older men comes to stand by your side.
“What is it?” you ask.
“A boat?” he suggests.
One by one, the other men stand up from their work, and take notice of the strange object drifting off shore. Orders are shouted and boats are pushed back out to sea. You jump in one.
As you get closer you see it’s about three ken across, the length of three tatami mats laid end to end — or for you more modern folk: nearly five and a half meters, about eighteen feet. It’s also completely round.
Ropes are thrown and it’s pulled in. The thing knocks against the hull of the boat. It sounds hollow. This is very much an utsuro bune, a hollow ship. You row back to shore, the strange vessel dragging behind, rising and falling in your wake.
Men on the beach wade out and help haul it in. There’s the unmistakable sound of metal grating against the stones on the beach.
All your fisher-friends stand around it in a circle, some to shocked to speak, others making comments on what it could possibly be. You’ve all seen boats from up and down the coast. This is no boat you’ve ever seen before.
Someone jokes that it looks like a kōgō, a small lidded incense container. The upper half is smooth and rounded, but there are windows, clouded by salt maybe? They seem to be made of some type of crystal or glass. There is illegible writing and strange designs, again utterly foreign to all of you, scrawled across on the upper part.
The lower belly of the craft is fitted with iron plates.
You go over and try to see inside. There’s something that looks like a water bottle, a couple mats, some food that could be sweets and kneaded meat as well…and also, a woman!
She emerges and everyone is dumbstruck. First, she is young and beautiful. Some of you will remember her as having skin as white as snow and long glossy black hair while others will describe her having pinkish skin and red hair and eyebrows. Others still that her hair was long and white. Some think it’s some kind of extensions, maybe it’s been powdered to look white.
Her clothes are completely foreign to you, the design and the fabric. Several men try to talk with her but she speaks a language no one understands.
Interestingly, she’s holding tight to a box. When one of the fishermen try to ask what is in the box and moves to touch it she pulls away. She is fiercely protective of that box.
The men start throwing out theories. One very creative fisherman comes up with what he thinks her story is.
The woman is obviously a princess from a foreign or barbarian country. She was married, but had an affair with one of the townsmen. Well, this of course caused a big scandal and her lover was executed. He was beheaded. The princess was supposed to also be put to death, except she was quite liked by the townspeople, so it was decided she would only be banished instead.
And by “banished”, that meant being cast to sea in this utsuro-bune (hollow ship) carrying her lover’s head in a box.
Author intrusion here: This idea sounds like it just came out of nowhere, but it didn’t. In 1698, at Yoshida-ura in Mikawa Providence ANOTHER utsuro-bune is said to have washed ashore. This one was not round or glass-windowed like the more famous 1803 version. But it did carry a lone woman who spoke a language no one understood. On the prow of the boat, a man’s severed head was displayed. She was sent on to Nagaaki.
Another side note: You’ll hear about a different utsuro bune sighting on March 24th of this same year. This is most likely the same incident as the above February 22nd encounter. Remember you’re dealing with the lunar calendar when this happened, so the March date might be someone translating that date to the more modern calendar.
Okay, back to the story. We’re almost done.
So what do you do? It’s discussed whether to report her to the proper authorities, which would mean sending her to Nagasaki. But that would be very expensive. No one can afford that. So that idea is thrown out.
You could take her into town, feed her, see if she’s okay, but no one can communicate with her. That idea is out.
Well, then. You do the only option you have left. You put her back inside her hollow ship, seal her up, and then haul her back out to sea. Then you just watch as she floats away.
Thank you all for listening. I’ll talk to you real soon, bye bye.
