John Manjiro: The First Japanese to Reach America

Introducing John Manjiro

by Prof. Tetsuo Kawasumi, Keio University

In 1841 at the age of 14, John Manjiro, whose fishing vessel was wrecked in Ashizuri-oki, landed on Torishima Island, where he was rescued by a U.S. whaler and brought to America. He became the first Japanese to set foot on American soil.

Manjiro, taking the name "John Manjiro," was welcomed by the citizens of Fairhaven and New Bedford where he disembarked. With the warm interest of Captain Whitfield, he became the first Japanese student to receive an American elementary and intermediate education as well as a high school education in English, Mathematics, Navigation and Shipbuilding, History, and Geography. He also acted as First Mate on a whaling ship's 40-month journey around the world.

At 24, his thoughts turning to the importance of opening Japan and to his mother, he resolved to return to closed Japan, even at the pain of death. He departed Hawaii and landed in the Ryukyu Islands in 1851. Undergoing investigation there, he then went further in the Ryukyus and on to Nagasaki and Tosa, where he was repeatedly interrogated for the crime of contravening the nation's policy of isolation. He was finally permitted to return to his home in Nakanohama in October of 1852, and mother and son enjoyed a moving reunion after their 12-year separation.

The Tosa government initially forbade him to leave his home town, "for travel abroad, needless to say, and for ocean-bound fishing journeys." It appeared that the order must dispel Manjiro's dream of appealing directly to the Shogun and becoming a force for the opening of Japan, but the urgency of the times demanded the technical and general knowledge that Manjiro had brought from America. Manjiro had just three days and nights with his mother before he was called back by Yamanouchi Yodo, Lord of the Tosa Domain. He became a teacher at the Tosa School, lecturing on American democracy, on freedom and equality, on the independent spirit, and on his travels on the world's seas, and it is said that he greatly influenced Sakamoto Ryoma and Goto Shojiro.

In 1853 America's Admiral Perry came demanding the opening of Japan. The bakufu speedily ordered Manjiro's appearance and he became a Shogunal retainer, dedicating himself to some of the nation's most pressing problems. "America greatly hopes to enjoy a deep and abiding friendship with Japan," he told the Shogunate. "America does not come with suspicious designs but with a full and open heart." With this encouragement, the Shogunate discarded the laws of over 200 years' standing and took the first step toward opening the country. It is impossible to measure the service rendered by Manjiro in enabling Japan to accept the Japan-United States Friendship Treaty.

America's 30th president, Coolidge, was later to say, "When John Manjiro returned to Japan, it was as if America had sent its first ambassador. Our envoy Perry could enjoy so cordial a reception because John Manjiro had made Japan's central authorities understand the true face of America."

Manjiro became translator and interpreter for the Shogunate, traveled throughout Japan to give instruction in shipbuilding and navigation, translated the 20-volume "U.S. Navigation Science" he'd brought with him, and edited English conversation texts. It is said, too, that he taught naval science to Katsu Kaishu, instructed Sakamoto Ryoma in U.S. politics and navigation, and discussed the spirit of rationalism with Fukuzawa Yukichi.


Perhaps most significant, to the Japanese of the late Tokugawa and early Meiji eras, "America" was the America of Manjiro's descriptions.

The Shogunate sent a delegation to America in 1860 to exchange ratifications of the Japan-U.S. Commercial Treaty. Manjiro boarded the Kanrin-maru as instructor and translator. The Kanrin-maru was intended to train Japanese to navigate the seas on their own; the captain, Katsu Kaishu, entrusted Manjiro with "full navigational authority," and in truth, Manjiro acquitted himself admirably.

The success of the Kanrin-maru voyage across the Pacific impressed the U.S. side with the skill and abilities of the Japanese, and became a basis for the success of later bilateral diplomatic negotiations.

Having thus visited San Francisco after his absence of 10 years, Manjiro, upon returning to Japan, did not again enter the political arena. He variously led the Ogasawara Islands surveying teams on behalf of the Shogunate, lectured at the Shogunal Naval Academy, taught English, Mathematics, Navigation and Shipbuilding at the Satsuma Kaisei School, and again became instructor at the Tosa School, devoting himself to the education of those who would lead the way to the dawning of a new era.

Upon its establishment, the new Meiji government brought Manjiro to Kaisei College, the predecessor of today's Tokyo University, and there he made his goal the education and training of Japan's future leaders.

He believed that the most heartfelt response he could make to the goodwill and friendship of the Americans who had raised him, would be to pass on to young Japanese the education that had underlain his own experience. Without an eye to glory or status, he educated people who would later become bridges in Japan-U.S. relations, and hoped that they would form the foundation of a new Japan.

Manjiro died quietly on November 12, 1898, at the age of 71. His remains are in Zoshigaya Cemetery Toshima-ku, Tokyo.

The service Nakahama Manjiro rendered will never be fully known. What would Japan's opening have been had he not lived? Truly, "It is Fate that nurtures men, and men who change their world."

In early Showa, when Japan-U.S. relations were deteriorating, America's 32nd president Franklin Roosevelt sent a personal letter to Manjiro's eldest son Nakahama Toichiro, inviting him to the United States to act as a bridge in improving relations between Japan and America. However, even these best of intentions were not understood by Japanese society.

When Japan lost the Second World War, it found itself much like Manjiro, shipwrecked and stranded at Torishima. No one can doubt that it is America's goodwill at that time and beyond that has enabled Japan to achieve its present prosperity.

Manjiro's life revealed the kind of spirit that opens the way to new times and that joins itself to international society. It is this spirit that our country can no longer afford to do without.

Link to original article: http://www.manjiro.org/manjiro.html
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Reconsidering John Manjiro

by Prof. Tetsuo Kawasumi, Keio University

During the Edo Period, which extended from 1600 to 1867, many Japanese seamen on coastal freight boats or fishing boats encountered storms which blew their vessels into the Pacific far from Japanese waters. Unable to return to Japan, they eventually found themselves in places as far from their home as the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands in the North, and points as far East as Canada and the North Western United States. Those who drifted South fetched up in Taiwan, Luzon, Annam, or one of the many islands in the South Pacific.

Seamen driven out of Japanese coastal waters experienced indescribable hardships. Most died, and those who survived in the ocean were either rescued by foreign ships or were washed ashore in unknown countries. When a foreign ship attempted to return Japanese castaways to their native land, the government would have its coastal troops bombard the ships and drive them away, or it would accept the survivors only to punish them as criminals who had contravened the national prohibition on foreign travel. During this period of forced isolation, no group of people in the world were as pitiful and as helpless as Japanese castaways.

Fukuzawa Yukichi (1834 - 1901), a late 19th century Japanese intellectual and educator, harshly criticized this inhumane government policy with the statement, "This cannot be described as the way a government ought to treat its own citizens."

Beginning shortly after the 1820s, American whalers and commercial vessels began to rescue Japanese seamen who were unable to return to Japanese waters. This brought the Japanese into contact with foreigners, revealed a different culture to them, and provided them with the chance to learn a foreign language. They abandoned Japan's feudal ways of thought as the modern world was revealed to them. The castaway, John Manjiro, experienced this transformation.

Born in Nakanohama in Hata Province in Tosa in 1827, John Manjiro lost his father when he was only 8 years old. In 1841, when he was fourteen, John was shipwrecked while fishing with 4 other people. They were rescued by the crew of an American whaler, The John Howland.

American whaling ships of the day were microcosms of life in international society. The five Tosa fisherman abandoned the daily customs of Japanese feudal society and began to live as members of international society. John Manjiro adapted easily to the foreign lifestyle of the Americans, began to learn English, and was even able to imitate whaling skills. Captain Whitfield took a strong liking to the eager and able youth, John Manjiro. He decided to leave the other four castaways with officials in Hawaii, and to take John to America to educate him.

John left his four companions in Hawaii and boarded the John Howland once again. People began to call him John Manjiro at this time. After another 6 months of whaling near Japan, the John Howland returned to the United States, reaching New Bedford in May 1843.

John settled in the town of Fairhaven, where the Captain, a man of unlimited good intentions, brought John up with all the affection he would have bestowed on his own son. He personally cultivated John's independent spirit and taught him that all men were equal.

At the local school, John learned mathematics and how to read and write English. He also studied surveying and navigation, and even mastered the skills required to make barrels to hold whale oil.

In accordance with Captain Whitfield's plans, John boarded a whaler bound for the fishing areas around Japan after spending a full three years in Fairhaven. Still yearning to see his mother again, John agreed to this plan which would give him the opportunity to return to Japan.

John's experiences during the 3 year 4 month voyage of the whaler Franklin made an important contribution to his maturation as a member of international society. Although he was unable to return to Japan and see his mother again, he was elected first mate after the Captain fell ill. This experience gave him the self-confidence and assurance that he could support himself independently as a whaler in American society. But John Manjiro had another dream.

This voyage made John Manjiro aware of how irrational and inhumane Japan's policy of national isolation appeared in the eyes of the people of the world. He decided that he would make it his personal mission to appeal directly to the Shogun to establish a port open to American whaling vessels in Satsuma, which was a province in Southern Kyushu, or in the Ryukyu Islands. He would have to abandon his secure and rich livelihood as a whaler, and risk his own life to carry out his plan. But he believed that by doing so he would not only be repaying both the captain who saved his life, and the American whaling industry that had provided him with a living; he would also be serving Japan's best interests.

After earning the money he needed to return to Japan, John put his plan into action. In late November 1849 John left New Bedford for Sacramento where he earned six-hundred dollars working in a gold mine. He travelled to Hawaii, and persuaded the four men castaway with him to return to Japan. With the assistance of Reverend Damon, they arrived in the Ryukyu Islands on February 3, 1851, a full ten years after they were shipwrecked. As John and his companions had expected, they were charged with breaking the exclusion law, and interrogated over and over again through many months in the Ryukyu Islands and in Satsuma, at Nagasaki, and finally in Tosa. When he was finally able to return to his home town of Nakahama on October 5th 1852, he found his mother in good health. The mother and son were deeply moved and unable to speak when they met for the first time in 12 years. Forbidden to travel outside of the Tosa region, John Manjiro felt as if he was exiled to an isolated island.

But John's country soon needed his knowledge. When Commodore Perry arrived in Japan in June 1853, John was summoned to Edo, where he appeared before the Bakufu leader Abe Masahiro and other officials. Undaunted by their rank, he told them about conditions in the United States: the practice of electing the President, the President's duty to obey the country's laws, and so on.

Next he informed Abe that the United States had wanted to establish friendly relations with Japan for a long time, and asked him to open a harbor where American whaling vessels could take on firewood, fresh water, and food in southern Kyushu, on one of the small islands under control of the Satsuma Domain, or on one of the Ryukyu Islands. He then added that the United States was not only a generous nation, it was a very modern country, and therefore had absolutely no intentions of invading any other country. It is reported that John's words gave the Bakufu the confidence it needed to open Japan to the outside world.

John Manjiro had fulfilled his duty by making these statements. He probably felt that he had at last been able to repay one ten-thousandth of the debt he owed to Captain Whitfield and the American whalers. In fact the "Record of the Investigation of John Manjiro," a report of the description of actual conditions in America he gave to Abe Masahiro, clearly indicates how strongly he felt about the opening of Japan.

The February 5, 1860 entry in the diary of Colonel Brook, a man who travelled with John Manjiro on the Kanrin-maru contains the words, "I am delighted that it was our John Manjiro contributed more than any other person to the opening of Japan."

The information provided by John Manjiro became the image of America held by Japanese in the last years of Tokugawa rule and the beginning of the Meiji era, and deeply influenced the pioneers of modernization in Japan: men like Sakamoto Ryoma, Katsu Kaishu, and Fukuzawa Yukichi. But despite his service as interpreter on the Kanrin-maru, and his appointment as a teacher at the Kaisei College (predecessor to the University of Tokyo) after the beginning of the Meiji Era, John Manjiro was never given a position appropriate to his talents. Japan was unable to achieve a sufficient degree of enlightenment to accept an internationalized person like John Manjiro (a more appropriate term might be Toshisuke Tsurumi's coinage, "citizen of the world," and it is still unable to accept persons like John Manjiro. This is what we can learn by looking back on the life of John Manjiro.

When John Manjiro's third son, Keisaburo went to the United States in 1898, his father asked him to find the Whitfield house. Keisaburo succeeded in finding the address through a friend who was living in America. The captain had already passed away (1886) leaving the house to his eldest son, Mercelas(?). The John Howland had been lost during a voyage in Arctic waters in 1883; and Reverend Damon had passed away in 1885. Keisaburo promptly sent this information to his father in Japan. But John Manjiro himself passed away before the letter arrived. In this manner relations were re-established between the Whitfield and Nakahama families. This relationship has endured up to the present time: the 150th anniversary of the shipwreck of John Manjiro and the other four Tosa fishermen.