Utsuro Bune- A Hollow Boat

Utsuro bune-A Hollow Boat
January 10, 2015
These beautiful artistic paintings and drawings can be found in manuscripts left by the story tellers who wanted to capture in art an event that happened on their shores which was extraordinary. There are several versions of this story but with research it appears that this same event had happened before in Japan and in this story the Toen Shosetsu version it is happening again. Rather than a re telling of an older story, it should possibly be looked at as a story telling that this same thing happened once before and that the people in this version, retained a knowledge of that event and now it was happening again.



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.
The book Toen shōsetsu contains the most detailed version of this account.



February 22nd 1803

Hitachi Province Japan



Local fishermen of the Harayadori shore see something drifting in the water. Curiosity

got the better of them, they decide to go and tow the strange vessel back to shore.

Upon inspection the strange vessel appeared to be 3.30 metres high and 5.45 metres wide. The shape reminded the witnesses of a Japanese incense burner called a kohako.

Typical Japanese kohako antique from the 1800's shown below

Design

The crafts upper part seemed to be made of a wood, possibly red coated rosewood. The bottom appeared to be coated with brazen metal plates, the fishermen presumed to protect it against the sharp edged rocks. The upper part also had several windows made of glass or crystal which were covered with bars of some sort and clogged with some kind of tree resin. The windows were completely transparent. When they looked inside the strange vessel they saw that the inside of it was decorated with texts written in an unknown language. The fishermen also found two bed sheets, a bottle filled with 3.6 litres of water, some cake and some kneaded meat. Amongst all of these things sat a beautiful young woman possibly 18-20 years of age.



Description of the woman

Her height was 4.93 feet -1.5 metres. She had red hair and eyebrows and her hair was elongated by white extensions. They thought that the extensions could have been made of fur or of thin white powdered textile streaks.

Her skin was a very pale pink colour. She wore precious long and smooth clothes of unknown fabrics.

The woman decided to speak but when she did, no one could understand her. She in return did not seem to understand the fisherman either so no one could ask her about her origin. The woman of the hollow boat appeared friendly and courteous in her manner but acted oddly for in her hand she clutched a quadratic box which was of a pale material and which was about 23.6 inches in size. No matter how kindly or pressingly the fishermen asked, she would not let them touch the box.



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.




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).

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 of Funakoshi, Go-Go island.

Historical research



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.

Note from Talvi Winter, I promised in this blog to present you something odd without giving my opinion on it however, something must be said here and as a researcher I cannot fail to point this out. The above historical research concluding that this hollow ships woman was Russian based on red hair and extensions I find inadequate. The researcher above mentioned has failed to answer one of the most solid details of the original account and this is why. Because the Japanese were extremely familiar with Russian Siberian tribes to the point that they had trade deals with them and actually married into these peoples lines and this can be proven by DNA grouping. If this researcher had done his homework, he should have known this, if he did know this then he should have known that this account cannot relate to Siberian traditional Russian tribes. So in the original account it states clearly, the Japanese could not understand her language. This means whatever people she had come from that they did not have any known connection with. I have researched this subject for years and I have to propose a different scenario and it may be way off, but certainly it matches the accounts details to a point. It is a contender for placing this woman although again, there are problems. The height.



Introducing the Tocharians

One of the most amazing finds in the last half of the twentieth century, has to be the discovery of a Northern European tribe found in the north east corner of Xinjiang province, near the Celestial mountains and the Taklimakan Desert. This is situated on the edge of the Gobi desert.

The story starts in 1978 when the Chinese archaeologist, Wang Binghus, began searching for ancient sites. He began by following stream beds, and asking the locals if they had ever come across any broken pots and artifacts. He eventually came across a few people who pointed out that there was a place called Qizilchoqa, or, as the local people called it, Red hill. Here he made the most amazing discovery, the first of the mummies. It had been placed in a grave on the side of the hill. They had been preserved in the most amazing way and the clothing was perfectly recognisable.

The 113 bodies were excavated and taken to the museum in the city of Urumqi.

The faces of the mummies were very well preserved, so, on closer examination, they could see that they were not chinese. They had red or blonde hair, big eyes, and European noses.

The most extraordinary thing about the mummies, was the fact that their clothes were in such good condition. A jacket belonging to one man, over three thousand years old, still had a crimson edge. And the women had artificial extensions in their hair.

This tribe was obviously very advanced for it's day. On one of the mummies, there is a scar which shows they had rudimentary skills at operating. It had been sown up with horses hair.

Researchers used the most up to date technology of the time to confirm the date of the mummies. They now believe that they are about 4,000 years old, and the youngest about 2,000.

These people were from the Bronze age, they were Caucasian, and it is possible that they interacted with the indigenous people at that time. The local people probably taught them their traditions, and the Caucasians most likely introduced them to their way of life as well.

There were two cartwheels found at the burial sites, very similar to what you might find in Russia, or nearby countries. These amazing people were probably Scandinavian or German or Celtic . These people had trekked their way all the way into china four thousand years ago.

The most fascinating thing about this story is that the local people, even today, that live in the area where the bodies were found, speak a language called Tocharian, the most eastern branch of Indo-European. This language is closely related to German and Celtic. And is considered by some to be an isolated language. A tartan pattern was also found on the material of one of the mummies. These people knew how to travel, could these people have had the skills to build a vessel described in our account. Two things remain that interest me. A piece of art depicting a tocharian with the buddhist monk found around the same location. I just happened to have this picture archived from previous research not relating to this story, I dug it out because of the tiny image which is portrayed in it between the tochian man and the buddhist monk and I can't help think, this is similar in design to our hollow boat. The only trouble with this hypothesis is that the Tochians were tall, really tall. However there may have been shorter ones, there may not have been, what we do have is examples of the Tochians script on manuscripts and artifacts. I would be interested to see if this language could be run in a computer to match it with any known language and more importantly the language or symbols written on our stories manuscripts. Computers are used to do this nowadays all the time. This is the only way we will ever know if the occupant of that vessel, was a inhabitant of the Taklimakan peoples.



Painting of Buddhist monks from the Eastern Tarim basin, Bezelek, c. 8th century AD, with Tocharian at left.




Wooden tablet with an inscription showing Tocharian B in its Brahmic form. Kucha, China, 5th–8th century (Tokyo National Museum)

Weird Art Fact

Auguste Rodin‘s work, The Age of Bronze, was so realistic people though he sacrificed a real person inside the cast.

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