
The Story of Zenmatsu: The First Japanese on the Sandwich Islands
Unlike Otokichi in my book, Hirahara Zenmatsu and the rest of crew of the Inawaka-maru made it to Edo. They even enjoyed the New Year’s...

Book Review & Craft: The Question of Hu
Jonathan Spence’s The Question of Hu (Vintage, 1989) is an account of a French Jesuit missionary Foucquet who brought a devout Chinese...

Makah Chief Yelak’ub: From Cook to "Antagonizer"
By the time the Japanese sailor Otokichi landed on the shores of Cape Flattery in 1834, the Hudson's Bay Company had already established...

How Two Japanese Sailors First Arrived in England
The young Japanese boy named Otokichi landed in London, England in 1835, but an earlier account suggests that he may not have been the...

Book Review: The Golden Spruce
To write good creative nonfiction is to read even better creative nonfiction. THE GOLDEN SPRUCE (John Vaillant, Vintage Canada, 2006)...

Obon Festival: When the Dead and the Living Celebrate
Every summer in Japan, the spirits of dead ancestors come home. In mid-August, as the sweltering humid winds blow in, Obon Festival or...

In the Tunnels: The Last Days of Admiral Ota in the Battle of Okinawa
Rear Admiral Minoru Ota as a child no doubt had heard the story of how the Mongolian Armada tried to conquer Japan in 1274. But from the...

The British “Dog” and the Chinese “Liar”: How Name Calling Started a War
In January 1834, while Chief George of the Makah tribe took possession of the Japanese castaway Otokichi and his ship the Hojunmaru on...

Orozco and the Man of Fire
“Art is Knowledge at the service of emotion.” – Jose Clemente Orozco Long before discovering the story of Otokichi in Japan, I was in...

How a "Barbarian" Missionary Met "Heathen" Japanese Castaways
In August 1825, Cyrus Shepard had a dream. In it, he was on a ship sailing towards the African coast, the hot wind blowing his hair back....