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...

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

By the time the Japanese sailor Otokichi landed on the shores of Cape Flattery in 1834, the Hudson's Bay Company had already established...

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

To write good creative nonfiction is to read even better creative nonfiction. THE GOLDEN SPRUCE (John Vaillant, Vintage Canada, 2006)...

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

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...

In January 1834, while Chief George of the Makah tribe took possession of the Japanese castaway Otokichi and his ship the Hojunmaru on...

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

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....