KJ
Reviews
Native
American in the Land of the Shogun: Ranald MacDonald and the Opening
of Japan
Frederick L. Schodt, Stone Bridge Press. 2004, 418 p.
Reviewed by Trevor Carolan (from KJ #63)
With the ease of modern communications, it is difficult to imagine that
in reaction to the spread of Christianity following early contact with
the Portuguese, the Tokugawa Shogunate imposed a policy of national
seclusion upon Japan that survived for 200 years. Even by the 1830s
when Western imperialism and the craving for new markets was creating
a global maritime trading network, Japan remained defiantly isolated.
As Frederick Schodt reveals in this brilliant, absorbing work, Ranald
MacDonald’s raison d’etre was to cross cultures.
He was born in 1824 at Astoria, a fur-trading post in the North American
wilderness where aboriginal peoples traded with Britain’s Hudson’s
Bay Company (HBC) and with east-coast Americans. It was a frontier,
multicultural world where adventurers took native wives and children
were mixed. With a local Chinook mother and Scottish father, Macdonald
grew up speaking several languages. Then the Japanese arrived.
Schodt, a scholar of Japanese, relates that the shipwreck of three “Kichis”
not far from what is now Seattle was a momentous event. Amazingly, these
Japanese sailors drifted across the Pacific in a disabled boat from
Mihama Township near modern Nagoya. The trio were ultimately rescued
and transported around the world by HBC officers, via London, to Japan
where the severity of the Seclusion Laws tragically denied them re-entry
to their homeland — but not before the young Macdonald learned
of their story and ‘forbidden land.’
Schodt’s account of MacDonald’s life and his eventual journey
to Japan is depicted with the accuracy of a trained academic and the
excitement of a skillful novelist. Sent off to school in Red River Settlement
(now Winnipeg), Macdonald traveled heroically with a fur-trading party
over a thousand miles by canoe and on foot across staggering terrains.
Yet the nearer his education brought him to the constrictions of ‘civilized’
society, the less happy he was in a future as an HBC trader like his
father. Instead, at 18 he began whaling aboard American boats out of
New England.
Whale-oil trading yielded colossal profits. American skippers had learned
of the rich whaling grounds north of Japan, and though forbidden to
land ashore they flocked to the region. Inevitably, minor contacts occurred
and Schodt speculates that — in limited quarters — Japanese
attitudes were already opening imperceptibly toward modernity. Meanwhile,
Western legends grew of vast riches inside Japan. With his boyhood memories
of the shipwrecked “Kichis,” MacDonald must have wondered
about the possibilities. He made plans.
On June 27, 1848, by agreement with his captain, Macdonald marooned
himself on remote Rishiri Island, Hokkaido. He knew that landing in
Japan risked death, but pressed on. Why? Schodt explains that MacDonald
believed his Chinook ancestry gave him a racial link with the Japanese
people. He was also an inveterate optimist. As luck had it, he landed
among the Ainu, who treated him well.
Soon arrested, however, MacDonald was held at Soya and Matsumae. His
plucky nature helped him adjust to Japanese food and customs; and as
no Japanese knew English, communication was in sign-language. His captivity
was reasonably comfortable, and with Japanese officers eager for outside
news, MacDonald began acquiring knowledge of their language. What Macdonald
did not know is that a dozen American deserters had also landed in Japan.
Schodt suggests that, fearing incidents with foreign powers that might
result, official alarm was growing at the numbers of foreigners washing
ashore. China’s humiliations from Western gunboats were well-known.
MacDonald and the deserters were moved separately to Nagasaki where
Japan’s exchange with the outside world took place when a single
Dutch boat was permitted to arrive annually. Since any likely foreign
negotiations would require English interpreters, after lengthy interrogations
MacDonald became a captive English teacher and for six months worked
with 14 students, including the gifted 29-year Dutch-speaking Einosuke
Moriyama Einosuke who would himself become legendary. It would prove
a historic teacher-student relationship.
Eventually, through the Dutch agent at Nagasaki, the USS Preble
arrived in April, 1849, with orders to retrieve all U.S. prisoners and
MacDonald headed home. Commodore Perry’s successful mission of
1853-54 was now inevitable. During negotiations in both instances, Moriyama,
MacDonald’s star English-speaking pupil, startled U.S. officials
with his skill as official interpreter.
While Japan has honored MacDonald, little is known of him in English.
But he left a written record of his life, and steadily his story is
coming to light. As a new era of globalization unfolds, it is timely
that this visionary traveler and his Japanese students be recognized
for the quietly progressive, peacemaking spirit of their contribution
to Japan’s independence and modernization.
Copyright
held by the author
Trevor
Carolan writes from Vancouver where he teaches English and Asian-Pacific
cultural studies at University College of the Fraser Valley. His recent
books include Giving Up Poetry, a memoir of his acquaintance
and study with Allen Ginsberg (Banff Centre); and Return To Stillness:
Twenty Years with a Tai Chi Master (Marlowe).
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