Utsuro-bune
Utsuro-bune (虚舟, hollow boat), also Utsuro-fune and Urobune, was an unknown object that allegedly washed ashore in 1803 in Hitachi province on the eastern coast of Japan.
Historians, ethnologists and physicists such as Kazuo Tanaka and Yanagita Kunio have discussed the legend as part of a longstanding tradition within Japanese folklore.
[1][2][3][4] On February 22, 1803, fishermen on the Harayadori (はらやどり) coast of Hitachi Province[5] saw a strange vessel drifting in the sea.
[1][2][3] The upper part had several windows made of glass or crystal, covered with bars and clogged with some kind of tree resin.
The fishermen found items inside such as two bed sheets, a bottle filled with 3.6 litres of water, some cake and kneaded meat.
Although the mysterious woman appeared friendly and courteous, she acted oddly, for she always clutched a rectangular box made of pale material and around 0.6 m (24 in) in size.
Since it seems to be tradition to expose those boats at sea, the townspeople thought they should bring the woman back to the utsuro-bune and let her drift away.
The lower part of the boat was protected by brazen plates which looked to be made of iron of the highest western quality.
[8] In the 7th century, a fisherman named 'Wakegorō' (和気五郎) from Gogo island found a 13-year-old girl inside an utsuro-bune drifting at sea.
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[citation needed].
The book describes traditional Russian clothes and hairstyles and mentions a popular method to dust hair with white powder.
He points out that circular boats were not unusual in Japan (see for example Tarai-bune); only the western-like details, such as the windows made of glass and the brazen protective plates, make the Utsuro-bune look exotic.
He also found out that most legends similar to that of the Utsuro-bune sound alike: someone finds a strange girl or young woman inside a circular boat and rescues the stranded or sends her back to the ocean.
[1][2] Yanagita also points out that the eldest versions of Utsuro-bune describe humble, circular and open log-boats without any dome atop.
Yanagita assumes that the details of the brazen plates and windows made of glass or crystal were added because skeptics would question the seaworthiness of a humble log-boat on the high seas.
A steel-reinforced Utsuro-bune with glass windows would more easily survive travel on the ocean than an open, unreinforced wooden boat would.
[1][2] Dr. Kazuo Tanaka (田中 嘉津夫), Japanese professor for computer and electronics engineering from Gifu University at Tokyo (東京), investigated the original scripts in 1997.
[1][2] The peculiar European appearance of the woman, the upper part of the Utsuro-bune and the unknown writings lead Tanaka and Yanagita to the conclusion that the whole story was based on the historical circumstance that people of the Edo period totally encapsulated Japan against the outer world.
To bedizen a stranded woman with European attributes showed how much the peoples were afraid of bad cultural influences from the western world, especially North America and Great Britain.
The story of the Utsuro-bune is significantly constructed in a way that makes the tale sound incredible at one site, but self-explaining at the same time (the woman and her craft are sent away so no one could ever consult her personally).
[1][2] Furthermore, Tanaka and Yanagita point out that the people of Edo period shared great interests in paranormal things such as yūrei, onibi, hitodama and yōkai, so it would not be surprising to find stories of exotic boats like the Utsuro-bune.
He assumes, that in order to make the anecdote sound credible, the author designated the beaches as personal acreages of a Daimyō named Ogasawara Nagashige.
This daimyō actually lived during the Edo period, but his acreages were placed at heartland and it seems sure that Ogasawara never had any contact with the fishermen of the Pacific coast.
[1][2] Tanaka finds it very odd that no incident of such alleged importance was commented on in the curatorial documents, since strangers leaving the shore had to be reported at once.
But the only remarkable incident during the late Tokugawa clan happened in 1824, when a British whaler was stranded at the north-eastern coast of the Hitachi district.
According to Tanaka's investigations, the transcription of 原舎ヶ浜 in the Hyōryū Kishū as "Harasha-ga-hama" is therefore a typo based on a misreading and should originally be read as "Haratono-ga-hama".
This corresponds to today's Sharihama beach in Hasaki, Kamisu city (神栖市波崎舎利浜) and is mentioned in a coast survey in 1801 and in Dai Nihon Enkai Yochi Zenzu (ja:大日本沿海輿地全図 maps of Japan's coastal area) by Inō Tadataka.
[14][15] In ufology, the legend of the Utsuro-bune has been described as an early case of a documented close encounter of the third kind based on the similarities between the drawings of the vessel from the Edo period and 20th-century descriptions of flying saucers.
[citation needed] UFO proponents further point to the woman's box, her physical appearance and unusual dress as evidence of off world human visitation.
