The Wakamiya-maru was a Japanese cargo ship whose crew members became the first Japanese to circumnavigate the globe after their ship went off course after getting caught in a storm en route from Ishinomaki in the Tōhoku region of northern Japan to Edo (now Tokyo) in November 1793.
At the time, under the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan was pursuing a policy of isolation, and its borders were essentially closed.
However, after sixteen days at sea, the Wakamiya-maru arrived at the island of Unalaska in the north Pacific.
However, Catherine the Great's death soon after the sailors' arrival in Irkutsk led to them spending seven years in the city, before being summoned to St. Petersburg shortly after Alexander I became Tsar.
Upon their return to Edo, the sailors were interrogated by the scholar Otsuki Gentaku, whose account of their travels was published as Kankai Ibun (環海異聞).