ABSTRACT
Historical accounts of Commodore Matthew Perry’s 1854 visit to Japan generally note that the Japanese interpreters could speak English. In December 1832 the small Japanese coastal boat Hyojun Maru set sail from Toba bound for Edo (Tokyo) with a load of rice and porcelain. In the treacherous waters of the Enshunada, a considerable distance from land, the craft encountered a storm. The Japanese arrived in England in June 1835 and spent 10 days on board their ship in the Thames, awaiting permission to land. Macao in the 1830s was a chaotic mixture of military, missionary, and mercantile interests all clamoring for a piece of the China action. The British government as the dominant force tried to supervise disparate and often conflicting interests. In the spring of 1837 four more Japanese castaways arrived in Macao. The Japanese castaways were much distressed by this turn of events. In 1842 two of the men from Kyushu wrote a letter to their families in Japan.
