The ‘UFO’ that visited Japan in the Edo period

A new exhibit highlights what some are calling Japan’s UFO history: a saucer-shaped ship known as the “Utsuro-bune” that is said to have washed up on the coast of Hitachi Province, present-day Ibaraki Prefecture, 220 years ago. years. during the edo era.

The Joyo Museum of Historical Materials in Mito is organizing an exhibition titled “Fushigi World Utsuro-bune” (Mysterious World of Utsuro-bune) available until March 19, displaying about 10 items, including newly discovered documents.

While the ship did not fly, it does look very much like some kind of flying saucer in the illustrations presented by the academics.

“The exhibition focuses on the Utsuro-bune, not the UFOs. It is up to the visitors to decide whether the Utsuro-bune was a UFO,” said Akiko Ozone, a folklore expert with the Joyo Museum of Historical Materials. “We hope that we can collect more materials on the Utsuro-bune by making it more widely known.”

According to historical documents, the Utsuro-bune is believed to have reached the coast of Hitachi Province on the afternoon of February 22, 1803, during the late Edo period (1603-1867).

When the locals looked at the strange vessel, they saw windows in its upper part and could make out that inside a woman with red hair and eyebrows and holding a box, according to legend.

She didn’t speak Japanese.

This story became a hot topic of discussion at “Toen kai” in Edo, present-day Tokyo. Toen kai were salon-style gatherings hosted by distinguished citizens, such as the famous novelist Bakin Takizawa, where members shared curious stories from around the world.

The “Toen Shosetsu” essay, compiled in 1825, contains the records of such meetings, and a recently discovered manuscript version is on display in the exhibit.

The essay describes the story of Utsuro-bune, detailing the ship and the woman. The description mentions mysterious letters, which looked like combinations of triangles and circles.

Some of the historical materials related to the story have only recently been discovered.

For the past decade, Kazuo Tanaka, a professor emeritus at Gifu University, has led research on Utsuro-bune.

In 2010 and 2012, he studied documents on Utsuro-bune that were discovered in private residences in Mito and Hitachi in Ibaraki Prefecture.

Exactly where the ship landed has long been a mystery, but a document discovered in 2014 suggests it washed up on the Sharihama coast in the Hasaki district of Ibaraki’s Kamisu.

Some also say that a legend of a “golden princess” passed down through the generations in Kamisu may be related to the story.

The story is about a princess who sailed across the sea from Tianzhu, present-day India, and passed on knowledge of silk cultivation to the local people in what is now Kamisu.

In December 2022, researchers discovered a handwritten copy of “Toen Shosetsu” in a library at Showa Women’s University in Tokyo.

The copy was moved there from the Kashimajingu Shrine in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1987.

Ozone said that another manuscript copy of “Toen Shosetsu” owned by Tenri University’s Tenri Central Library in Nara Prefecture also contains a description of Utsuro-bune.