By KEITARO NISHIZAKI/ Staff Writer
February 24, 2023 at 18:40 JST
The exhibition at the Joyo Historical Materials Museum shows a model of the Utsuro-bune. (Keitaro Nishizaki)
MITO, Ibaraki Prefecture--Chinese spy balloons are not the first mysterious, alien vessels Japan has encountered over the ages.
A new exhibition is casting the spotlight on what some call Japan’s UFO story--a saucer-shaped boat known as the “Utsuro-bune” said to have washed ashore on the coast of Hitachi province, present-day Ibaraki Prefecture, 220 years ago during feudal times.
The Joyo Historical Materials Museum in Mito is holding an exhibition titled “Fushigi World Utsuro-bune” (Mysterious world of the Utsuro-bune) until March 19, which showcases around 10 items, including newly discovered documents.
While the vessel did not fly, it looks a lot like a flying saucer of sorts in the illustrations unearthed by academics.
“The exhibition focuses on the Utsuro-bune, not UFOs. It’s up to visitors to decide whether the Utsuro-bune was a UFO,” said Akiko Ozone, a folklore expert who works for the Joyo Historical Materials Museum. “We hope that we can collect more materials about the Utsuro-bune by making it better-known.”
According to historical documents, the Utsuro-bune is believed to have washed ashore on the coast of Hitachi province on the afternoon of Feb. 22, 1803, during the late Edo Period (1603-1867).
When locals looked at the strange boat, they saw windows in its upper part and could make out that a woman inside it had red hair and eyebrows and was holding a box, according to the legend.
She did not speak Japanese.
This story became a hot topic of discussion at “Toen kai” in Edo, present-day Tokyo. Toen kai were salon-style gatherings held by distinguished citizens, such as famed novelist Bakin Takizawa, where members would share curious stories from around the world.
The essay “Toen Shosetsu,” compiled in 1825, contains the records of such gatherings and a newly discovered handwritten version of it is on display in the exhibit.
The essay describes the story of the Utsuro-bune and details the boat 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 been discovered recently.
Over the past decade, Kazuo Tanaka, a professor emeritus at Gifu University, has been leading research on the Utsuro-bune.
In 2010 and 2012, he studied documents on the Utsuro-bune that were discovered at private residences in Mito and Hitachi in Ibaraki Prefecture.
Exactly where the boat landed has long been a mystery, but a document unearthed in 2014 suggests it washed ashore on the Sharihama coast in the Hasaki district in Ibaraki’s Kamisu.
Some also say that a legend of a “golden princess” handed down throughout the generations in Kamisu may be linked to the story.
The tale is of a princess who drifted on the sea from Tianzhu, present-day India, and passed on knowledge about silk farming to local people in what is now Kamisu.
Researchers in December 2022 discovered a handwritten copy of “Toen Shosetsu” at a library at Showa Women’s University in Tokyo.
The copy was moved there from Kashimajingu shrine in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1987.
Ozone said that another handwritten copy of “Toen Shosetsu” owned by the Tenri Central Library of Tenri University in Nara Prefecture also contains a description of the Utsuro-bune.
Entry to the exhibition is free but the museum is closed on Mondays.
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