The Castaway's Report: How a Shipwreck Brought Russia to Edo Japan
In the twelfth month of Tenmei 2 (1782), a cargo ship called the Shinsho-maru, out of Shiroko in Ise, was caught in a storm off Suruga and lost its rudder. The crew drifted for roughly eight months before washing up on Amchitka, a small island in the Aleutian chain then under Russian control. What followed turned a maritime disaster into one of the most remarkable books of Japan's closed-country centuries. That book, Hokusa Bunryaku, is held today by the National Archives of Japan and was named an Important Cultural Property in 1993.
The work is not a travel diary written by the survivors. It is an official record. After the ship's master, Daikokuya Kodayu, finally returned to Japan in Kansei 4 (1792), he and a fellow survivor named Isokichi were brought to Edo and questioned in detail by Katsuragawa Hoshu, a shogunate physician and scholar of Dutch learning. Hoshu compiled their answers into a structured account of Russia and Siberia, presented to the authorities in the eighth month of Kansei 6 (1794).
The physical work runs to twelve volumes of text (eleven of main content plus one appendix), two illustrated scrolls, and a set of ten maps, with the formal count recorded as twelve booklets, two scrolls, one album and nine sheets. The main text organises its information into seventy-six categories, an attempt to make sense of an empire almost no one in Japan had seen.
A Decade-Long Journey, Recorded in Detail
Kodayu's road home was extraordinary. From Amchitka the survivors built a vessel and reached Kamchatka, then crossed Siberia by way of Okhotsk, Yakutsk and Irkutsk. There Kodayu met the naturalist Kirill Laxman, who helped him travel on to the capital, Saint Petersburg, where he gained an audience with Empress Catherine II and pleaded to be sent home. He had spent close to ten years away by the time the envoy Adam Laxman delivered him to Nemuro.
Because Russia was pressing on Japan's northern frontier at this very moment, the castaways' knowledge was treated as intelligence as much as curiosity. Hoshu drew on what Kodayu and Isokichi remembered and also on a Dutch-language geography to check and correct their accounts. Where the survivors misremembered, he often let their words stand and added a note correcting them, a method that preserves both their voice and the limits of their memory.
The result earned its reputation as the finest of Japan's castaway records and the starting point of Russian studies in the country. For readers of the time it opened a window onto an unfamiliar Europe: a chapter on writing reproduces the Russian alphabet as a beginner's primer, another presents rubbings of Russian coins, and the descriptions reach from imperial ceremony down to the running of orphanages.
The Pictures Kodayu Carried Home
The two illustrated scrolls are where the report becomes vivid. One depicts Russian clothing; the other, devoted to objects, records the things Kodayu and Isokichi were given or saw at court. Among them are a medal, a watch and a tobacco case received from the Empress, a hanging portrait of Catherine II, a dagger, a cane and a microscope, alongside everyday items, each rendered with careful attention. The object scroll is long, its paper running well over ten metres, so that turning through it feels like an inventory of a vanished encounter.
The maps may be the most quietly astonishing part. Hoshu's team copied Russian copperplate engravings by hand, producing a world map, regional charts, a map of the Russian empire, and a street plan of Saint Petersburg. On the city plan, major buildings such as the palace are keyed with Japanese syllabary marks, their names listed in the margin. These are not Japanese imaginings of a far place; they are faithful transcriptions of European cartography, made at a moment when such images were rare and tightly held.
You cannot leaf through the original at will, since it is an archival holding rather than a permanently displayed exhibit. The National Archives shows treasures like this in its free special exhibitions in central Tokyo. More conveniently, the entire work has been digitised on the National Archives Digital Archive, where anyone, anywhere, can page through the text, the clothing and object scrolls, and every map for free.
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Q&A
- Where can I see Hokusa Bunryaku?
- It is held by the National Archives of Japan in Kitanomaru Park, central Tokyo, and is not on permanent display. It may appear in the Archives' free special exhibitions, and the complete work is freely viewable, page by page, on the National Archives Digital Archive online.
- Who actually wrote it?
- It was compiled by Katsuragawa Hoshu, a shogunate physician and Dutch-learning scholar, from the testimony of the returned castaways Daikokuya Kodayu and Isokichi. It was presented to the authorities in the eighth month of Kansei 6 (1794).
- Why is it considered so important?
- It is regarded as the finest of Japan's records by shipwreck survivors and as the foundation of Russian studies in Japan, a wide, detailed account of late-eighteenth-century Russia and Siberia from a country otherwise sealed off from Europe.
- What do the illustrations and maps show?
- Two scrolls depict Russian clothing and objects, including a watch, microscope and a portrait of Catherine II. Ten maps, hand-copied from Russian copperplate engravings, include a world map and a street plan of Saint Petersburg keyed to building names.
- Is there an English version of the text?
- The original is in classical Japanese with no full modern translation, though scholarly editions exist in Japanese. The Digital Archive offers an English-language interface for searching, and the high-resolution images of the maps and scrolls are rewarding regardless of language.
Basic Information
| Name | Hokusa Bunryaku (dated eighth month, Kansei 6) |
|---|---|
| Holder | National Archives of Japan |
| Location | 3-2 Kitanomaru-koen, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo |
| Category | Important Cultural Property (Historical Materials) |
| Designation No. | 00065 |
| Designated | 20 January 1993 (Heisei 5) |
| Date | Edo period, Kansei 6 (1794) |
| Quantity | 12 booklets, 2 scrolls, 1 album, 9 sheets |
| Compiler | Katsuragawa Hoshu |
| Viewing | Not on permanent display; free online via the National Archives Digital Archive, and occasionally in free exhibitions. |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/201/10207
- National Archives of Japan Digital Archive, "Hokusa Bunryaku"
- https://www.digital.archives.go.jp/pickup/71/79
- National Archives of Japan
- https://www.archives.go.jp/
Last verified: 2026.06.22