Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Nakahama Manjirō
Summary
, also known as John Manjirō (or John Mung), was a Japanese samurai and translator who was one of the first Japanese people to visit the United States and an important translator during the opening of Japan.
He was a fisherman before his journey to the United States, where he studied English and navigation and became a sailor and gold-miner. After returning to Japan, he was elevated to the status of a samurai and was made a hatamoto. He served his country as an interpreter and translator and was instrumental in negotiating the Convention of Kanagawa. He also taught as a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University.
During his early life, he lived as a simple fisherman in the village of Naka-no-hama, Tosa Province (now Tosashimizu, Kōchi Prefecture). In 1841, 14-year-old Nakahama Manjirō and four friends (four brothers named Goemon, Denzo, Toraemon, and Jusuke) were fishing when their boat was wrecked on the island of Torishima. The American whaleship John Howland, with Captain William H. Whitfield in command, rescued them. At the end of the voyage, four of them were left in Honolulu; however Manjirō (nicknamed "John Mung") wanted to stay on the ship. Captain Whitfield took him back to the United States and briefly entrusted him to neighbor Ebenezer Akin, who enrolled Manjirō in the Oxford School in the town of Fairhaven, Massachusetts. The boy studied English and navigation for a year, apprenticed to a cooper, and then, with Whitfield's help, signed on to the whaleship Franklin (Captain Ira Davis). After whaling in the South Seas, the Franklin put into Honolulu in October 1847, where Manjirō again met his four friends. None were able to return to Japan, for this was during Japan's period of isolation when leaving the country was an offense punishable by death.
When Captain Davis became mentally ill and was left in Manila the crew elected a new captain, and Manjirō was made boatsteerer (harpooner). The Franklin returned to New Bedford, Massachusetts in September 1849 and paid off its crew; Manjirō was self-sufficient, with $350 in his pocket.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.