59  Japan - Akira Yoshimura - Shipwrecks - Score 7.60


Isaku’s village is a small, poor place on the sea. On a bare rocky area where not much grows except in the distant hills. They rely on catching a variety of fish as each moves in season along the coast. We learn a great deal about their lives and lifestyle, ceremonies, selling themselves into bondage for a set number of years to provide for their families and to avoid being a burden on them.

They live in hope of an “o fune sama” event, although it is many years since this happened. O-fune-sama occurs when a merchant ship comes aground on the rocks of their section of coast, but dread a ship belonging to one of the clans of the daimyo coming aground since they must make every effort to save the vessels, their cargos and their crews, all at great hardship to themselves by the disruption of their fishing. If they are found to doing otherwise they are likely to be killed and their village destroyed since the daimyo have the power of life and death over to ordinary people.

A merchant ship crashes ashore after following a light set up by the villagers. Is it moral for the peasants to lure a ship and crew into danger in bad weather, even if it is to help feed their own families?

There is a detailed description of the emptying and stripping down of the vessel. It has enough cargo to feed the village for about three years, as well as other goods to be used in the village. Two sailors had been seen praying for salvation on the ship when it was first seen on the morning of the beaching. At the end of the work there was the disposal of their bodies, two more discovered hiding, and those of the drowned crew in the fast flowing and deep water at the two headlands out from the beach. There was now no danger of the villagers being found out.

At a later date another ship drifted in, full of dead men dressed in gorgeous red clothing. The head man ordered that they should be brought ashore and their clothing distributed among the women and children, the ship then being towed out to sea and set drifting away. I had my suspicions about what this all meant. Read the book and find out for yourself.

There was little evidence of when these events were set, except that it had to be earlier than the middle 1800s as the daimyo had lost their power by then after the arrival of the United States and other Western ships. For that reason I was surprised to read that one of the senior villagers could write script.

I gave this book a score of 8.0.