Unhinged History strives to bring you the stories you’ve never heard of in your history class, and this week is no exception.
Angie kicks off this week by exploring the Silk Road and the heist that liberated silkworms and opened the door for countries other than China to produce this incredibly luxurious textile.
Theresa veers off in a wildly different direction as she shares the story of Nakahama Manjiro, also known as John Mung. Manjiro starts off as a stranded Japanese 14-year-old fisherman, gets rescued by an American whaling ship, becomes the first Japanese man in the United States, and returns home just in time to be an interpreter for Commodore Matthew Perry coming to Japan to sell weapons.
This episode pairs well with:
Battle of Hastings and Bayeux Tapestry
The Fall of the Shogun and the Women’s Army
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Transcript
Theresa: Hi, and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast. The podcast where two absolute crazy heads are going to listen to audiobooks, hear one line of a story, go wait, wait, I’m sorry, what now? And go off on rabbit trails and compulsively research the thing that we’ve never heard of before and just completely overwhelm everyone around us with the story we’ve only recently learned and then tell our co-host on a weekly basis. I’m host one. I might be the most guilty of that recently. That is host two.
Angie: I am Angie and I am very excited about what you are going to talk about.
Theresa: Sucks to be you because you’re first. I went only last time. That was rude for my next trick. Well, all right then.
Angie: That is not a source. I am just adding articles into my sources that are not sources right now. This both well for me. Yeah, it was a link I sent to my son that apparently I needed to put in this notes. Anyway, my sources start with the Silk Road Foundation.org. There is a Wikipedia article.
Speaker 4: Okay, I’m going to need you.
Theresa: You say Wikipedia, like you are practicing some kind of accent. I really like the word white.
Angie: So I’m just trying to incorporate that WH and everything. No, not seriously. But you’re going to love this next source, but I swear to you it was very valuable.
Theresa: TheNazMiyahAntiRugz.org. This sounds like somebody said, you know, your rug needs an SEO play. You’re going to need a blog.
Angie: So anyway, the International Ciri Cultural Commission has a website which I think is just really fun. Wow, I didn’t write this website down. Oh, the Sarians. Let’s see what it’s actually called. Of course my thing.
Theresa: The power of editing will fix this. Thanks.
Angie: Ethnic relations and the migration in the ancient world. A website of Philip H. Harland.
Theresa: Now, hold on. You didn’t give me anything to edit to make that better. Sorry. You have to like actually like.
Angie: Okay, you can keep it if you want to. It is a website by Philip H. Harland. Ethnic relations and migration in the ancient world. This website is specifically talking about Pliny the Elder on the Savage Silk People from the first century CE.
Theresa: I’m sure he’s not biased here at all.
Angie: No, not even a little bit. Expedition Magazine has an article called Textiles from the Silk Road. It is put together by the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The article is by Angela Shang. It was published in 2010. All about history has how did silk get out of China. BBC has a history of the world, the Silk Princess Painting, which is only here so I can eventually show you that painting if you are inclined. Historia Magazine has an article called Stealing the Secret of Silk, the first international industrial spies.
Theresa: In case you’re curious, I’m telling you the secret of silk. This is going to be exciting because I did get the Silk Road the massive volume, but I got an audiobook form and it was, oh my gosh, so incredibly good, so incredibly long. And also a couple of years since I’ve partaken. So I am not going to be as up to date on all of that. So refresh my memory.
Angie: So I am going to give you, here’s just a quick outline. I’m going to give you the history of silk as we know it, silk, like the textile silk, as we know it, until it left China and how it got out of China. Because I love this story so much.
This girl has a soft spot for textiles, apparently. Do you remember a while ago when I told you the story of the 1527 sack of Rome and I was like, originally I was going to give you the history of the Vatican, but as it turns out, that’s like the history of the world. So I pivoted and I told you about the fall of Rome instead.
Yes. Okay, this story should have played out like that. I was like, wait, what? Because like you said, the Silk Road audiobook is like 90 hours long. So of course the history of silk is big. But do you know how old the art of silk making is?
Theresa: No. I think this is one of those things, if you said I was going to, yeah, of course, but the second see, Theresa Pop quiz, I’m going to be like, I can’t write an answer.
Angie: Five years. Okay, well, silk production, which is called sericulture, originated in Neolithic China sometime between 5,000 and 8,500 years ago.
Theresa: No, wait a minute. You say Neolithic and my brain goes, I know this isn’t right. My brain goes automatically how to make fire.
Angie: Okay. I feel like all of our brains do something like that and kind of, yeah, but they are not just making fire. They are making things.
Theresa: They’re making gorgeous luxury items. This is the Louis Vuitton of survival.
Angie: Yeah, basically. The earliest evidence of silk shows up in sites like the Jahu site in the Henin province. This is a tomb site and it dates around the late 7th millennium BCE, so a minute ago. The evidence here right now is what they found is biomolecular and studies show the existence of the prehistoric silk fibrone. And if you’re curious, because I was like, what the hell is a fibrone? It’s basically the structural core of silk fibers found in the tomb. And I was like, okay, that’s actually really cool.
Theresa: I’m glad you said it, because it sounded like a gang for fibers, like a cloth gang.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Angie: It’s a cloth gang, but it’s the core of silk. So textiles from the Choo Toon, number one of the jailing at Mausin in the Hubei area, they date from 340 to about 278 BCE, and they already show a technical mastery of brocading the silk with pictorial patterns, which I think is so impressive when you think of how long ago that was.
Like, I am beyond impressed. So also found at this site are rough weaving tools and bone needles, which are of course indicative and indicating that the residents of this area possess these basic weaving and sewing skills. Right.
So like, that’s super impressive. That said, because silk making is so old, it sort of, for me, I believe that it predates any written record. So instead of like a, we know exactly how it came to be, we know the legend of how silk came to be. So reiterating what you just said,
Theresa: making silk cloth is older than written language.
Angie: It seems that way to me. I did not make a, like, I didn’t go personally googling like how old is the old written language, right? We know Sumerian is like incredibly ancient, but I’m not sure as far as in the Chinese world when writing, like when calligraphy and when writing and when writing in its basic form was formed, but it seems like silk’s been around since the beginning in their world. It’s just a good house. I’ll Google that when I’m done telling you the story because now I am curious, but it’s there. It’s been around a hot minute. Here’s the legend. Supposedly Empress Lizu, she is the wife of the Yellow Emperor.
This is circa 27 BCE. Supposedly she had unraveled a silkworm cocoon after it fell into her teeth. Like dropped in her teeth. She’s like, Hey, what’s this? Unrolls it. It’s this was, you know, absolutely luxurious bit. And so now she’s like, Oh, we can do something with this. This is beautiful. It’s soft and shiny. I love it.
Right? From this, the production is formed and it is called sericulture. And like this, but I did not realize this. We all crave this silk. Like even today, silk is still the same.
Right? I did not realize that it comes from the, like I knew it came from the silkworms, but I didn’t know it came from like specifically the cocoon. So these bombics, mori silkworms, they are fed on a diet of mulberry leaves. They then spin these cocoons and the cocoon is the raw silk thread. Now I thought was absolutely wild is one cocoon is roughly the length of a thousand feet of thread. Yeah.
Theresa: Like I had a kindergarten teacher who grew, who had us grow silkworms and we got to play with the cocoons and stuff and things like that.
Angie: That’s awesome. I just remember butterflies in my kindergarten class.
Theresa: Also I did just Google it and it is Chinese silk is significantly older than writing. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah. Like I knew it silk being up to 8500 years ago, writing being gosh up to 1600 BC Chinese writing. So don’t come at me if you know you have some kind of clay table with cuneiform.
Angie: If you’ve got a tortoise show that’s 9000 years old, we’d like to see it please.
Theresa: Well, and it’s not going to be Chinese. So the Chinese had different things, different priorities. That’s where I’m looking for.
Angie: Well, I mean Fouhou’s whole story was written on tortoise show. Sure. But she also wasn’t 8000 years ago. Anyway, so I love knowing that my feeling was right because as I was doing the research, I was like, this feels like one of the oldest skills in the world. I wonder what came first beer or silk. I didn’t look that up either, but I’m so curious. I think it’s beer.
Theresa: Beer makes sense, but silk can’t be that much further behind. So anyway, regardless of the true nature of the origins, China keeps the secret of silk making for a like in a tight, tight circle for at least a millennia. Like nobody outside of China knows how to make this. Eventually the knowledge spreads to other parts of the East, including places like Japan and Korea. And one of the things that I thought was interesting is one source says the skill eventually like, well, not eventually rather quickly spreads to India, but it is possible that India may have been developing the techniques around the same like concurrent.
Theresa: They could have both kind of come to the same idea at the same time or around the same time.
Angie: It seems that way. But there’s not again, because this skill is so old in both places, there isn’t like somebody journaling it down like today I made silk. It’s dated 1921. Like anyway, so according to the antique rug.com or dot org quote, evidence of the long distance silk trade can be dated back to as early as 1070 BC, where archaeologists found silk woven into the hair of an Egyptian mummy.
It’s pretty cool. So there’s one story and I love this so much that says a princess loved her silk so much that when she left China to marry the prince of Kotaan, which doesn’t exist in that name today, but back then she stuck like hid the silkworms in her headdress so she could sneak them out of the country and into her new home. And then the people of Kotaan were so impressed that they also kept it a secret. Now this whole area is China today and has been China for a very long time, but at this time when this legend sort of starts, they were very separated regions. This checks seems that’s pretty cool. Right. And there’s the there’s some really cool paintings about the silkworms being in her headdress or being like sewn into her clothes as a way to sneak them out.
I kind of love that. Now silk becomes a major export during the Han dynasty. So 202 BC to 220 CE traveling west via the Silk Road to Rome where silk is quite literally worth its weight and gold. It’s worth saying that the Silk Road was like up and operational by a second century BC or BC and continued being heavily traveled till the 15th century.
What I did not realize and this is going to sound so dumb. I guess I wasn’t as familiar with the Silk Road as I thought I was because in my brain the Silk Road is 4,000 miles of trading posts that are positioned from like the entire expanse of Asia into Europe, right? But it webs out in multiple directions. In my brain it was like one straight line.
Theresa: Yeah, not a net equal because it’s called a Silk Road when in actuality it’s that network is more realistic.
Angie: Yeah. 100%. So I was like, wait a minute, you need to tell me the other roads. And I was like, I am 42. I feel so ridiculous right now.
Theresa: Well, and you probably learned that at some point and your brain went, we’re going to delete that because you need to remember your social security number.
Angie: And bro, we have a hard enough time with that one. So you’ve got places like Byzantium and like the whole of the Levant that in Italy and Rome and they are like pining for the stuff, right? Like silk is perfect and they are dying over it. Pliny the Elder would write in the year 70 AD quote the series or Chinese are famous for the wool of their forests brackets.
So which was roven into cloth and sold at such a price that it drains the wealth of our empire. I think he might just be a little bit jealous that they have the monopoly on this.
Theresa: And I like how he describes it as the wool of the forest. Like you’re just going out and picking this off the trees. It’s right up to the apples.
Angie: Yeah, I don’t think he fully understands it, but silk has such a hold on Rome that China is to them is called the land of silk. Like that’s just what they equate China with. Some of the reasons people are absolutely using their minds over this textile is that it is both lighter and stronger than the wool and linen, which you can pry off my cold dead body because I live in linen.
But I get it. It’s great in cold damp weather as well as hot climate. So it’s super diverse and it holds the dyes beautifully like that imperial purple. It holds on to the silk with like the tenacity of a toddler with candy. It can’t like so good so much better than the other textiles that they’re currently working with. And if it’s not obvious, silk isn’t just fashion, it’s diplomacy and its power on full display because of course only elites can wear silk because of some slag as far as being able to afford it. But there are also some sherry laws that later make the purple silk an imperial monopoly. But the problem is like the long and short of it is basically the whole of the western world is dying to get this stuff right. But in order to get the silk, they have to go through the Byzantium world and in order to get that, they have to go through Persia. And this is an issue.
Theresa: And why is it an issue Angie? To quote Wikipedia.
Angie: At the zenith of the Sassian Empire controlled all of modern day Iran and Iraq and parts of the Arabian Peninsula. Is there a particular? No, Sassanin. S-A-N-I-A-N. They control particularly Eastern Arabia and Southern Arabia and the Caucasus, the Levant, parts of Central Asia as well as parts of the Indian subcontinent. They maintain the Sestiphon as the capital and it has been under this rule for like quite a bit. At its zenith, just for context here, it happens to be like at its most powerful between the 6th and the 7th century, which also happens to be the timeframe we are now looking at. And for the most part, in one way or another, they are always at war with the Roman Empire. Thus cutting off access to the hottest commodities that the West must have. And this leaves the Byzantians just hemorrhaging the gold they do have to buy it where they can find it.
And 541 rolls around and there’s a plague and it like wipes the population out. I think as much as 50% in some places. As you can imagine, this breaks the economy. Like it seems to make sense, right? Like it just destroys your farming, your agriculture, your industry. It just destroys the economy. The plague does, right? The plague does, yeah. Coincidentally, they also believe it’s along this same route that you would take to get the gold that the plague had traveled in the first place.
So I find that really interesting. By 550, the Roman Empire is in just absolute shambles. And it’s not looking good for the restoration of Roman glory under Justinian, which is like really what he wanted. He wanted to take Rome to the golden age of Rome.
Make Rome great again. Basically. Taxes aren’t working out like they hope, right? Because half your workforce is dead. It’s a plague. The plague will do that.
It’s weird. And then these two Nestorian monks roll up to Constantinople and they’ve got an idea. And if it works, it just might save the empire. They think they know how they could steal the secret of soap from China, which like I said before has been this closely guarded secret for more than a millennia now.
Some sources say that you received the death penalty for trying to get the secrets out of China. So like these guys are putting it on the line with this idea, right? One of the sources that I have said that these two fellows, these two monks had previously been to India where the sericulture is happening there as well.
And they think they figured out how it’s done and how they can make it work in the West. Sadly, there is not a ton of first person info here. I would have loved to have read like a diary entry or something.
You’re not even fresh. Yeah, a letter exactly would not believe what comes to today. He went to Constantinople and he said that we can, anyway, this is the gist. The monks travel to China. The mission is probably at least two years long.
The undertaking requires serious logistical planning, like less diplomatic envoy, more elaborate heists. But the monks, they catch a few good breaks. The first thing that’s totally to their benefit is that China is in the middle of a very messy civil war. And there’s this newly established Turkic caganate and they are keeping the central step region like pretty stable. They’re sort of working as the security force for the area, if you will. But there’s just enough happening between this and this group and this messy Chinese civil war that nobody is really going to notice two monks just spreading the good word. They’re just kind of going to let them through.
You’re the least problematic of our issues today. Right? Yeah.
Yep. As for the actual route, like how they actually got there, we don’t know for sure. They either trekked across by foot or the long way around via the ocean voyage to India. Either way, both goals are to dodge Persian agents that would have shut the whole operation down from the get. So they’re just trying to like, how do we not see that guy? Right?
Like I owe that guy money. Like we need to… Roman merchants are already using both routes regularly, so it’s not really uncommon for them to be seen. This is not uncharted territory for them. They’re like, okay, we can sort of…we sort of understand where we’re going here. They finally make it back with the procured silkworms, which they have hidden in their bamboo canes, like their walking sticks.
Theresa: You know, and that’s not a short journey. So I’m stoked that these things have lived because there are times I can’t get seeplings home from the nursery a couple blocks down because I take a corner too tough. Yes.
Angie: And so like I have so many questions about this, but again, they’re not here to answer me and they didn’t leave a travel journal. But the basic gist is they supposedly packed their bamboo canes with straw to keep the silkworms like the right temperature so they wouldn’t hatch. So they’re basically like putting them in spaces for the travel back, right?
It’s a minimum of a year’s worth of travel back. They sneak them back in and bam, the Byzantine silk industry is born. But it does not pay off the way everybody hoped it would, at least not to the extent they’re hoping.
The monks are most definitely rewarded for their efforts, but nobody’s told about it because remember, this whole thing has been a secret mission, right? The amount of gold that is spent on Chinese silk goes down. The treasury balance in Byzantium goes up, but there are more wars and building projects to fund.
So this doesn’t eliminate, because they’re a problem, nor does it eliminate the populace’s love for Chinese silk. Like it doesn’t matter that we can make it here now. We want the real thing. Like, yeah, you don’t want the lab ground diamond.
Yeah, they’re very serious. Western silk is still inferior to Chinese silk, which I think is awesome. But one of the benefits that it does offer them is it keeps more of the coin within the realm and out of the hands of Persia. So that’s sort of helping his goals. Now, technically, Decinians generals, they’re eventually able to like, repake Italy from the gulf, but that’s not really a win because between the near constant warfare and everything else that’s been going on, like the plague, everything is basically a dumpster fire for him. His plan to like, reignite the economy and reinvent Rome using this stolen idea doesn’t work the way that he wants. And within 30 years of his death, the Lombards roll in and they take the Italian peninsula back anyway. And by this time, there are silk factories everywhere.
Theresa: Factories. That is, it’s weird for me to believe that because I think in my heart of hearts factories are an outcropping of the industrial revolution. Right.
Angie: Like in our mind, yeah, I’m sure it’s very much called something different back then, right? But to us, a factory is like the Model T Ford conveyor belt, right? The empire goes on this whole rebranding thing. They are now definitely Byzantium, but the citizens remain calling themselves Romans because we are diehard.
It’s not anything. Eventually, they have this long, slow fade that is just a grinding defeat and then a decline and then a short comeback. And this goes this way over and over for the next several hundred years until my guy, Metmed, rolls up with his big guns and deals the death blow to the Roman Empire.
In 1453. There we go. There we go. I know you’re like, she’s going to say it. I know she’s going to say it. And that’s the story of how the West got silk from the records of the Silk Road. And China still remains the end all be all of superior silk and they are still considered the greatest exporter in the world. Also, if I vacation now.
Theresa: That was that was incredible. Thank you.
Angie: You’re welcome. In case anybody needed to know how where silk came from.
Theresa: I mean, look, I’m here for it. I am going to take us on a very different road.
Angie: You’re really shocking a wildly different road.
Theresa: Maybe not even a road. I’m going to tell you the story of Nakahama Manjiru. Okay, that sounds fun. And that’ll probably be one of the last times I say his name. So you said it really cool. Didn’t I? I said it was so much confidence. My sources, the Japan Society of Boston. Manjiru Nakahama by Danielle Cochran, the Millicent Library. Nakahama. Millicent? Yes. Okay.
Angie: I heard Millicent and I knew that wasn’t what you said it was not.
Theresa: The Tokyo Weekender, the first Japanese man in America, the epic tale of Nakahama Manjiru by Celery John Strusevich. Okay. Okay. So we are going to January 27th, 1827.
Angie: Are you with me? Yeah. And we’re going to be in Boston. Not at the start. Oh, okay.
Theresa: Nakahama Manjiru, he’s born. He has a father whose name is Ettsusuke, who’s a fisherman, and he has a mother named Shio. Okay. Now, he loses his father when he’s at age nine, and he begins working as a fisherman, and he’s doing this to support his family.
Okay. Not enough fish at nine. At nine. He is a baby. He is.
When he’s 14, it’s 1842 now, he sets out on a fishing trip, and he’s part of a small crew, and they’re going to catch tuna. Okay. They get caught up in the Kuro-Shio, or the black current. This is a little bit of a rabbit hole here. There’s a couple of ocean currents that are rather large and in charge. This is in the top three in the world.
Angie: Oh, okay. So this is your, your on its schedule.
Theresa: Yeah. Like, you know, in finding Nemo when they catch the current and they’re right. Yeah. So imagine that. Okay. It’s named after these dark cobalt blue waters, which sound beautiful. Now, in addition to getting caught in this, it does a bunch of things because it has some wind that smashes their sails, splits the udder apart or the rudder apart even, snatches their oars clean away. Not the udder, not the udder, but the rudder. And Lee’s Nakahama and his crew just wrecked on this uninhabited island.
Angie: So this is inconvenient. Not fortuitous.
Theresa: Now, they end up, well, they, they, I say that they’re, you know, they’re able to, to get to the island, right? Cause they’re up in the water, but eventually they get to Torishima or Bird Island as it’s called.
And it’s, it’s great that it’s called Bird Island because they end up living rough for the next couple of months and consisting basically on the albatross that lives there. Gross. You know, I’ve never tried it. I’m sure that sea chicken is fine. But eventually there’s a ship, the John Howland, that’s a new Bedford whaler and it’s captain by a bro named William Whitfield of Fairhaven, Massachusetts. And he rescues them. Where did they start out from? The famous Nakahama? Yeah. They’re in Japan. Okay.
Angie: Just checking, making sure I said Boston, but then he said no. And I was like, okay, then it must be Japan. Okay. Got it. Yeah.
Theresa: But we’ve got a couple of entries from the log book where the captain made a couple of notes. Sunday, July, June 27th, 1841. The light, or whoop, this day light wind from Southeast Isle in sight at 1pm, sent two boats to see if there were any turtle, found five poor distressed people on the Isle, took them off, couldn’t understand anything from them more than they was hungry. Made the latitude of the Isle 3 degrees, 31 minutes north.
Angie: Okay. You know what? Being able to understand they’re hungry, that’s really all you need to know. Sharrades for the win.
Theresa: Now, the next day, we have a note. This day, light winds from Southeast, the island in sight, to the westward stood, the southwest at 1pm landed and brought what few clothes the five men left, which I’m stoked we have that information.
Angie: Now, like they went back and got their clothes? Yeah. Yeah. That’s how that sounds.
Theresa: Okay. Got it. I mean, you think about it, you’re not, I mean, I’m assuming if it’s warm enough, you don’t necessarily need your shirt, but if you’re going to be on a vessel for who knows how long?
Angie: You might blissfully want your pants. Yep.
Theresa: Kim Chaka. Here’s the problem, right? Because the crew’s been rescued and they realize they’re not able to return to Japan because right now Japan is in this strict isolation movement. If you leave Japan, it is death if you come back. Because of this isolation policy.
Speaker 4: They left on accident though. Doesn’t matter. Okay. Yeah. That door only goes one way.
Theresa: So this means that they can’t go back. So Captain Whitfield somehow or another figures all this out. I’m sure a bunch of pointing and shaking their heads and saying no, big X’s. So the book I read last week about the Battle of Ahtu, it actually starts with this story. Oh, that’s cool. Which is where I got this idea from. Okay.
So Japan was strictly isolationist. Do not pass, go, do not collect $200. You are not going home. Okay. So, bad news there. So they decide instead to go on this wailing journey and the captain ends up dropping most of them off in Hawaii.
Literally Honolulu. This doesn’t feel terrible. It doesn’t. So Nakahama, he become attached to Captain Whitfield and so he kind of begs to go along and complete the voyage and go with him to America. But his buddies are like, this is literal paradise. You can drop me here at this kingdom. These guys seem great. This is nice here.
Yes. And around this time he’d somehow picked up the English language. I say somehow like it’s a mysterious event. I mean, he’s been immersed in English and he’s able to speak pretty well and he’s got a great nature and he’s described as having a willingness to work and he learned and what he had learned and this endures him to the captain and the crew.
Angie: So and he has 14. Yeah. That is my baby.
Theresa: You mean the age of your literal children? Yeah. So you can kind of see where this is going, right? Well, the other guys are like, Deuces, we’re going to hang out in paradise. And Nakahama, he ends up taking the name John Mung. Okay.
Because Mung, as you know, is a very traditional Japanese last name. Of course. No, not at all. But you know, and I’m sure it was Manjido and they were like, Mung? Can we just say Mung? Mung, you wrote? We’re just going to call you John. It works. So he goes by John Mung, which didn’t like crack me up to no end. And he goes with Captain Whitfield and his crew to Fairhaven, Massachusetts.
Angie: That is a journey. Okay.
Theresa: He has seen a thing or two. He has been around the world. Now while in Fairhaven, Nakahama becomes quite involved in the community. He later, Captain Whitfield will marry a second time and set up a home in Skana-Kuttenek. And I realized I hadn’t said that word out loud. So let me know how bad I did. I’ll make sure the email is in the notes.
Angie: I was literally just thinking I should out loud say my entire thing and not just a occasional word here and there. It would be so helpful. But then I was like, there’s so words I’m never going to be able to pronounce. You know, like Dale, for example.
Theresa: Dale? No, anyhow. Dude. Okay. So Captain gets married a second time, sets up his household and John Mung becomes a member of the household. He’s not regarded as a servant, which is so incredible. He is a foster son to the captain.
Angie: Yes, he should be. He was 14 when you picked him up. He is still a baby. But this is the late 1800s. Whatever. Okay. So I know exactly what type of mother I would be in any generation. Amen.
Theresa: Now, he also attends private school and is basically just one of the family. I love that. Good for him. We’ve got records that the people in the community pretty much accepted him as well. He attended school. He learned to read and write in English. And meanwhile is just delving into the intricacies of navigation, barrel making. He’s going on several whaling expeditions. He’s assisting Mrs. Whitfield on the family farm. Like where she is. Boy is just in it. Right?
Angie: He is making himself useful. His Nana taught him right.
Theresa: You got time to lean. You got time to clean. You better. Well, here’s the moment. Of course, there’s going to, for every hundred humans, they’re going to be great. There’s going to be a handful that are less than desirable. And you know, it happens even here because they go to church. They have a family pew that the Whitfield sit at and he’s with them. But because he’s with them and he’s not exactly of the whitest complexion, there’s suggestion that he should sit with the Black congregants. He is neither, though.
Let him sit with his family. Captain Whitfield refuses. And they decide, you know what? We’re going to join the Unitarian Church instead. We’re going to take our pew and go home.
Angie: Okay, because here’s the thing. First of all, it makes me so mad that there would be any segregation, be it gender or color or whatever in the church. But if you walk in with the family, you sit with the family. Yes. That sort of makes sense to me, regardless of what church you go to. They are our guest. Period.
Theresa: End of story. The end.
Angie: Also, we have my last day. Thank you so much. Yes.
Theresa: At the Unitarian Church, they would sit alongside prominent community member named Warren Delano, the second. That is a name. It is a name indeed because this next line, quote, I will remember my grandfather telling me about the little Japanese boy who went to school in Fairhaven and who went to church from time to time with the Delano family, wrote then-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Angie: I knew that’s where you were going to go. That’s awesome.
Theresa: And I had to say it wrong on purpose to throw you off the scent. It didn’t work. Nice try. You know, I do what I can. You know, fail, though I might.
Angie: We all have our minutes, you know? Truth.
Theresa: Despite the fact that our boy is living it up and fully integrated into the home that he found himself in, he gets kind of homesick and he knows that going back to Japan is going to risk death. And there ends up being a classmate, John C. Tripp, who once finds Nakahama crying into the remnants of a Komodo made for him by his mother. And eventually it’s too much and he decides he wants to try to go home.
Angie: I mean years have passed. We could be hopeful.
Theresa: Yeah, we would love to try for this, right? So 1846, he finds work on a whaling ship in the Pacific and he visits his former crewmates at its date in Hawaii. That’s awesome. Now he learns that they had tried and failed to get entry back into Japan. But Nakahama, he’s determined to go try again. Fair. Okay. It’s 1849. He has saved up $350. Which is… That feels like a lot. 15 grand in modern money. Good for him.
Then we also have the gold rush kicking off in California and he kind of goes, ooh, quick money? I’m here for that. Let’s go.
He arrives in San Francisco in May of 1850, takes a steamboat up the Sacramento River and then proceeds up into the mountains. Okay. Boy, it’s traveling. Within months, he has enough gold to exchange for 600 pieces of silver, 25K in today’s money. Okay. Now, I was floored to read this because of how I heard of Americans treating Chinese during this time period when I covered the Chinese and Oregon during the same time period in episode 122. Now, I can’t imagine that being Asian, I know Chinese and Japanese are very different. I’m well aware.
So stick with me. The camps, the minor camps had to be absolutely atrocious because we have these huge number of immigrants from China that are being accused of stealing, quote, the American jobs because… Of course. It’s not the job… It’s not the boss’s fault for paying low wages and the immigrant for accepting them. The fact that there’s immigrants to accept them at low wages means I can’t get paid a fair wage. We’re blaming the wrong person.
But basically to a bigot, a Japanese and a Chinese person are way too close for comfort and probably same-same. This checks. Either way, he gets the money, which is damn impressive, and reunites with two of his former shipmates, a man named Denzel and then Guaimans. The fourth one seemed to have…
There’s some reports that say there were three or four… One seems to have stayed in Hawaii and one seems to have passed away. That seems to be where I came to with my understanding of the sources. So that’s the long story. Now, he’s able to get passage for him and them. So it’s all of us together if we can, and they start going back to Japan’s shores, which is beautiful for me to come back to Honolulu and be like, I got our ticket home, boys.
Let’s give it a go. So they land at the southern part of what we know is OK Now and now because things change, all that kind of stuff. It’s 1851 and they are prepared to really face the music because remember, isolationist, penalty of death, and it’s not long before they’re arrested for violating these laws.
This checks they’re being detained in Nagasaki when Nakahama, he is identified as being a Japanese person who had been to America. This attracts a ton of attention because he’s got more Hutzpah and storyline behind him than the two guys that laid on the beach for a couple years. He has put in the work.
Yes. And so he attracts a bunch of crowds and they want to hear his stories and he proceeds to tell them all about the virtues and kindness of the Americans. OK OK, which is exciting because Japan has been in this little isolationist bubble for 200 years.
Right. They have been isolated so long that the Japanese officials are having a hard time understanding him and his companion stories because the concepts that they’re offering, they have no foundation for. So much so that they take Kawada Shoryu to, he’s an artist and scholar, they’re like, hey, we’re going to need you to go in, go sit with these guys and draw pictures of what the hell they’re talking about because we need to see what is going on.
Like visuals need some help here. Yeah. Like sit down with them, figure out how to play this game and we want to see the images. Right. OK. Now. They end up creating a four volume set called the Hyo-sen Kiyaku.
Speaker 4: Is this like an encyclopedia?
Theresa: Basically. But it’s just a massive four volume set of like, here’s what we experienced. Like this is the world outside of our bubble.
Angie: That would be wild having been stuck in your own. Like just thinking of the three weeks I got to hang out at home during COVID. Like to think of 200 years that way. Yeah.
Theresa: And to have people come from space and say, here’s what you’ve been missing. Yeah. Yeah. We know that Nakahama, he eventually is able to reunite with his family and this is incredible.
Right. Then the Nakasaki’s magistrate office, you know, they’re able to unite. Like he’s able to finally get to his hometown in Posa in 1853. He hasn’t seen his mom in 12 years. Say how long has he been gone?
Speaker 4: OK.
Theresa: Yeah. 12 years. Now it would be another 10 years before Captain Whitfield and his family would hear from Nakahama. There would be a letter that would come in 1860 that would describe his fortunes. He talks about how he had embraced his experiences abroad. He had, quote, adopted the path of the samurai.
Now remember, he was a poor fisherman. This is a class system. Right.
But because of this, he has made a hatamoto, which is a samurai in direct service of the literal shogun. Cool. OK. So he’s got some street cred. Yeah. Yeah, OK. He’s given a surname and he even assumes the role of professor at what’s going to become Tokyo University. OK, I love that. Now, this is when Japan is just kind of starting to open its ports and this is where Nakahama’s story is really going to intersect with another story I’ve told.
Angie: I’m sorry. It’s not Nikki, is it? Nikki? Yeah. Nikki who? Nikki 2, getting…
Theresa: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. OK. This is long before that. OK.
Theresa: This is when Commodore Mathupari ships arrived in Japan.
Angie: Yes! I can use Mathupari again.
Theresa: Now, in case you’re wondering why Angie is losing her ever-loving mind, in episode 67, titled Blood Soaked Battle Angel, we had a long hard debate about Matthew Perry not being friends with Matthew Perry, but how Angie cannot unsee. I can’t. Yeah.
Angie: He just put him in a three-cornered hat. Commodore Perry as far as I’m concerned. Yeah. That’s awesome. Thank you for bringing him back.
Theresa: I wasn’t expecting it, but when it happened, I was like, all right, all right, all right.
Angie: That’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. Thank you so much.
Theresa: Now, Nakahama, this is his time to shine because he’s got a strong knowledge of the English language. He’s got familiarity with the American culture, and he’s got tons of experience with wailing and ship industries.
Matt Perry’s going to need that info. Yeah. And the Shogun has got some questions, so you’re going to need to end up talking. This also coincides because Matthew Perry has come to sell arms to the Japanese people. Of course. Because America wants to sell weapons for their own expansion.
Weapons? So you remember that four-volume book that he ended up helping write? Okay, okay. This starts circling widely among the samurai leaders and daimyoes who wanted to learn about the outside world.
As you do. The original manuscript seems to have been lost, and there were many copies that were made. Most of those were lost as well. Dang it. These are things, right?
This is paper is a thing that fails and falls apart. Now, because Nakahama is able to communicate in a language that the other Japanese don’t understand, Perry’s arrival is kind of fortuitous here. There’s some people that look on it with suspicion because he’s so fluent and he’s so familiar and so at ease with the Americans. He’s a spy. That’s exactly what they’re afraid of. He came back.
Angie: He’s living a life there. He’s trying to gather intel.
Theresa: Boy, isn’t it convenient that now, Commodore Matthew Perry shows up? Silly. Well, this veil of mistrust seems to have been pretty rough for poor Nakahama. Nakahama, he’s providing interpretation and he’s giving advice. He’s doing this while hidden behind a literal screen.
Angie: Like a confessional screen?
Theresa: Okay. I think what it is, is there is a screen because if you’re interfacing with say the emperor or the shogun, I think at this point he’s dealing with the shogun. The shogun wants to be seen as the person you’re chatting with. The interpreter is hidden behind a literal screen.
Angie: Oh, okay. That makes sense.
Theresa: Okay.
Angie: It’s a power play because if you know it’s faster and easier to talk to the interpreter, you’re going to turn your body to him and be like, okay, well, just tell him this. Right. No, that makes sense.
Theresa: But all that to say, like, you know, when you hear, you know, you say something and you’re like, well, just tell him I said, just deal with the terms. Just handle it. And the interpreter goes, hey, now is not the time to be brash. I get that you’re American.
I get this is who you are, but you’re going to need to bow to conquer. What did you say? That’s not what I said. You need to say what I said, boy. You know what I mean? I think that that’s what’s happening.
Angie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. That makes sense. I’ll allow it. So all that to say,
Theresa: he’s what got Perry the weapons deals that Perry got, which is a fascinating tie in. Yeah.
Angie: For some reason, my brain would have never thought that you would have, he would have had an interpreter, but yeah, I guess that makes a hundred percent. Yeah.
Theresa: Surprisingly, you know, when the first picked up and the only thing he communicated boy, I’m hungry. You know. Rub in that belly like it is empty. Can I eat your food sandwich?
Angie: Yeah. The same in any language, right?
Theresa: In Japanese, the word is literally sandwich sandwich. Yeah, basically. Yeah. Yeah. 1870. Our man, John Mung returns back to Fairhaven. My guy. He’s taking a trip. This time he’s going on a diplomatic mission or he’d been sent on a diplomatic mission to Europe by the Japanese government and he’s there to study military science during the Franco-Prussian war. Okay. He’s seen a thing or two.
Angie: I’m just so impressed that he started out as a nine year old fisherman that like got blown off course. Yeah. Like, like that’s the gist here, right?
Theresa: Well, he got grown.
Angie: And of course at 14, but yes, started at nine. But he started at nine, right? So like I’m nine. I’m a fisherman to help feed my family. I’m 14. I’m a fisherman to help feed my family. And now I’m on a diplomatic mission to Europe to study the Franco-Prussian war. Yeah. Yeah.
Theresa: Wild. Okay. It is just like, okay. And like it feels like one of those stories that is fiction because it’s like he was at the Franco-Prussian. There were Japanese at the Franco-Prussian war.
Were you also at the Paris World Fair? I mean, could have been. I don’t see him painted in that picture. He’s got a soft, soft and licking sign. Now, here’s kind of a bummer because after returning from London, he ends up suffering a mild cerebral pre-image and collapses.
My guy. He recovers a little bit, you know, soon afterwards, but he doesn’t take a leading role in politics and spends his final years relatively quiet considering how he started. Okay.
During this time, he returned several times to visit his elderly mother who died of illness at age 86 in 1879. Wow. Okay. And he kind of lived out his life and was a man of modest means living quietly in the care of his sons. He died in 1898 in the home of his eldest son in Tokyo.
What a life. Now, his accomplishment and life is celebrated both in Japan and in the United States because he did have a couple of touchstones here. The most influential moment of his life was opening the Japan’s porcelain outside world.
And as we’ve already said, started as this 14-year-old stranded fisherman literally on a deserted island and became the most influential man of diplomacy between Japan and the outside world. That’s beautiful. I have a quote from Calvin Coolridge, President Calvin Coolridge, to close us out.
When John Mangeto returned to Japan, it was as if America had sent their first ambassador. I love that. And I have a couple of pictures for you. Oh, please. I know. I got you. It doesn’t know what I expected. I know. I’m showing you a picture of an old man and you were expecting the 14-year-old.
Angie: Yeah. Okay, he is, I’m not great with age, but I would say between 50 and 70. The top of his head is bald, but it looks like perhaps he does have some white hair around the back. He’s got the beautiful folded, what is his top called? Probably a kimono. Okay. It’s got the lighter on the inside, darker on the outside, looks like a Jedi.
Theresa: I mean, he’s got like multiple layers. You’ve got the inner layer here. You’ve got that one in the outer. And then this one here, the Vaikon-ishi of Japan is visiting Fairhaven and he’s placing a wreath at the grave of Captain Whitfield. That’s so cool. That’s awesome.
Angie: Theresa, you’ve brought a heartwarming story.
Theresa: I’ll make up for it next time.
Angie: Sorry, guys.
Speaker 4: This makes my whole day.
Theresa: But yeah, that’s the story of John Mung, the not Japanese sounding Japanese man to first visit America. I love that. Thank you for that. My absolute pleasure. If you’ve got a story where you’re like, oh, holy beings, they absolutely need to cover blank, let us know. I’m doing this thing where I actually put our email address to email us in the show notes so that you don’t have to remember what I say because who would? That’s awesome.
You should do this thing where you rate, review, subscribe, like actually do the things that allow us a small independent podcast to get in front of more humans like you. And on that note, goodbye.
Theresa: Bye. Thank you.
Unhinged History 
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