bout de papier, Vol. 20, No. 4 (2004) — Spring/Summer 2004 // Printemps/Été 2004, pp. 42–43
Ranald Macdonald, attempted single handed to break through Japan’s closed society. Although he apparently failed, his efforts indirectly contributed to the opening of Japan to the West.
M Territory in 1824, the son of a Hudson’s acdonald was born in the Oregon
Bay Company Chief Factor, Archibald McDonald, and a Chinook Indian, Princess Raven, daughter of Chief Comcomly. His mother died shortly after his birth. When his father remarried, he was brought up by his stepmother as one of her own, unaware until years later of his native heritage. He spent his early years with his family at various trading posts throughout the West before being sent to school at the Red River Academy in the future Winnipeg. After he graduated his father arranged for him to become a clerk in an Ontario bank owned by one of his friends. Macdonald found this stifling and looked for something more adventuresome. He thought of Japan.
As Macdonald explains in his memoirs, through his upbringing in what are now Washington and British Columbia he was conscious of Japan as the next neighbour to the West. For over 200 years it had cut itself off from the world. Its citizens were forbidden to travel abroad. Macdonald knew of Japanese fishermen who had been carried by storms as far as the west coast of North America; because of their possible exposure to alien ways they were not allowed to come back home. Foreigners were not allowed to land in Japan, apart from a handful of Dutch confined to their trading factory in Nagasaki. Macdonald wondered about Japan’s people, their manner of life, their wealth, their feelings towards other peoples, especially their neighbours to the east. “I resolved, within myself, to personally solve the mystery if possible, at any cost of effort — yea life itself?
Macdonald signed on as a crew member of an American whaler in the Pacific, the Plymouth, on the understanding that once the ship’s hold was full of oil and it was ready to return to the States he would be dropped off in the Sea of Japan to make his way to shore in the guise of a shipwrecked sailor. On June 28, 1848, he was set adrift in a ship’s boat near some small islands off northern Hokkaido. He was picked up by Ainu fishermen and taken to their village. These he acter to the North West Coast Indians among whom he had grown up. Uncouth and wild, both in appearance and dress, they compared very unfavourably with the clean, refined and cultivated Japanese on the mainland to whom they turned him over. To the local authorities Macdonald explained as best he could in a mix of languages and gestures his desire to live among them, but they shipped him by junk to Matsmae in southern Hokkaido. The authorities there similarly ignored his pleas and sent him on, also by junk, to Nagasaki. Travelling by sea and usually carried in a closed palanquin when on land, he had disappointingly little opportunity to see the country on the way. However he did observe the daily life of his fellow travellers, including their clothes, food and drink. He was particularly impressed by the fact that all were educated to read and write, even among the lower classes, apparently always carrying brushes and paper to do so. He admired their books and well-executed woodprints. (He also noted they carried paper for blowing their noses — the Japanese evidently anticipated Kleenex.)
Shortly after his arrival in Nagasaki, Macdonald was taken before the Governor for what appears to have been something between a formal interview and a trial. He was accompanied to this by an interpreter, Enosuke Moriyama, whom he described as the most intelligent person he met in Japan. He was intrigued to find that to demonstrate he was not a Roman Catholic he was expected to step on a bronze plate with an image of the Virgin and Child at the entrance to the court — “being a Protestant, I unhesitatingly did so.” When Macdonald was asked about his religious views during the interview, however, Moriyama tactfully refrained from translating his recitation of the Apostles’ Creed. In a subsequent interview he was asked about whaling off Japanese shores. He attempted without success to convince his interviewers that Japan could profitably replace the Sandwich Islands or Hong Kong as a supply base for the whalers. Evidently Macdonald managed at these and later inter-neither a spy nor a troublemaker. Although they decided to confine him until he could be sent home on the next Dutch trading ship, he was otherwise treated quite well.
Once Macdonald’s examination was over, Moriyama and thirteen other interpreters became increasingly friendly, coming almost daily for language lessons. Their primary duties involved working with the small Dutch settlement, but they were interested in broadening their knowledge of other European languages. One at a time they would read to Macdonald in English. He would correct their pronunciation and explain as best he could the meaning and construction of the passages. He found it difficult for them to make some of the English sounds, particularly the consonants. He reported that they could not pronounce, except very imperfectly, the letter L. They also had a habit of adding an / or o at the end after a consonant. As a result his name came out as Ranardo Macdonardo, with a short burr of the r. On the other hand they learned grammar readily. They were all quick and responsive. He decided that he must have a natural aptitude as a teacher — of which he had no idea until developed by the effort. He reported it was a pleasure to teach them.
Although Macdonald considered that his residence was really a prison, for he had no liberty beyond it, a variety of people visited him: men of all sorts – students, officers, priests and people in general of the respectable class — came to stare at him, as a natural curiosity. The only time he saw women, however, came when the Captain of the guard asked his consent to bring his wife, daughter and three of their friends. Of course Macdonald agreed, because he wanted to see what Japanese women looked like. They entered giggling. He reported that their general expression of countenance was that of smiling good nature and artlessness calculated to make a favourable impression. Otherwise, as they shuffled in and out in their long gowns, he thought they looked more like moving bundles of loose clothes than anything else. When he missed the Captain afterwards, he enquired about him and was told his head had been chopped off for breaking the law by bringing women to the prison. Macdonald found this hard to believe.
In April 1849, the American naval corvette Preble arrived to pick up thirteen Americans who had deserted their whaling ship. Their experience had been very different from Macdonald’s. They lacked his motivation and education, resented being held in prison and appear to have quarrelled constantly among themselves as well as with their guards. Their terms of captivity were correspondingly harsher. The Japanese must have been particularly glad to get rid of them. The captain of the Preble was unaware of Macdonald’s presence in the country, but readily agreed to take him as well. Since the Oregon Territory in which he had been born had recently been ceded by the British to the United States he could in any case plausibly claim to be American. Macdonald had suspected that other seamen might be held captives, because he had seen their graffiti in one of the places he had been held en route to Nagasaki and had been puzzled by the interpreters’ enquiries about the meaning of various nautical terms and sailors’ slang. He met them for the first time just before they were transferred to the care of the Dutch Chief Factor preparatory to boarding the Preble.
After a ten-month stay, including seven months teaching English to the interpreters, Macdonald left Japan — his private mission to open the country to the West an apparent failure. He was debriefed by an officer of the Preble, whose report eventually formed part of a U.S. Senate document. Macdonald went on to the Australian gold fields before returning to work in various enterprises in western North America. For the rest of his life he regaled friends and no doubt bored strangers with stories of his Japanese adventures. When he died in 1894 his last word was reportedly “sayonara”. However he missed the opportunity to write about his experiences while they were still topical. When he and a friend, Malcolm McLeod, finally completed them, a proposal to publish them in 1892 under the title “A Canadian in Japan” fell through for lack of interest. A revised version finally appeared only in 1923.
In 1853, four years after Macdonald’s departure, a very different visitor arrived off Tokyo Bay. Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry and his black ships — heavily armed frigates — arrived with a letter from President Millard Fillmore requesting Japan to open its ports to American ships and trade. Leaving the Japanese a few weeks to ponder their reply, he returned in early 1854 with an even stronger fleet: three steamers and four sailing ships. Threatening to force his way into Edo (Tokyo) if his terms were not accepted, he succeeded in negotiating the Treaty of Kanagawa, signed March 31. This provided for the opening of two ports to American ships wishing to buy supplies, protection for shipwrecked Americans and the opening of an American consulate at Shimoda, near Tokyo. Within a few years similar treaties were concluded with the British and Russians. A general opening of trade with the West followed. The Tokugawa shogunate itself failed to survive the collapse of its policy of splendid isolation.
Perry and his heavily armed fleet apparently succeeded in opening Japan where Macdonald and his one-man effort had failed. Nevertheless there was a close connection between the two. When Perry and his team negotiated the Treaty one of their principal interlocutors was Macdonald’s friend Moriyama. Others of the interpreters he helped train were also involved. Apart from their knowledge of English, they undoubtedly also helped sensitize the Japanese side to the realities of dealing with Westerners. Perhaps it can be said that Canadian soft power helped pave the way for the successful exercise of American hard power.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 20, No. 4 (2004) — Spring/Summer 2004 // Printemps/Été 2004, pp. 42–43. Read the rest of this issue →
