The Ship That Came to Japan With a Peaceful Mission — And Was Fired Upon

Japan, 1837

Imagine sailing towards Japan in the 1830s with a rather unusual cargo.

Not gold.

Not weapons.

Not soldiers.

Japanese sailors who simply wanted to go home.

In 1837, an American merchant ship called the Morrison sailed towards Japan carrying Japanese castaways who had spent years away from their homeland.

The people aboard were not invaders. The purpose of the voyage included attempting to return Japanese castaways to Japan and opening communication with the country.

But there was a problem.

Japan was living under the strict isolation policies of the Tokugawa shogunate.

And foreign ships were not simply free to approach Japanese shores.

The Japanese Sailors Who Had Been Lost at Sea

During this period, Japanese sailors could find themselves thousands of miles from home after storms carried their vessels far out into the Pacific.

Some survived incredible journeys before eventually reaching foreign shores.

In the case surrounding the Morrison, Japanese castaways had ended up in places including the Philippines and Macau. A group of them were eventually taken aboard the Morrison as part of an attempt to return them to Japan.

To the Americans involved, this presented an opportunity.

They could potentially return the sailors to their homeland while establishing peaceful contact with Japan.

But the Japanese authorities did not see the situation in quite the same way.

The Morrison Approaches Japan

In 1837, the Morrison sailed towards Japan.

It first approached the area around Uraga, at the entrance to Edo Bay.

But rather than receiving a warm welcome, the ship came under fire.

Japanese coastal forces fired upon the vessel, forcing it to retreat.

The Morrison then travelled towards Kagoshima, hoping to establish contact there.

Instead, it was fired upon again.

The ship eventually left Japanese waters.

No peaceful trading relationship had been established.

And the Japanese sailors who had hoped to return home were still away from their homeland.

Why Did Japan Fire?

From the perspective of the people aboard the Morrison, the attacks were shocking.

They believed they were approaching Japan partly to return Japanese castaways.

But from the perspective of the Tokugawa authorities, the situation was very different.

Japan had strict policies governing foreign ships and contact with foreigners.

The authorities were deeply concerned about foreign influence and the possibility of foreign powers threatening Japan.

The Morrison therefore wasn't simply viewed as a friendly ship arriving with a humanitarian mission.

It was a foreign vessel approaching Japanese territory at a time when Japan's authorities were determined to keep such ships away.

The clash was therefore not simply a misunderstanding.

It was the result of two completely different understandings of what the ship's arrival meant.

The Strange Part?

The Japanese government later discovered something important.

The ship that had been fired upon was the Morrison, and it had been attempting to return Japanese castaways.

In 1838, the shogunate learned this through information supplied by the Dutch trading post at Nagasaki.

But even after learning why the Morrison had come, the government decided to continue its policy of driving away foreign ships.

That decision became controversial.

One Japanese scholar and painter, Watanabe Kazan, was among those who criticised the government's approach after learning more about the outside world.

He began writing a work discussing international affairs and questioning Japan's isolation policy.

His work was never completed.

It later became evidence used against him during the Bansha no Goku affair, a crackdown on intellectuals who were critical of the shogunate's foreign policy.

Why This Story Matters

The Morrison Incident might sound like a strange little episode in Japanese history.

But it tells us something much bigger.

Japan's isolation was not simply a case of the country having no contact with the outside world.

Japan had trade, foreign information and diplomatic relationships — most notably through the Dutch at Nagasaki.

But contact was tightly controlled.

And the events surrounding the Morrison demonstrated the growing tension between Japan's established policy and a world that was becoming increasingly interconnected.

Only a little more than a decade later, in 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry arrived with American warships, helping trigger a much more dramatic confrontation between Japan and the Western powers.

The Morrison had arrived quietly.

Perry would arrive with considerably more force behind him.

A Story Hidden in the Details

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the Morrison story is that it wasn't really about an American ship trying to conquer Japan.

It was partly about something much simpler:

people trying to go home.

Japanese sailors had been carried away by the sea, found themselves living in foreign lands, and eventually ended up aboard a ship attempting to take them back.

But the world they were returning to was one where the arrival of a foreign ship could be considered a threat.

Their journey home became caught up in one of the most important questions facing nineteenth-century Japan:

How long could Japan remain isolated from a rapidly changing world?

The answer would come soon enough.

And when it did, Japan would enter one of the most dramatic periods of transformation in its history.

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The Historical Record

The Morrison Incident is documented in Japanese historical sources and collections, including materials held by the National Diet Library of Japan. Contemporary and later records preserve information about the ship, the Japanese castaways and the shogunate's response.

This is one of the stories we love at Chronicle Society: a real event, supported by historical records, that sounds almost unbelievable until you discover that it actually happened.

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