Tuesday, 10 January 2017

We Have All Heard Of Aliens,

from other worlds,


 but this is the first that I have heard of them in 19th century Japan,

 the story goes like this, there were several reports of a “hollow ship” allegedly washed ashore the coast of a village in Hitachi province (today’s Ibaraki Prefecture), 

 an attractive young woman stepped off the sturdy boat with glass windows, but was unable to communicate in Japanese and eventually the locals returned her and the ship back to the sea,

 a number of 19th century Kawaraban-newspapers recount very similar versions of the legend, the three most well-known are Toen shōsetsu (Tales from the Rabbit Garden, 1825), Hyōryū kishū (Counts of Drifters, about 1835) and Ume-no-chiri (Dust of the Plum, 1844),

so did it really happen, or was it a slow day in Edo-Japan's newspapers?


No comments: