Pathway to Japanese Literature

Tale of the Bonin Islands

In late December 1837, just outside Sakurada Gate near Ōtemae, a laughably pitiful act of violence occurred.
This was the incident involving Tanaka Kyūdayū—captain of the vanguard under Lord Nambu Shinano no Kami Toshinari of Morioka Domain (200,000 koku)—who, enraged by the insolence of clerks demanding seasonal debt payments at his palanquin, slashed at them with a gilded bamboo practice sword.

The Nanbu Domain of Ōshū had been repeatedly struck by famines since the Genroku era, with the great Tenmei famine of 1783 leaving no harvest nor seed reserves—over a quarter of its 300,000 subjects starved to death. From the time of its 30th-generation lord Bingo no Kami Nobuyoshi onward, this protracted poverty persisted for 150 years until Lord Toshinari’s reign, when destitution finally hit rock bottom: samurai now faced merchants’ lawsuits along the castle moat during their daily comings and goings.

Fishmongers, oil merchants, sundry-goods peddlers, tobacconists, greengrocers, and other assorted clerks—about thirty in total—had gathered beneath the willows along the moat’s edge. Deliberately targeting the chaotic bustle of palanquins jostling during the lords’ comings and goings, they swarmed around Lord Shinano no Kami’s palanquin, pestering loudly: “Our trade cannot endure this! We implore you—settle your debts!”

The debt collectors’ hounding was nothing new—in Edo’s upper residences, such disturbances always erupted at the end of each season.
During the time of the 33rd-generation lord Shuri-dayū Toshimochi, there had been cases like this: when he failed to repay a 2,000 ryō loan borrowed from Zojo-ji Temple in Shiba even after its due date, about eighty monks stormed into his upper residence and grabbed the sleeves of Shuri-dayū—who had just stepped out to attend court—to pressure him. Yet this ambush en route was the first of its kind.

The debt collector clerks, intending to shame them into settling payments through public humiliation, ran alongside both sides of the palanquin shouting: “A mere three ryō and two bu two shu! We humbly implore you—settle your debts!” they bellowed shamelessly. The foot soldiers and palanquin attendants, not to mention the mid-ranking samurai and even the pole-bearers at the very bottom, all seethed with resentment—yet found themselves powerless to act.

Tanaka Kyūdayū had studied swordsmanship under Hirayama Gyōzō and mastered the deepest secrets of the Jitsuyō-ryū school, establishing himself as the domain’s foremost swordsman. Once, a disciple who had slain a thief summoned Tanaka and proudly displayed the calloused palm that had delivered the fatal strike, boasting: “Behold—the fruits of my daily training!”

Tanaka’s expression darkened the moment he saw it. “If you focus on making a clean cut,” he snapped, “the enemy will exploit that opening and escape—then you’ll be held responsible for the blunder.”
“Since killing is the primary objective, grab their topknot with your left hand and strike a vital point—that way you’ll surely fell them with one stroke.”
“A mentality that prioritizes displaying elegant cuts shows no promise of mastery. As of today, you’re expelled from this school,” he had once rebuked.

Tanaka Kyūdayū stood beside the palanquin as captain of the foot soldiers’ vanguard when the relentless badgering finally overwhelmed him. Shouting “Three ryō! Three ryō!”, he seized the ringleader pressing against the palanquin by the nape, growled “You cur!”, and flung him into the mire.
Through all prior incidents—no matter what abuse they’d endured—no Nanbu samurai had ever drawn steel before. This history made the clerks bold.
Thirty surly figures,

“What’s this? What’s this?” they jeered, pressing closer to Kyūdayū with hunched aggression.

At the front stood a clerk from an oil merchant called Akagiya, clearly acting as ringleader,

“You dare throw down my comrade?! If lawsuits displease you—don’t slash or stab—do as you damn well please! Let’s see you try!” he blustered with forced bravado, seizing Kyūdayū’s hakama waist.

Kyūdayū had been walking beside the palanquin with a bitter smile, but whether from some profound irritation or other cause, his face abruptly darkened as he gripped his sword’s hilt.

“Akagiya, I am Tanaka Kyūdayū. Care to be splendidly cut down?”

The Akagiya clerk knew that Tanaka Kyūdayū of the Nanbu Domain was a skilled swordsman but dismissed the possibility that he would actually draw his blade.

“You think a millet-chomping Nanbu rat can cut someone down? This’ll be good—go on, try it!” he shot back.

Shichio Komazaburō stood in the mud, watching this outcome unfold. He knew that Kyūdayū’s sharp sword had been traded years prior for a single bale of rice in desperate straits, leaving only a gilded bamboo practice sword in its scabbard. The moment he saw Kyūdayū’s gauntlet twitch with readiness,

“Tanaka, don’t draw it—you’ll make us a laughingstock,” Shichio called from behind—but Kyūdayū
“Fine, I’ll cut you down!” he declared while drawing his bamboo practice sword and raising it high for a strike.
The Akagiya clerk cried out but couldn’t flee; if he ran away now, he thought desperately, he’d surely be cut down from behind.

“Please—just like this! Exactly like this!” he pleaded, pressing his hands together as he hunched over and shuffled around Kyūdayū. Instead of retreating backward, he stumbled forward when his feet caught in the mud. Kyūdayū had no choice but to strike if his opponent came within reach—yet with thirty clerks encircling them and watching intently, even this became impossible.

Though meticulously crafted to resemble steel, the bamboo practice sword remained fundamentally bamboo—it couldn’t cut anything nor was meant to. When the Akagiya clerk staggered into range of its tip, Tanaka subtly stepped back to keep three shaku between them. Like a mechanized doll frozen mid-action, he maintained his blade in a high guard position while breathing harshly.

The Akagiya clerk, however destitute he might be, never imagined that a swordsman of Kyūdayū’s caliber would be carrying a bamboo practice sword.
The clerk’s perilous sidesteps and Kyūdayū’s unyielding grip on his weapon—amidst the sweat-drenched frenzy of year’s end—found him rubbing his hands together pleading “Like this, like this,” his face contorted in desperation as he inched sideways to reposition himself.

Shichio Komazaburō could not abandon his comrade in peril and remained by the moat after leaving the procession, but knowing that half-hearted mediation would only embolden the clerks, he could not act recklessly.
The sword at his waist was likewise a finely crafted Nanbu bamboo practice blade—were he to valiantly draw it on principle, he would share Kyūdayū’s humiliation.
Komazaburō extended both hands in a gesture reminiscent of Umihiko calming the waves. “Calm yourselves, calm yourselves—the main gate approaches.
“Show some awareness of your surroundings!”
“I said calm yourselves—will you not relent?!” he declared in a tone befitting dismounting guards, attempting from afar to pacify Kyūdayū.

Lord Nambu Toshinari’s palanquin narrowly escaped the castle gate’s vulnerable point, rounded the corner of the moat where the great weir stood, and hurried toward Soto-Sakurada.
Following suit, Ikeda Tanba no Kami’s palanquin descended.
Matsudaira Iyo no Kami’s procession arrived.
The foot soldiers beside the palanquin flipped off their sword bags, grasped their sword hilts, and briskly passed through while glancing sidelong at the commotion.

Snow from that morning lingered on the black pine branches while three mallards, blown in by the winter wind, preened their feathers atop thin ice.
Kyūdayū by the moat and the Akagiya clerk stood frozen like figures in a tableau vivant for nearly a quarter-hour, but as exhaustion etched deeper into both their faces, the situation reached its breaking point—they had to end this decisively now, through killing or being killed, for maintaining this standoff even a moment longer seemed beyond endurance.

Kyūdayū’s cheeks, gaunt from poverty, twitched as he glared into the void and grinned wryly. “Poverty is an abomination,” he muttered to himself, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the clerk’s face—
“You wretch! Because of you, I’ve been branded with lifelong shame!” he bellowed, then thrust his bamboo sword’s blade straight at the clerk’s face.
The Akagiya clerk gasped sharply, toppled backward into the mud, and sat there clutching his head while wailing like a child, “He cut me! He cut me! Ah, how cruel!” But upon realizing the wound on his body wasn’t even as swollen as an earthworm’s welt, he abruptly stood up and—

“What? A bamboo splint?
“How many times have you cooked up schemes with this thing?”
“To use as evidence of a blade attack.”
“Hand that over here!” he demanded, as the clerk grabbed at the blade with both hands.

If this were taken, it would compound his shame—Kyūdayū panicked,

“What are you doing?!
“Let go of this, I said!” he shouted, shielding the sword with an entering body shift.
The clerk tried to grab it; Kyūdayū tried to resist.
As they grappled with each other, the bamboo practice sword slipped from both their hands.
The bamboo sword with its magnolia hilt was caught in a sudden whirlwind that had been sweeping through the main intersections, and almost before one could say “Look!”, it soared high into the empty sky.

Just then, Tsugaru Etchū no Kami’s palanquin came down. The foot soldiers beside the palanquin were startled and pointed at the sky, shouting in unison, “Look—an unsheathed blade flying away!”, as they gazed at this spectacle that defied belief. But then, when one among them burst out laughing uncontrollably, the dam broke—the vanguard attendants and the entire procession alike doubled over with laughter, clutching their stomachs.

Kyūdayū’s bamboo sword danced like a living creature beneath the low, snow-laden clouds, rising and falling along the whirlwind’s path, but after crossing the moat and reaching the vicinity of Fukiage Imperial Garden, it vanished abruptly.

Kyūdayū stood dazed by the curbstone with his arms folded, but then turned his large, tear-filled eyes toward Komazaburō and—

“I’ll cut my belly open, but a starved belly’s going to be hard to slice.”
“As my farewell to this life, I’ll eat and drink my fill first—then bid this world a calm goodbye.”
“I’ll invite Fukashi Jinzaemon—come join us from evening onward. There’s still things left to say.”

Kyūdayū’s row house in the upper residence compound stood on the site of what was once called the slaughterhouse—a former meeting hall. He had converted the plank-floored area into a dojo and lived there alone.

When Shichio Komazaburō and Fukashi Jinzaemon trudged through the newly fallen snow to Kyūdayū’s row house, they found him waiting with a seppuku site prepared on three tatami mats, a cheap sake bottle and bamboo-wrapped package drawn close before his knees.

When they took their seats, Fukashi nodded to Kyūdayū with a laugh. “Today’s the farewell, I hear,” he said.
“You’re a selfish bastard.”
“Have you no regard for our years of friendship? Planning to slip off to some easy escape all by yourself?”

“I’m going.”
“You lot can live on to sixty, seventy, writhing in turmoil in this idiotic world of suffering to your heart’s content.”
“I’ll be watching from the bright window of the underworld!”

Noticing this, Komazaburō asked,
"You say you'll cut your belly, but I don't see a single kitchen knife."
"Why do you intend to cut your belly?"

Kyūdayū nodded.

"Good of you to notice."
"Since I don't need to borrow a short sword to cut my belly, I've prepared a cutting tool here."

With that, he gestured with his chin at the cheap sake bottle before his knees.

Fukashi seemed moved with emotion as he gazed at the snow on the alley through the warrior’s window,

“So you intend to cut your belly open with a sake bottle shard? No matter how desperate you become, this truly hits rock bottom. Nanbu’s poverty has truly hit rock bottom with this,” he murmured.

Kyūdayū poured sake from the katakuchi into Gorohachi bowls and whatever vessels were at hand,

“There’s no need for such talk,” he replied gently.

“The samurai of Nanbu are too poor to own belly-cutting swords—but in exchange, their belly skin’s grown soft enough that even pottery shards can slice through. I’ll show you how it’s done.”
“I want this properly witnessed.”

Fukashi said.
“Go ahead and inspect—but cutting your belly with pottery will surely send blood spraying everywhere.”
“Not exactly a blessed task.”

Kyūdayū gulped down sake from the katakuchi,

“Consider this too as part of our karmic fate.”
“It was the second year of Shōtoku.”
“In Lord Toshimiki’s era—the thirty-second generation—from just past noon on Ōmisoka, as was customary, twenty-odd debt collectors came swarming in.”
“Even when New Year’s Day arrived, they wouldn’t budge. With the New Year’s ceremony impossible to hold, everyone was at their wit’s end.”
“My great-great-grandfather—also named Kyūdayū—and Fukashi’s ancestor Tsuneemon declared, ‘Then let us cut our bellies and settle this,’ summoned the debt collectors to the slaughterhouse meeting hall, skipped formalities entirely, and lined up in the lower seats to demonstrate seppuku.”
“That made the debt collectors retreat.”
“The forms may differ—whether it’s year-end or midyear—but our opponents remain merchant clerks… The Nanbu lineage seems fated to be hounded to death by shopkeepers. But how many times must we repeat this farce? It’s laughable beyond endurance.”

“Speaking of merchants—it’s said that even in Lord Toshimi’s era, such things occurred,” Komazaburō continued.

“Prior to his return to his domain, he ordered travel preparations from merchants, but since no money was paid, they wouldn’t deliver the goods.”
“Guests who came to bid farewell had crowded into the upper residence since morning, yet even past noon showed no signs of departure.”
“Stunned, they exchanged farewells and all left.”
“My great-grandfather rushed about everywhere and borrowed some two hundred ryō from the Hachinohe upper residence at Hanzo Gate—but that still wasn’t enough.”
“Just last month, they borrowed about fifty ryō from the dowry of the newly wedded wife—only then could they finally make their departure.”

Tanaka Kyūdayū was a vanguard captain and martial arts instructor with a stipend of 9 koku and a two-person allowance; Shichio Komazaburō served as a mid-ranking officer with 6 koku 5 to and a two-person allowance; Fukashi Jinzaemon worked as a resource officer’s clerk with 3 koku and a two-person allowance. Though treated as low-ranking retainers during their Edo assignment, all were hereditary servants spanning five generations since their great-great-grandfathers’ time, having served in the domain’s administrative office back in their homeland and been members of the senior retainer’s advisory council.
Having lived for generations through the famine-driven poverty of Nanbu Domain, their conversations inevitably descended into lamentations of destitution.

“This too was during Lord Toshimiki’s era,” Kyūdayū continued. “When the Kinugawa River at Akutsu in Yashū flooded during their Edo sankin journey, forcing them back to Utsunomiya for over four days. They’d exhausted their travel funds—even after the waters receded, they couldn’t cross.”

“They dispatched a messenger to Fukushima to borrow from a merchant called Shimada. With that paltry twenty-five ryō, they finally secured passage.”

Komazaburō said.

“It was during Lord Toshimi’s era.
After exacting funds under various pretexts—official levies, reserve funds, wealth-based taxes—they then compelled peasants across the domain to contribute twenty mon per person each month as a ‘token of gratitude.’”
Then they imposed a tsubo land tax at two mon per tsubo.
“Because of that, my great-grandfather was hated by the merchants in the castle town. During the Tenmei 3 famine, when his means of gathering rice were blocked and he found himself at an impasse, he hanged himself in the forest.”

Kyūdayū said with a nod.

“I had forgotten about your great-grandfather.”
“There are various ways to die, but for a man of your standing to end up hanging himself—it must have been truly dire circumstances indeed.”

The winter of Tenmei 2 was as warm as summer throughout.
In November there was a slight frost, but as winter set in, this too melted away, resulting in a climate akin to March or April.

When the New Year of Kinoe-U 3 arrived, the cold grew somewhat more intense, but soon even that abated, and despite being in the northern provinces, they lived through the end of March without experiencing true cold.

When April arrived and the wheat grains began to form, each day brought nothing but north winds, and sleet fell as if in the depths of winter.
From April through late August—a span of 150 days—there were merely twenty rainless days, and even those were either overcast or drizzly, with not a single day of clear skies. Consequently, the wheat failed to ripen overall. Though they delayed harvesting, almost no grains had formed.

The abnormal climate showed no sign of improving even as summer arrived, and past July, wisteria and kerria bloomed again, turning the mountains into a more vibrant floral display than spring. Cicadas kept chirping until late October, bamboo shoots began sprouting in November, and primroses and hollyhocks bloomed four or even five times.

By the end of July, the rice plants still showed no ears.
The sparse ears remained hidden among the leaves without flowering—amounting to barely one percent of normal—when soybeans, millet, foxtail millet, and buckwheat met with a great frost on August thirteenth, perishing entirely in a single night.

In Nanbu Domain, southeast of Morioka Castle Town where Nanbu rice grew thickest, the fields yielded but thirty percent and a quarter. To the west in the mountain reaches, not a single young shoot could be seen, while north of Hachinohe across Kita County, neither foxtail millet nor millet remained.
Against an official rice yield of 200,000 koku, losses from blighted and unripe crops totaled 196,000 koku.
After three or four years of disastrous harvests yielding less than half a crop—now culminating in the complete failure of wheat, autumn grains, and even hardier staples—this became a famine without precedent in history.

The price of rice per da was sixteen kan five hundred mon, while one shō of rice cost the same as one shō of polished millet—two hundred fifty mon.
Anything edible carried terrifying price tags, with even rice bran and wheat bran leaping to one hundred mon.

They moistened rice bran and wheat bran then steamed them.
Since these contained fragments of actual rice and wheat, pounding them while hot would yield mochi.
When even this became unobtainable, people ate thistles, great knotweed and bamboo grass seeds before ranging through fields and mountains to dig up bracken roots, wild yams and kudzu.
Mountains grew stripped bare in moments as tens of thousands swarmed their slopes until not a blade of ground cover remained.
They climbed peaks and descended valleys, scouring range after range.
Some reportedly traveled fifty ri to Ichino-seki hunting bracken roots.

By the time summer had yet to end, the people of Morioka Castle Town were driven to eating straw stems, bean pods, and pine bark ground into flour—until even those from once-prosperous households took on the forms of beggars and outcast beggars, wandering aimlessly through the streets. Their complexions were ashen, their limbs like withered trees. Their cheekbones jutted out, their gaunt mouths sharp beneath naked bodies wrapped in straw mats—they bore the semblance of Yamada scarecrows, making it impossible to believe these were living human forms.

From late September, outcast beggars began beating cattle and horses to death and selling them. Though abandoning livestock had always been forbidden, and slaughtering them stood as the foremost prohibition in Nanbu Domain, peasants—unable to sustain their animals and driven by starvation—took to abandoning them in fields and mountains. Outcasts and beggars would claim these discarded creatures, skin them, weigh the meat like otter pelts, and peddle it as venison.

When the stock of cattle and horses was depleted, they turned to dogs and cats, then finally even rats and weasels. The outcasts sold dogs at five hundred mon apiece and rats for one hundred mon each; purchasers would bludgeon the animals where they stood and gorge on the flesh without so much as a sprinkle of salt.

From Morioka northward, in Sannohe County and Kita County, they began eating human flesh around September.
At first, it was merely a matter of cutting meat from those who had collapsed and died, but since the flesh of those who had starved to death was desiccated and tasted foul, they began killing and eating those still alive.
They shamelessly evaluated the meat—deeming old people’s flesh unpalatable while praising women and children’s meat as tender and flavorful—then began breaking into homes rather than just fields and mountains to abduct their victims. In secluded mountain hollows and river bends, they built makeshift kitchens where groups of about ten would sit in circles, ravenously competing to devour their spoils.

In Horadaira Village of Kita County, there was a black-hearted father.
One day, he went to his neighbor’s house and said that since his son would soon die anyway, he didn’t want it to go to waste.
"I want to kill him while he still breathes, but when I think of him as my own son, I find I cannot bring myself to do it.
If you kill him for me, I’ll give you half the meat as thanks," he proposed with feigned sincerity.

The neighbor, wanting meat, agreed and killed the child with a single blow of his hatchet.
The father had been standing by watching, but then—"You! What have you done to my son?!"—he shouted, and swinging a mallet with all his might, struck the man’s head.
The father, having successfully obtained meat from two people at once through his scheme, was overjoyed. He spread word through the neighborhood that he had taken revenge on the neighbor for killing his son, then cooked and salted the meat, managing to survive for about a month.
The neighbors knew the truth, but all were too starved and exhausted—in this era when even parents and children, brothers and sisters killed and ate one another—for anyone to condemn it.

Komazaburō’s great-grandfather had served as the head of the accounting office.
In early November, he built relief shelters at Terakōji Tōzenji and Hōonji in Morioka to house the destitute, but because the domain had long enforced tax collection with severity, the wholesalers proved uncooperative and refused to release the rice intended for relief.
They gathered about twenty thousand destitute people, but even a strategy to let them sip thin gruel proved ineffective.

The refugees overflowed from the relief shelters in all directions, forming gangs of fifty or seventy people to storm into townhouses. They seized not only grains but even household belongings, then burned the houses and fled—committing acts of violence of this nature.
Counting on relief rice, countless refugees came out from the countryside with their children, but with the abolition of the relief shelters, having no way to feed them, they placed the children alive into sacks and straw bags and sent them down the river.

Among the townspeople of the castle town, those who took their own lives out of fear of starving to death grew ever more numerous.
Some died resolutely, others reluctantly—their deaths took various forms—but those who cherished their reputations entered the forest alone to hang themselves or clasped stones to their chests and threw themselves into the rapids to die.
Komazaburō’s great-grandfather, ashamed of the relief shelters’ failure, disguised himself as a common townsman and entered the forest, where he hanged himself in the same manner as the populace.

The three men solemnly exchanged drinks, each sinking into their own thoughts, until Kyūdayū wiped droplets from his sake cup and fixed the two men with a meaningful look.

“The way my great-grandfather died was no ordinary matter, but I doubt even that surpasses the misfortunes of our fathers—mine, Shichio’s, and Fukashi’s.”
“You all were likely told your fathers died by committing seppuku to atone for mishandling Nanbu’s trade affairs in Nagasaki—but that was merely the surface. The truth held darker circumstances.”
“I’d meant to keep silent about this shogunate secret—its exposure would bring calamity—but since my life ends today, I’ll confess everything before cutting my belly.”
“The full tale comes later—but first, read this now.”

With that, he took out a secret ledger from the government storehouse—bearing a vermilion seal reading “Keemana Denial”—from the floor cabinet’s document box and placed it before the two men.
Komazaburō took it in hand and read.
This is what was written there.

General description of the uninhabited island located three hundred ri south of Hachijō-jima.

In the second year of Bunroku (1593), Ogasawara Sadayori, son of Hikoshichirō, lord of Shinano’s Fukashi Castle, received orders from Ieyasu, departed by ship from Shimoda in Izu, sailed three hundred ri south of Hachijō-jima, and came upon uninhabited islands. He erected wooden markers at two locations inscribed: *“Sacred Ground of Amaterasu Ōmikami of Japan; Island Magistrate Minbu-no-Taifu Ogasawara Shōshō Sadayori Ason, Fourth Rank, under His Lordship Minamoto no Ieyasu.”*

Since then, he went to the same islands every year and reaped great profits.

In Enpō 2 [1674], Shimatani Ichiemon and his party inspected the uninhabited islands, enshrined Amaterasu Ōmikami and two other deities, and erected a wooden marker inscribed “Within Japan.”

In the spring of Kyōhō 12 [1727], Lord Ogasawara Ukon Shōgen, castellan of Buzen Kokura, reported to the shogunate that he wished to verify claims of an uninhabited island southeast of Japan where grains grew untended and trees and flowers abounded. Having received immediate permission, he had a large ship built in Ise Province, loaded it copiously with weapons, horse gear, provisions and more, and dispatched a force of some hundred fifty men southeastward under Ogasawara Shikibu—a samurai accomplished in both letters and martial arts. Yet no word ever came whether they successfully reached those shores or foundered at sea.

Around that time, fishermen of the same province encountered a storm and were blown to a remote island in the southern sea. On that island, not a single person dwelled; grains were plentiful, and as it was normally uninhabited, everything grew exceptionally well. Despite their large numbers staying there for an extended period, they faced no shortages of food.
Then, in the spring of the fifth year, carried by favorable winds back to their homeland, they brought snake shells gathered on the island—large enough to hold one *to* (approx. 18 liters).

However, the villagers of that village packed up household belongings and, not leaving a single house behind, vanished overnight to an unknown destination.

Among the fishermen, those born in the village had earlier returned and reported that "the island"—as they called it—was abundant in grains, fish, shellfish, birds, and game, with none of the hardships found in Japan; if the whole village were to relocate there, since no lords or stewards existed to oppress them, a world of ease must surely be that island. But given how the entire village had disappeared overnight, it appeared in the rumor mill that they had been lured by the fishermen’s tales and departed for that place.

Tanaka Ichidayū, Fukashi Jinjūrō, and Nanao Jinbei Petition

1. In accordance with the lord’s command, on the second day of the tenth month of Bunsei 9 [1826], we set sail from Ōminato in Kita County aboard Fujishiro Chōemon’s ship at Kamaishi in Hei County. On the morning of the fifteenth day, we reached Hachijō-jima; on the eighteenth day, we passed Aogashima and Tori-shima; and on the twenty-second day of the same month, we arrived at the uninhabited island reported to lie three hundred ri south of Hachijō-jima.

1. Description of the island: An island approximately 17–18 ri in circumference.

1. An island approximately 12–13 ri in circumference.

1. There were approximately fifteen islands with circumferences of 1 ri, 2 ri, and 3 ri each.

2. Furthermore, approximately 30 ri south of the aforementioned islands, there existed four islands with circumferences of 17–18 ri and 14–15 ri.

3. The height of the island measuring 17–18 ri in circumference slightly exceeded that of Izu Ōshima’s mountains. It possessed one reasonably suitable harbor facing southwest, spanning approximately three *chō* in width, capable of mooring twenty to thirty ships. Depths measured two fathoms at low tide and four fathoms at high tide.

4. On the aforementioned island measuring 17–18 ri in circumference, there existed one flat area suitable for rice fields spanning approximately 2 *chō* and 4 *tan*, along with four or five flat areas suitable for slash-and-burn fields each spanning approximately 1 *chō* and 4 *tan*. No signs of habitation were visible, nor any indication of prior settlement having been attempted; it appeared to be a naturally uninhabited island.

1. On the aforementioned island, streams flowed abundantly from the mountain valleys. The rivers measured two to three *ken* in width, were abundant with small stones, and were shallow.

2. When we surveyed by small boat, we observed that on islands measuring 14–15 *ri* and 12–13 *ri* in circumference, each had one or two harbors with flowing streams, and flatlands ranging from one *chō* square to four or five *tan* in size—one or two such areas per island.

3. Small islands measuring two to three *ri* in circumference—fourteen or fifteen in total—all lacked flat land, and no suitable locations for mooring ships were observed.

4. All of the aforementioned islands were uninhabited, with large trees growing thickly; we observed various fish but did not observe any beasts.

Types of Trees Present on the Aforementioned Islands

1. Sago palm
1. Windmill palm
1. Japanese oak

1. Misagi tree
1. Mulberry tree
1. Soapberry tree

1. Japanese bigleaf magnolia
1. Snakewood

1. All were large trees measuring two to three arm spans in girth, with abundant groves of windmill palms. Among these stood Isotobera trees with trunks thirteen fathoms tall and leaves resembling myōga ginger leaves, alongside varieties resembling coconut palms and betel palms.

1. On the aforementioned islands, birds included bush warblers, rock thrushes, mountain doves, a persimmon-colored bird resembling a night heron, and seabirds resembling gulls that catch fish.

1. Fish: Black sea bream, mullet, sharks, shrimp up to three feet long, octopuses measuring up to three feet. Turtles included green sea turtles as large as tatami mats and hawksbill turtles, though these could not be caught in significant quantities. Among rock seaweed beds lay abundant coral in waters eight to ten fathoms deep. From February through March, whales frequently passed through these waters.

Products collected on the aforementioned islands

1. Red coral: Referred to as Boke; branches fully translucent; noted as rare specimen; base diameter two sun; branch spread over three shaku; weight exceeding three kanme—one item.

1. White coral and peach coral: four pieces each weighing approximately one kanme; additionally, branch coral and coral fragments totaling roughly ten kanme.

1. Hawksbill turtle: 567 carapace pieces, 1,072 marginal plate pieces. Note: On the island, [they] were unsuitable for fire-joining or splice-joining; left as whole carapaces.

1. Coca leaves: A rare medicinal herb, over 10 kanme

1. Snakewood: Ten logs measuring 6 sun in diameter and 12 shaku in length

Account of the aforementioned products sold to Chinese ships at Amakusa Island

1. Coral: In total, 25,120 ryo

1. Hawksbill turtle: In total, 12,100 ryo

1. Coca: 3,700 ryo

1. Betel nut: 340 ryo

1. The ship was sold in Nagasaki; [we] hereby report returning by land. End of report.

Bunsei Kinoe-U 2nd Year, December [1819]

After waiting for the petition to be read through, Kyūdayū said to Fukashi,
“Shichio aside, you—being versed in all facets of produce—must have grasped the gist.”

Fukashi had been pondering something with a shadowed gaze. “I’ve mostly pieced it together,” he said, tossing out the words like discarded blades. “Since we took the lives of the shipowner and crew—ten souls in all—they’ll need to slit their bellies to balance the scales.”

“How did you figure that out?”

“It’s written they sold the ship in Nagasaki but say nothing about the shipowner and crew.”
“The ban on leaving Japan is ironclad.”
“Trading goods abroad is forbidden by law except for Nagasaki’s ten cargo magistrates.”
“Having gone that far, they couldn’t let shipowner or crew live.”

“I see—sharp eyes… They must’ve disposed of them during the long journey.”
“What’s done is done, but now the nobles want to dredge up that old tale again.”
“You’ve heard of the castaways that washed up at Suzaki Beach this February?”

Komazaburō said.

“You’re talking about the sailors from Ōminato who lived on an uninhabited island for about four years and were blown back to Edo without incident this spring by favorable winds, I presume? I’ve heard they’re confined in the detention house at the upper residence in Teppōzu.”

“One of them last night caught a thin cord on the lattice bars of the detention house and hanged himself. The remaining three will be deported back to their home province the day after tomorrow. I’ve been assigned to go as their escort.”

“In that case, I can’t just sit around cutting my belly,” Fukashi laughed.

Kyūdayū shook his head,

“If I don’t explain, you won’t understand. Being an escort is manageable enough, but Senior Retainer Keemana gave me three ryō to buy a short sword. In other words, he means for me to kill the castaways along the way.”

“Aren’t you jumping to conclusions?” said Komazaburō mockingly.

“Far from jumping to conclusions—there’s a reason it must be this way. One of the castaways is a shipowner from Ōminato—a prudent man who keeps his words measured. But the authorities have discerned that the island where those sailors washed ashore is the very same one where goods were collected years ago. Not only that, but there also seem to be signs that they had joined forces with the fishermen’s settlement our fathers left behind on the island.”

Fukashi groaned, "Hmm."
Komazaburō's face twitched with irritation as he shouted,

"You could return the money to Keemana and cut your belly—that would settle it. But if you refuse, someone else will go and kill them."
"What will you do about that?"

Kyūdayū looked back at Komazaburō’s face,

“What do you expect me to do? There’s nothing I can do.”
“I too am utterly astonished by the depth of our clan’s sins.”
“Because of that, even living has become uninteresting.”
“I want to stop fighting poverty here and now.”
“You must have things you want to say—but laugh and let me cut my belly.”

Fukashi nodded.

"I won't say a thing."
"It depends on each person's convictions."
"You should do as you see fit."

"How kind."
"It seems both conversation and sake have run their course."
"Well then, I suppose it's time to begin."

Kyūdayū took the cheap sake bottle and smashed it against the floor. After picking out a shard of adequate size, he took it in his hand, went to the lantern's side, and gazed at it with intense scrutiny.

After Tanaka Kyūdayū committed suicide without reason, his duties fell to Shichio Komazaburō and Fukashi.
Keemana Densuke, the Edo-based senior retainer, summoned the two men to the official chamber and said, “I trust there will be no negligence—handle it appropriately.”

They departed Edo on April 3, Tenpō 9.
To Ōminato at the edge of the mainland was a fifteen-day journey if one hurried along the way.
Staying over in Sugito, Koganei, and Kitsuregawa, they arrived in Shichinohe of Kitagun District on the afternoon of April 16.

North of Shichinohe, the ground stretched boundlessly with mingled sand dunes, gloomy houses with stone-weighted roofs scattered sparsely—three every two ri, two every three ri—and beyond them lay a rough, rust-colored sea.
It was indeed a desolate landscape.

The aftermath of the Great Famine that lasted from 1833 to 1836 still remained uncleared, with bleached skulls scattered everywhere. The residents of this area seemed to have almost all perished, for when they left an inn, they could see no human figures from evening until reaching the next inn. Beyond the sand dunes, a village of about thirty houses could be seen. When they thought to take a short rest and went to check, there was not a single inhabited house. Peering under the thatched roof at the village’s edge, they saw walls collapsed and paper screens torn. On the earthen floor of the sitting room—overgrown with weeds—lay a pair of skeletons, limbs fully intact, embracing as if clinging to each other. Whether parent and child or husband and wife, it was a sight of utmost horror.

On the afternoon of the 17th, they arrived at a town called Noheji.
There, they left the Ōshū Highway and followed along the shore of the peninsula jutting out into the Tsugaru Sea.
Ōminato was a two-day journey from there.

As they left the town of Noheji, the coldly gleaming sea of Mutsuura came into view on their left.
A little ahead of them walked Seibei and Shōkichi with backs hunched like old men, buffeted by the sea wind, their steps nearly dancing.

Seibei was a shipowner from Ōminato, forty-five years old; Shōkichi was an indentured farmer from Tanabu, fifty years old.
Both were taciturn men of plain appearance; though unspoken, even their dancing steps betrayed an irrepressible joy at soon setting foot on their native soil.

Fukashi and Komazaburō harbored a spiteful scheme deep within their hearts.
Were they so inclined, these two could lose their lives in an instant; yet seeing them walk onward eagerly, oblivious to all, they found it unbearably pitiful.

Crushed by an unspeakable emotion, Komazaburō unconsciously called out to the two men walking ahead.

“Mr. Seibei, Mr. Shōkichi.”

The two men halted their steps and turned back toward them.

“Yes,” they answered as they ran over, then knelt on the road with solemn expressions.

“Do you require something?”

It was an age-old custom for escorting officials to accompany castaways being returned to their home province, but these sincere old men seemed convinced they were imposing unnecessary expenses and troubles upon the authorities, devising various ways to minimize inconveniences however slightly.
At each inn they stayed at, they ate as little as possible, slept curled up small, and if called, would immediately come running at the first word to offer diligent greetings.

“It’s a journey whose end is in sight. There’s no need to rush so. Why don’t we take a rest where we can see the sea?”

Seibei and Shōkichi nodded courteously, selected a patch of flattened withered grass, and arranged seating for Komazaburō.
Fukashi caught up and settled beside Komazaburō.
Appearing to have something to say, he blew tobacco smoke while gazing seaward before turning to the pair. “By evening the day after tomorrow, you’ll tread your native soil. Must be downright delightful,” he remarked.

Seibei, his face breaking into an uncharacteristically broad smile, nodded as if delighted.

“Shōkichi, what about you?”

He gave no reply.

“What’s wrong? You look wilted—aren’t you happy?”

Shōkichi had been kneeling with his hands on his knees when suddenly, in a voice like a screech-owl’s cry,

“Hell no!” he screamed. “There ain’t no place in this world more worthless’n here.”
“I don’t reckon a dump like this as my homeland.”
He added something in thick fisherfolk dialect about feeling neither glad nor amused.

Seibei panicked. “Mr. Shōkichi! You mustn’t talk such hateful talk before the officials!”
“That cuts right through a man.”
“Quit it now,” he pleaded, but Shōkichi just smirked...

“What’s this, Seibei?” he retorted in a mocking tone.

Komazaburō had never imagined that Shōkichi—usually quiet as a cat—would adopt such a sullen demeanor. Stunned, he stared at Shōkichi’s face, thinking that this man, after enduring a life harsher than that of indentured farmers called *nago*, had likely lost the ability to speak properly, so that whenever he did chance to speak, he inevitably went too far.

Originally, illiteracy was widespread among the people of the Nanbu domain, so much so that even their crucial calendar for tracking the seasons—known as the Nanbu "blind calendar"—had to rely on illustrated guides.
They couldn’t even properly name their children—a girl born in January was Shoga, one born in February was Niga, and one born in March was Saga—such was their plight.

The *nago* were impoverished tenant farmers who borrowed houses, fields, and tools from stewards or landlords, becoming their property and toiling like slaves until death. They never ate rice in their lifetimes—instead, during mealtimes, they would go near wells or rivers to swallow what was called “*nago*’s millet gruel,” crumbling millet mixed with cold water—a story Komazaburō had once heard.

Komazaburō accepted this explanation, but Fukashi remained unsettled,

“Hey, Shōkichi. Maybe because we’re getting closer to our homeland—a strong wind has suddenly picked up.”
“Hey now! Behave yourself properly!”
“Don’t you realize Seibei’s been worrying himself sick over this?” he snapped dismissively.

Shōkichi had been sitting with his hands on his knees and head bowed, but then he raised his face and bared his faintly clouded white eyes,

“Go on, kill me!” he shouted, flipping onto his back and flailing his legs.

Seibei crawled out in front of the two men and planted his hands on the withered grass,

“There is a reason for this,”

he proceeded to tell this story.

The place where you two gentlemen were now sitting was a mass grave from the Tenmei Great Famine, and Shōkichi’s parents’ bones were likely buried there as well. Moreover, the two sets of skeletons you had seen in Noheji Town were the remains of Shōkichi’s brother and sister-in-law—people he had longed to meet even in his dreams. Thus, upon his chance return to his homeland and witnessing the aftermath of the Tenmei and Tenpō famines, he had felt life’s impermanence and suddenly become incoherent. There was no reason for stepping onto his homeland’s soil to bring anything but joy—these were merely words spoken in madness—and so, while Seibei made polite greetings to ensure no offense was taken, Shōkichi gazed at the drifting clouds,

“Liar, Seibei!” he interjected.

Fukashi smiled at Seibei,

“To me, it only looks like stubbornness—but if it’s madness, then madness will do. That aside—Minatoya Seibei is a name known even in Edo. Yet here you are, a grand master, addressing Shōkichi, a *nago* peasant, as ‘Mr. Shōkichi,’ while that same *nago* peasant addresses you, the grand master, as just ‘Seibei’ without any honorific. I find this unacceptable.”

When he said this, Seibei clutched his chest as if struck and abruptly lowered his face.

“Is there some reason for this?”

“This is the island’s custom,” Seibei answered in a small voice.

“This ‘island’ you mention—is it truly the uninhabited one where you all settled? At every inn we stayed at along the way, there was never time to hear your tale. But now seems a good time—tell us something of that island.”

Having said that, he glanced back slightly toward Komazaburō,

“Komazaburō here feels the same—there’s an island I’ve long wanted to visit.
“The uninhabited island you were on may not be precisely the one we’ve imagined, but they’re likely similar enough. At least give us a rough sketch of how things stand on such an uninhabited island.”

“That’s easily done,” said Seibei, and proceeded to describe the island in detail.

It was a group of about thirteen large and small islands located three hundred ri east-southeast of Hachijō-jima; those British living on Peel Island reportedly called them the Bonin Islands.

When compiling Seibei’s account: towering Angelica trees, red ironwoods, and octopus trees—all colossal species—dominated the island’s highlands; its valleys swarmed with tree ferns and hego thickets; while along the coast stretched coconut palms and betel palms spreading their fan-like green leaves.

In the nearby waters dwelled tuna, Spanish mackerel, and whales, while green sea turtles and hawksbill turtles came ashore to the sandy beaches to lay their eggs.
The British and Spaniards on Peel Island took native women as wives, raised cattle, goats, and chickens, cultivated mountain yams, harvested coral, drank strong rum distilled from sugarcane, and—abundant in natural resources—seemed to pass their days in a leisurely fashion like people of antiquity.

Ever since reading his father’s petition, for Komazaburō, the uninhabited island said to lie south of Hachijō-jima had become an unforgettable presence—or perhaps because of this, as he listened to Seibei’s account, the island’s features began vividly materializing behind his eyelids.
On the white sand of the coast, coconut trees spread their crowns of leaves, tilting diagonally toward the sea.
In the thicket of ferns, a sheep bleated.
When he closed his eyes, he could almost see figures stripping hawksbill turtle shells and others diving into the waves to gather coral.

What Komazaburō wanted to know was about the fishermen his father and others had supposedly left on the island and what kind of life Seibei and Shōkichi had lived there—but he spoke only of the British people and never touched upon their own affairs. There were moments where he seemed to be digressing from the topic. So Komazaburō decided to ask.

“Seibei, so does that mean you’ve been living with those British people on the island all this time?”

Seibei suddenly flustered and stammered, “The time we spent with those foreigners was just a brief period. Soon after, we moved to another island by ourselves.”

The island that Seibei and his group moved to was located north of Peel Island—about ten ri in circumference—with fertile soil and a layer of black earth six shaku deep, where nothing sown would ever fail to grow.
They cleared forests and created rotated fields, but even there, the soil proved so fertile that if you carelessly discarded fruit seeds, they would sprout into trees overnight, making it impossible to thoughtlessly toss seeds away—a genuine nuisance, he explained.

Fukashi laughed,

"That's quite an island indeed.
Compared to this withered wasteland around us, it sounds like something from a dream.
Yet even while living in such a paradise, you still grew homesick for Japan?"

Seibei nodded courteously and pointed due north. “Though presently veiled by mist, that is Mount Osore—the mountain marking Kita District’s emblem.”
“Merely to behold it once.”

Shōkichi raised his voice again.

“Liar, Seibei!”

Fukashi furrowed his brows between his eyes,

“Hey! Don’t interrupt.”
“Go wait by that marsh over there.”
“I’ll call you when we’re finished.”

Shōkichi abruptly fell silent and trudged toward the marsh where patchy snow lingered. Turning his back to them, he settled among frost-bitten reeds.

Having thought of something, Komazaburō said.

“Mr. Seibei, there’s something you’re hiding from us.”
“I heard one of your companions fastened a thin cord to an execution ground’s lattice and hanged himself.”
“You finally returned to this homeland you supposedly longed for—why would anyone hang themselves then?”
“I’m not just citing Shōkichi’s words—this whole ‘yearning for home’ story reeks of lies.”

“Why would you say such things?”

“I’m not blaming you.”
“I want to hear the truth.”
“As I consider that matter—your claim that you boarded an Edo-bound ship and encountered a storm off Chōshi—that too doesn’t seem to be true.”
“Mr. Seibei, wasn’t it that you didn’t actually get shipwrecked, but had prepared the ship from the very start with the intention of going to the uninhabited island?”

Seibei answered that such a thing was impossible and utterly unthinkable.

Fukashi continued.

“What Shichio just said—there are indeed unconvincing points.”
“You claimed you sowed various grain seeds and reaped bountiful harvests—but were those seeds part of the shipment meant for Edo?”
“That must be it.”

Seibei straightened his posture and stared back at Fukashi with sunken eyes.

Fukashi clapped his hands.

“Seeing you like this, I must say you’ve got a noble face.”
“Truly bearing worthy of a shipowner.”

“You jest; I am unworthy.”

“I’ve also heard rumors that Ōminato’s Minatoya was crushed under Nanbu Domain’s tax payments… Mr. Seibei, I suppose your departure overseas was a premeditated decision.”

Komazaburō said.

“If you’d just open up honestly, I’ve got things I want to share too… I need to hear the truth.”
“This may seem a strange topic to bring up at this wind-swept shore, but this isn’t something we could discuss at an inn anyway.”
“You’ve probably already guessed most of it—but truth be told, I’d like to settle this before we enter Ōminato town.”

Seibei puffed out his chest and answered, “I will certainly tell you.”

Fukashi nodded,

“So it was true after all.”
“No—it’s only natural it would be.”
“Fujishiro Nagauemon of Ōminato—your uncle or nephew by relation—took ship and crew to foreign lands under governance so wretched he never sent back a single sailor. No one could stomach such misrule.”

“No—that wasn’t the cause.”
“The Tenpō 4 famine ravaged Kita District worst of all, leaving it as you see here—so broken that farmers and fishermen alike fled beyond our borders. They say eight thousand homes stood empty in Kita District alone.”
“Having long sailed those waters and known of the Bonin Islands, I resolved to take indentured farmers and day-laborer fishermen there to settle that wild place before Matsumae’s forces could seize our ships.”

“That’s exactly why I want to hear about that part,” Komazaburō said.

“Despite going to all that trouble to start such an important undertaking, why did you come back? If castaways return to their homeland, do you know what treatment they’ll receive?”

Seibei had a troubled look on his face, but
“At everyone’s urging to bring as many peasants as possible from untaxed lands to the island, I—along with Shōkichi and Matatarō, day laborers—volunteered as envoys.”
“The American whaling ship was supposed to drop us near Ōshū Miyako, but unfavorable winds left us adrift off Suzaki until we were inspected by maritime patrol officers.”
“We kept silent about the island, but Matatarō let details slip. ‘So you were enjoying leisurely games on that island?’ they berated us. ‘What frivolous fools!’”

Seibei turned his back to the sea and struck a light for his tobacco.

“Ōminato and Tanabu in Kita District have produced many castaways since ancient times. But even when returned to their homeland, they must not set a single step outside their villages or board any vessel called a ship—not even fishing boats.”
“Bound by harsh edicts, they end up living trivial lives—but executing them during transport? In all my years, I’d never heard of such a thing.”

Komazaburō asked while laughing.

“Mr. Seibei, who did you hear that from?”

“Mr. Tanaka came to the detention house and spoke about Fujishiro’s ship. He said, ‘I refuse to take on any more duties myself, but since attendants will be assigned regardless, you should expect to be killed somewhere eventually.’”
“Matatarō became despondent and hanged himself over it.”

Seibei tapped his kiseru pipe, tucked it into his robe, and with an inscrutable gaze compared Fukashi’s and Komazaburō’s faces.

“Mr. Tanaka is skilled and merciless, so his methods are predictable—but with all due disrespect, neither of you appears particularly capable, and with your carefree natures, you might strike while I’m asleep or ambush me without warning. Not knowing when it’ll come means I can’t rest even in bed.”
“As for Shōkichi, he’s grown utterly impatient—reasoning that if he’s to be executed anyway, he’d rather get it over with quickly—so whenever they call for him, he eagerly hurries to their side.”

After darting a glance toward Shōkichi by the waterside,
"Please observe—Shōkichi has resigned himself to the execution block and waits obediently in that manner."

“I never intended to kill from the start,” Fukashi said. “What about you?” he asked Komazaburō. After a moment’s thought, Komazaburō replied, “It seems I had no intention of killing either.”

Fukashi turned toward Seibei,

“Mr. Seibei, that’s how matters stand—as you’ve heard.”
“By normal procedures, our duty would end once we handed you over to Noheji’s county magistrate. But we’ve accompanied you this far because there’s a small request we wish to make.”
“Now then—Mr. Seibei—would you not grant us a hearing?”

Komazaburō took over.

"I too have a request."
"I want you to take us two to these Bonin Islands or whatever they're called."
"After hearing about it from Tanaka, I thought, 'What a fulfilled world might exist,' but your account has made this obsession impossible to sever."
"What I meant by wanting to settle matters before reaching Ōminato was precisely this."
"If you insist it's impossible regardless, we'll have to detour through Tsugaru from here and flee to Dewa or thereabouts, but..."

Fukashi rubbed his hands together while,

“Let me tell you one poverty story.”
“Seven years ago, they took a quarter of our stipends as a loan… Things were still manageable then. But after the seven-year famine began, they reduced us to meager rations.”
“One fuchi stipend meant five gō of rice, but given the times, they cut it to two gō. High and low alike received two gō of white rice per person daily—plus twenty mon each for miso and firewood.”
“Whether you held a thousand-koku stipend or a hundred-koku—two gō for all… Every morning, we’d go to the magistrate’s office.”
“They’d measure it out precisely—‘Here’s your share,’ they’d say—we’d take it and go home.”
“If we were lucky enough to get anything at all, three days might pass without another distribution.”
“So they tell us to manage on our own… We receive rice, yet none of us actually eats rice.”
“Take it to the grain dealer—trade it for millet or barnyard grass.”
“Otherwise we couldn’t stretch it through.”
“The only thing on our minds is wanting to eat… That’s the edge we live on.”
“Force us to choke down millet and bran rice—then have us kill people with such brutality.”
“I’m no Tanaka, but even I want to slice my belly open and die… What do you say, Mr. Seibei? Won’t you grant our wish?”
“I’ve some knowledge of materia medica and natural products—I’ll assist you in those matters.”
“I don’t mean to trouble you.”

Seibei waved his hand,

“Don’t speak of such things. If you insist on going, I could take you along, but that island is no paradise of ease like you two imagine. Let me explain. This is how it was.”

We reached the island on the twelfth day of the fourth month in Tenpō 5 with sixty starving souls—forty-two indentured servants and day laborers, plus eighteen crew including myself… Abandoning that smaller island, we pushed ever southward until making landfall at an island perhaps the size of Shōdoshima. Passing through a moss-cloaked cavern-like passage, we found ourselves in a rock-bound harbor where beyond lay a sandy beach and stony path winding up to mountain ridges.

Banana fruits, pineapple fruits, and unfamiliar produce whose names they did not know filled the valleys and mountain ridges; unaware these were foreigners’ cultivated fields, they marveled at what an abundantly fruitful island it was.

When they ventured deeper into the island, they found a picture-perfect beautiful plain through whose center flowed a small stream, its shallow rapids teeming with multicolored crabs—blue, red, purple—darting about.

Looking around, he saw both the indentured farmers and boatmen had pushed through the fruit trees and were scrambling to pluck the fruits.

Coming from a land of scant harvests, one might say there was nothing to be done—but having suddenly reached an island overflowing with natural bounty after subsisting on millet and barnyard grass, that very transition became the root of their downfall.

I returned to the ship early, but even when night fell and the next day came, not a single soul returned. When I went to investigate, they had all vanished into the valley of fruit trees—when hunger struck, they would simply lie sprawled out, reach blindly for whatever grew nearby, and stuff it into their mouths, or so I was told...

Is this not a matter for profound reflection? Through sheer glut of nature's bounty, those very indentured laborers who had spent years driving hoes into gravel-filled sands—their brows dripping sweat—transformed overnight into hopeless layabouts. Push them or jab them, they'd only stare up with vacant eyes and stubbornly refuse to lift a finger.

For about three days they watched in silence, but however foreign they might be, they couldn't tolerate having their painstakingly tended fields endlessly plundered. Mazaro—an Italian acting as their representative—emerged from the island's far side to confront us: "This land belongs to us. Leave at once." He insisted there were countless islands to the north where we ought to go instead.

The place we relocated to was that very island I mentioned earlier. Though scarce in wild fruits, it contained splendid farmland that would bear crops if sown.

They promptly began planting with poles and sowing seeds, but the young indentured workers and boatmen’s shorehands, having come all the way to an uninhabited island, found it disagreeable to be ordered about from above. Land stewards and island lords were unneeded. Masters and boatmen were hindrances. They demanded that all work on this island be done completely equally.

Since their argument seemed reasonable enough at first, we acquiesced, but that didn’t last long either. One of the boatmen had observed what the foreigners on Pele Island were doing and stirred up the others. The foreigners’ conduct hardly set a commendable example. They brought Pelaho native women—each man taking about three as household members—forcing them to work while they themselves lived leisurely off of their labor. That was precisely what they meant to implement here.

“The commanders, boatmen, helmsmen, and navigators there... those types had long been acting like masters and living leisurely,”
“Starting today, we will be the masters.”
“You lot—fall back to your place as indentured farmers or laborers and sweat your guts out working.”
“In exchange, we’ll let you have an annual rotation—that was their line.”
“Of course, we didn’t stay silent, but with five on our side against over fifty on theirs, it wouldn’t become a war, so we surrendered.”

Those who had been indentured servants turned masters ceaselessly competed over scraps of flatland, trying to claim them for themselves.
They tried not to do so.
They built fences.
They came to destroy them.
The more ambitious ones pushed across to the small island via temma boats and claimed it as their own domain.
As this went on, those remaining on the original island dwindled until few were left, and they scattered to live divided among smaller islands.

If matters had ended there, it would have been tolerable—but soon came worse consequences.
Around last autumn, a Pelaho native woman fled from Pele Island and taught them rum production.
This became the catalyst for their corruption—wherever you went across the islands now, people lay stupefied by drink or ran wild in drunken rages.
It reached the point where not a single soul could be seen laboring.

"They speak grandly of luring even one person from an untaxed land," he said, "but their true design is to exploit those newcomers while they themselves guzzle rum in idleness... No place humans inhabit can ever know peace."
"Before long, the Bonin Islands too will resemble hell itself... Knowing this, do you still mean to go?"

Fukashi and Komazaburō exchanged glances and gave a wry smile,

“In that case, our domain remains preferable after all,” they replied.

In Meiji 8 [1875], when Tanabe Taichi’s expedition went to investigate the Bonin Islands, it was said that traces of dwellings from that time still remained on Chichijima’s western shore—but even those were washed away by the fifty-foot tsunami from Krakatoa Island’s great eruption in Meiji 16 [1883], which struck India’s coast, leaving only white waves behind.