ペリー、ロンドン、ブッシュ

本を読んでいて、ちょくちょく小笠原諸島を目にする機会があったので、自分メモ代わりに書かせてもらいます。英語だとBonin islandsとなるようです。

（アメリカンヘリテージ）
Bonin Islands
An archipelago of volcanic islands in the western Pacific Ocean south of Japan. The islands formed a major Japanese military stronghold in World War II.

（コリンズ）
Bonin Islands
a group of 27 volcanic islands in the W Pacific: occupied by the US after World War II; returned to Japan in 1968. Largest island: Chichijima. Area: 103 sq km (40 sq miles) Japanese name: Ogasawara Gunto

Rhythms, Rites and Rituals: My Life in Japan in Two-step and Waltz-time (2014/12/01) Dorothy Britton 商品詳細を見る

ブリットンさんの自伝のはじめのほうに日本郵船に初めての外国人として入社したエピソードがあり、小笠原諸島に何度も赴いたことを書いていました。ペリー提督が小笠原諸島に寄ったことに触れています。なんか、イギリスの領有を認めようとしなかったら、蒸気船航路の中継地としての小笠原諸島の役割を考えていたりと、事業計画的な要素の強い報告です。

After the end of the war, Frank made seven voyages to the Ogasawara Islands, known then as the Bonin (uninhabited) Islands. In a leter to his uncle in Sydenham, Frank wrote that the Bonin Islanders – descendants of early Western whalers:

… will be very sorry when we are taken out of the ship as we are the only fresh Western faces they see, and we always do our best to cheer them up. One trip we brought down a gramophone and another time a magic lantern. They are a very good-hearted lot of people. One old man seventy years of age remembers Commodore Perry calling at the islands some fifty years ago.

ペリー提督の探検記を確認してみるとBonin IslandsをChapter Xで取り上げていました。沖縄の次に訪問していたんですね。

Narrative of the expedition of an American squadron to the China Seas and Japan

The green turtles which abound in the island were probably mistaken for crabs, which may account for the gigantic size attributed by Kfempfer to these animals. Other accounts give a much earlier date for the discovery by the Japanese than that' of 1675, stated by the authority just quoted. At any rate, the English have not a particle of claim to priority of discovery. In illustration of the discovery of the Bonins by the accidental visit of a Japanese junk, it may be stilted that the Commodore was informed by Mr. Savory, an American resident, that a Japanese vessel of about forty tons burden came into Port Lloyd thirteen years before, having been driven by stress of weather from the coast of Japan. After remaining during the winter she sailed on her return home in the spring, and, as she had brought with her nothing but a small supply of dried fish, was provided gratuitously by the settlers with provisions. On another occasion, some eight years subsequently, a French ship, cruizing off Stapleton island, discovered a fire ashore, and on sending a boat to the spot found the wreck of a Japanese junk and five of its crew, the only survivors, in a most helpless plight. They were then taken on board and carried to Port Lloyd^ and thence subsequently removed by the humane Frenchmen with the intention of lauding them on one of the Japanese islands. In confirmation of this statement we have the fact that a party of officers from the Susquehanna, on a visit to Stapleton Island, accidentally saw the wreck of this same vessel. The remains of the junk were found in a little bay where they landed, the wreck being still partially kept together by large nails of copper and portions of sheets of this metal. From these materials and other indications, it was inferred that it was a Japanese junk, and as the edges of the planks were but little rubbed or decayed, it was concluded that the wreck could not be very old.

小笠原諸島を紹介する際に、アメリカの視点だとペリー提督とジャックロンドンの訪問はキャッチとして定番のようで、下記の２つの記事ではどちらも紹介しています。後は、下記動画にあるようにパパブッシュの第２次大戦時のレスキューのエピソードがあるようです。

Japan's Island of Diversity
Chichi Jima is home to scores of 'Westerners,' who count Americans among their forebears. But the wider culture is slowly subsuming them.
December 28, 2002|Mark Magnier | Times Staff Writer

Most of the tourists see few traces of the island's rich history. They view Chichi Jima, the main island in the Ogasawara chain, as little more than a nice place for diving, kayaking and forgetting the stress of Tokyo for a few days.

Still, there are hints of the island's special character. Departing ferries still bring out crowds sending off friends and relatives, complete with a taiko drum salute, in a reminder that mainland Japan is still a faraway place.

Over the years, visitors to the Ogasawara Islands, known in the West as the Bonin Islands, have included the famous and infamous. Commodore Matthew Perry and author Jack London spent time on Chichi Jima. In 1944, former President George H.W. Bush, then a 20-year-old Navy pilot, was shot down offshore and rescued by an American submarine. During World War II, cannibalism also paid a grim visit.



A Western Outpost Shrinks on a Remote Island Now in Japanese Hands
By MARTIN FACKLERJUNE 9, 2012

Since it was settled by Mr. Savory’s American and European followers — fortune seekers, deserters, drunkards — and their Hawaiian wives, the island has been pillaged by pirates, gripped by murder and cannibalism, and tugged back and forth between Japan and the United States in their battle for supremacy in the Pacific. There was a brief revival of the island’s Western culture after World War II, when it was ruled by the United States Navy.

Even the island’s V.I.P. visitor list seems outsized for a spit of land just five miles long. It includes Commodore Matthew C. Perry, who stopped here on the 1853 voyage in which he opened Japanese ports at gunpoint, and Jack London, who visited as a 17-year-old deckhand and later wrote about the Bonins.

Today, the island is a sleepy place. Its rhythms are set by the arrival once every six days of the ferry that makes the 600-mile journey from Tokyo, which has administered Chichi Jima as part of what are now known as the Ogasawara Islands, after the United States returned them to Japan in 1968.

About 2,000 people live here, mostly Japanese from the mainland who came after the transfer. Over time, they have overwhelmed the descendants of the original settlers — known here as Obeikei, or the Westerners — who are now estimated to number fewer than 200.

Most of the Obeikei are Japanese citizens. Most of those who still speak English and retain distinctly Western or Polynesian features are over the age of 50.

定住したのは欧米系の住民が日本が領有するよりも前で、歴史上珍しいかたちと書いています。といっても、いまでは欧米系のコミュニティーが高齢化し小さくなっているようです。

What is undisputed is that the island was left largely to rule itself until 1875, when Japanese settlers and officials took over in what the historian Daniel Long calls the first act of territorial expansion by a budding Japanese empire.

“Chichi Jima was probably the only case where the island was claimed by an Asian power and the natives were English-speaking Westerners,” said Mr. Long, who has written several books on the island.


作家ジャックロンドンが小笠原諸島を船乗りとして訪問していて、その体験をズバリ「Bonin Islands: An Incident of the Sealing Fleet of '93」という短編に書いていたということを最近知ったので、興味をもったのでした。そのあたりは次の記事で取り上げます。