December 1956 | Volume 8, Issue 1 The story of Manjiro, the
shipwrecked waif; of the kindly captain from Fairhaven; and of
how Japan, hidden away from the world, learned strange news of
other lands In 1841, before Commodore Perry had opened up Japan,
before any Japanese had set foot in America, a fisherman’s boy
was transported by a chance of history to Massachusetts. This is
his story, condensed from a new book by Hisakazu Kaneko,
published by Houghton Mifflin Co. Manjiro, The Man Who
Discovered America is a true account, so strange and charming
that it reads like a fairy tale. Manjiro was born in the tenth
year of the Bunsei era (1827) in a lonely fishing village called
Nakanohama, in the province of Tosa where the warm Black Current
of the Pacific Ocean ceaselessly washes its craggy coast. His
father Etsuke died when Manjiro was only nine years old and his
widowed mother, Shio, with her lean hands had to feed her five
ever-hungry children. So poor was she that she could not afford
to send the children to a