IIL] 
JAPANESE IDEA OP THE WALRUS 
161 
JAPANESE DRAWING OF THE WALRUS. 1 
1 The drawing is taken from a Japanese manuscript book of travels^— 
No. 360 of the Japanese library which I brought home. According to a 
communication by an attache of the Japanese embassy which visited Stock¬ 
holm in the autumn of 1880, the book is entitled Kau-Jcai-i-fun, “ Narrative 
of a remarkable voyage on distant seas.The manuscript, in four volumes, 
was written in 1830. In the introduction it is stated that when some 
Japanese, on the 21st November, 1793 (?), were proceeding with a cargo 
of rice to Yesso, they were thrown out of their course by a storm, and 
were driven far away on the sea, till in the beginning of the following 
June they came to some of the Aleutian islands, which had recently been 
taken by the Russians. They remained there ten months, and next year 
in the end of June they came to Ochotsk. The following year in autumn 
they were carried to Irkutsk, where they remained eight years, well treated 
by the Russians. They were then taken to St. Petersburg, where they 
had an audience of the Czar, and got furs and splendid food. Finally 
they were sent back by sea round Cape Horn to Japan in one of Captain 
von Krusenstern’s vessels. They were handed over to the Japanese 
authorities in the spring of 1805, after having been absent from their 
native country about thirteen years. From Nagasaki they were carried to 
Yeddo, where they were subjected to an examination. One person put 
questions, another wrote the answers, and a third showed by drawings all 
the remarkable events they had survived. They were then sent to their 
native place. In the introduction it is further said that the shipwrecked 
were unskilful seamen, by whom little attention was often given to the 
most important matters. A warning accordingly is given against full 
reliance on their accounts and the drawings in the book. The latter 
occupy the fourth part of the work, consisting of more than 100 quarto 
pages. It is remarkable that the first Russian circumnavigation of the 
globe, and the first journey of the Japanese round the world, happened at 
the same time. 
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