The Kanrin Maru's crossing of the Pacific has long been told as a great Japanese feat. Read the records of the men who were in the same ship, though, and Katsu Kaishū, who ranked as her captain, looks very different from the hero of later fame. This is a ship other than the Powhatan, in which Oguri sailed, but the two parties met again at San Francisco.
Every man seasick from the day after they sailed
The voyage of 1860 was rough from the start. A storm came up on the evening of the twentieth day of the second month, the day after they sailed, worsened on the twenty-first, and the gale and rain held for three days. Of the thirty-eight days of the whole voyage, only four or five had good weather. By the journal of the voyage kept by Lieutenant John M. Brooke of the United States Navy, who sailed with them, every one of the Japanese was laid low by seasickness the day after they sailed, and Katsu did not come out of his own cabin, let alone take command.
During the storm the only men able to work on deck were the American officers and seamen and, among the Japanese, Nakahama Manjirō, Ono Tomogorō and Hamaguchi Kōemon — three men in all. Brooke had command for more than two thirds of the whole voyage. Sakamoto Fujiyoshi writes that without Brooke and his men the Kanrin Maru might well have been wrecked.
It was Kimura Yoshitake (Settsu-no-kami), aboard as commissioner of warships, who decided to take Brooke and his men. Katsu opposed having Americans aboard fiercely; he disliked it that they should be thought to have had help. Kimura, for his part, set down plain thanks to Brooke in his account of the voyage.
A man of the gentlest nature, and accomplished in the art of navigation. That he should come with us on this voyage I count the greatest good fortune
Kimura Yoshitake, Kikō (his account of the voyage)
Kimura and Katsu asked Brooke for eight American seamen for the voyage home as well, and five of them did sail with her.
“Please do as you like”
Kimura supposed that the several quarrels Katsu got into with the ship's company during the voyage came of his discontent over rank.
It was I who arranged for him to be captain of the Kanrin Maru, since he would go whatever happened; but his rank could not be raised, and so he took it out on everyone
Kimura Yoshitake in conversation, quoted in Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai
Katsu stayed shut in his cabin and would not come out. He still had to be upheld as captain, so Kimura, the commander, would go to the cabin himself to consult him; Katsu, sulking, would say nothing but “please do as you like”, by this account. There is even a story that in mid-Pacific he ordered a seaman to “lower the bateira — I am going home now”.
The affair of the flag — Katsu's crest put out of sight
Two incidents came with the entry into San Francisco. One was the affair of the flag. The Japanese officers aboard settled on entering port with the crest of Kimura, the commissioner of warships, hoisted as the ship's flag. Katsu would not have it: he was put out that the flag was not his own.
When the officers asked Brooke and his men what the Western practice was, the answer came that of course the flag of the highest in command should be flown. Delighted at this, the officers are said to have put Katsu's flag away out of sight somewhere. The affair, then, was not between Katsu and the foreigners but between Katsu and Kimura — captain and commander — over precedence aboard ship.
The affair of the salute — “if you can, I will give you my head”
The other was the affair of the salute, which Fukuzawa Yukichi set down in Fukuō Jiden, his autobiography.
Katsu Rintarō was a man very poor at sea, and through the voyage he could not come out of his own room, much as an invalid; but once we were in port, being the commander, he gave orders about everything, and in the course of it the salute came up
Fukuzawa Yukichi, Fukuō Jiden (his autobiography)
Katsu said it could not be managed and they should drop it: to fire a salute for no good reason and make a mess of it would be a poor show. One of the officers, Sasakura Kiritarō, answered that they could certainly fire it. Katsu flared up and burst out, “nonsense — if you can, I will give you my head”. The salute was fired, and well.
In his account of the voyage Kimura writes that Japanese officials are used to referring everything to their superiors, but that abroad the unforeseen happens and one cannot send home to ask about each thing; the salute was a case of it, he had it done on his own judgement, and it succeeded.
In such a matter as the salute, to have been able to do it according to the courtesy of that country without the least regard for (the opinion of the shogunate's councils) was greatly to our advantage
Kimura Yoshitake, Kikō (his account of the voyage)
Kimura had been known from childhood as a brilliant student, served as inspector at Nagasaki at twenty-five, and was a man who listened well to others. Fukuzawa respected him, and seems not to have been easy in himself about Katsu, who made light of Kimura. It broke out years later in Yasegaman no Setsu (on empty stoicism).
A night at San Francisco
The Powhatan reached San Francisco on 20 March 1860, the eighth day of the third month by the Japanese calendar. On 30 March Oguri and the other two envoys, with Morita Kiyoyuki, went straight to Kimura's lodgings. Kimura offered them a bath and brought out Western liquor he had been keeping. They drank and talked till late in the night, and Oguri and Morita, drunk, stayed the night there at Kimura's. It may be that Oguri was told that night what had happened aboard the Kanrin Maru.
Source: Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai (the life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke), Kōdansha, 1987 (quoting Brooke's journal of the Kanrin Maru's voyage, Kimura Yoshitake's Kikō, and Fukuzawa Yukichi's Fukuō Jiden)
→ Testing the “myth” of the Kanrin Maru → Kimura Settsu-no-kami Yoshitake → Katsu Kaishū