Manjiro: The Boy Who Risked His Life for Two Countries

Manjiro: The Boy Who Risked His Life for Two Countries
written and illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully, 2008, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (978-0-374-34792-5).

Author/illustrator website: http://www.emilyarnoldmccully.com/

Media: pastel watercolors

Awards and Honors: Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, NCSS-CBC Notable Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies

Annotation:
The true story of a young, shipwrecked Japanese boy brought to America who learns to adapt to his new life while working towards finding a way back home to Japan.

Personal Reaction:
      McCully tells the amazing tale of one of the few Japanese citizens to travel outside of the country during the Tokugawa Shogunate’s period of enforced isolationism.  The book opens with the severity of this rule, displaying a quote from the Japanese government that states any Japanese person who ventures out of the country does so on penalty of death.  Manjiro is illustrated in American clothes and standing on a dock by himself, already separated from his country by more than the ocean behind him, but the consequences his reappearance into his native country would bring.
      McCully delves into Manjiro’s beginnings as a resourceful young boy who argued his way onto a fishing boat despite his youthful age in order to earn income for his fatherless family.  His fishing boat is shipwrecked and he and his crew survive for six months on a deserted island before being rescued by an American whaling ship.  The Captain and crew immediately warm to Manjiro as his curiosity and intelligence are evident in the quickness with which he learns English.  Manjiro is taken to Massachusetts and raised and educated as a member of the Captain’s his family but the hardships he faced as an outsider and immigrant (and a rarely seen or heard of immigrant at that) are evident when McCully describes the townspeople’s suspicion of him, how he is teased and avoided at school, and in Manjiro’s own nostalgic yearnings for Japan and the family he lost.  But despite Manjiro’s own melancholy, he teaches others about his own Japanese culture while learning about—and adapting to—Western life, eventually advancing in his education and status that he has earned enough money to buy a boat and return to Japan as he has wished.  Nine years later, Manjiro and his crew land back on his homeland and are imprisoned and questioned for seven months by suspicious officials who believed America would invade them.  Because of Manjiro’s education and experience, he is able to convince the officials of the West’s intentions to trade and is allowed to return to his family.       
     McCully’s realistic watercolors boldly stand out against the book’s white background and acutely reveal the contrast between traditional Japanese and 19th-century Americans along with enhancing the disorientation Manjiro, his ship mates, and any immigrant, must feel upon being exposed to a new, and very different, culture: the feeling of being apart and of being the “other.”  The illustrations highlight the most important event of each text section, showing Manjiro’s development from a Japanese boy into an American man.   Colors are bright and rich, drawing readers further into the remarkable account of a real-life person whose courage and determination in unexpected circumstances are requirements of survival for immigrants and also led Manjiro to later play an imperative role in U.S.-Japanese relations.  McCully’s “Author’s Note” provides a brief summary of the rest of Manjiro’s life and his role in both his countries’ histories, including his published account of his life in America, his role as advisor to the Japanese government with American traders and his trip back to the U.S. in the first diplomatic delegation Japan sent West.  An illustrated map of his travels lies above the note and ads further context to his travel and life.      
     Manjiro’s story can educate students on both the difficulties and excitement of the immigrant experience in America:  overcoming unexpected circumstances, finding new ways to live and learn, and the power and yearning for ‘home’ and belonging.  Using the story of Manjiro in the classroom would be a creative, novel move as educational emphasis is usually on European immigration.  But Manjiro’s tale demonstrates that not all immigrants came from Europe, and that what is in the textbook is not the whole story.  Utilizing such a book as this would allow a teacher to not only educate students about universal immigrant themes of isolation, loneliness, and the difficulties of adapting to a new culture, but demonstrate that the provided education does not offer a student everything:  like Manjiro, students need to go out on their own and to explore the different ways of life in order to get what they want out of it.  A poignant true story of an American immigrant who is both unique and universal in his struggles, and whose tale presents an intriguing rediscovery of a well-known time of history.

Curricular Connection:
California History / Social Science, Grade 5, California Standard: 5.8: Students discuss immigration to America from 1789 to the mid-1800s focusing on the impact of economic incentives, consequences of the physical and political geography, and transportation systems.