The Failed Stowaway: Why Shōin Tried to Board Perry's Ship

Late on the night of March 27, 1854 (the twenty-seventh of the third month of Kaei 7), two Japanese men in a small boat approached the USS Powhatan, the flagship of Perry's fleet anchored in the harbor of Shimoda in Izu. One was the twenty-four-year-old Chōshū samurai Yoshida Shōin; the other was his disciple Kaneko Shigenosuke, an ashigaru. They carried a letter requesting passage to the United States. The Americans politely refused, and the two returned to shore — then turned themselves in to the bakufu authorities and were imprisoned.

Shōin's Motive

What Shōin himself later wrote about the attempt was that the goal was 'to see and learn the civilization of the West on the ground.' He had watched Perry's first arrival in Edo Bay in June 1853, and concluded that the gap between Japanese and Western military capacity was too immediate to be addressed by reading books about it. The decision to attempt the crossing was the logical extension. Under the seclusion edicts of the period, overseas travel was a capital offense; Shōin knew this and acted anyway.

Why Perry Refused

Perry's handling of the request was diplomatically cautious. The Treaty of Peace and Amity was in the middle of being negotiated, and quietly carrying away two Japanese subjects would have undermined the treaty's credibility. Perry expressed sympathy with Shōin's intent but declined the request, and rather than reporting them to the bakufu directly, he simply put them back on shore. It was Shōin's own self-surrender, not the American side, that brought the matter into the open. The bakufu, going through the formal motions, ordered him to Edo.

Imprisonment Changed Shōin

Returned to Hagi in 1855 and held at Noyama Prison, Shōin began lecturing to his fellow inmates. This was the institutional prototype of what would later become the Shōka Sonjuku. Having acted in the conviction that he might be executed, and having instead been imprisoned, he turned from 'getting outside to see' to 'cultivating people at home.' The two and a half years at Noyama Prison from 1855 to his takeover of the Shōka Sonjuku in 1857 were the decisive period in which the orientation of his thinking shifted. Recent scholarship has emphasized the chain of causation: the failed stowaway attempt at Shimoda produced the Shōka Sonjuku, which produced the operational leadership of the Meiji Restoration.

"Without seeing the world abroad with one's own eyes, the direction of the country cannot be set."