Twice ToldHirokata zuihitsu, 「うつろ舟の蛮女」 (the Toen-kai text, copied 1825 or after): the opening, the woman and the box, the old man's guess, the closing remark
- Language
- Japanese
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 10 October 2026
Original
Cursive, read by us from the 1920 px images; the passages are excerpts, not the whole entry. Within each excerpt, a new line starts where a column of the page starts (columns run right to left). [?] marks a character we are not sure of, [illegible] one we could not read; small kana in parentheses are the copyist’s reading aids written beside a character.
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[image 23-1, left page, columns 1 to 9: title and opening] うつろ舟の蛮女 享和三年癸亥の春二月廿二日の午の時ばかりに、常陸国[illegible] [illegible]小笠原越中守 高五千石 知行所 常陸国[はら?]やどりと云(ふ) 浜の沖の方に舟のごときもの見えしかば、浦人あまた小 舟[に乗り?]漕ぎ出して、遂に浜に[引き?]つけて見るに 其の舟のかたち、香盒(ハコ)のごとくして、長[サ?]三間[illegible] あまり、上を硝子障子にして、松脂(ヤニ)にて[塞ぎ?]、底は鉄の板がね [ダンダラ]の筋のごとくに張りて、海中の巌石にあたるとも 砕けざるためなるべし、上より内の透徹(すきとほり)て隠れなきを
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[image 23-2, right page, columns 1 to 6: the woman and the box] 眉と髪の毛の赤[かるに?]、其の顔も桃色にて、付髪(ツケガミ)[illegible] [illegible]白く長く、背(ソビラ)に垂れ[illegible] 言語(コトバ)の通ぜざれば、いづこの人なるを知るべからず[?] この蛮女、二尺四方[許]の筥(はこ)を[持ち?]、人をこれに近づけず[?] 水二升許、小瓶に入れてあり(割注:一本に二?升を二斗に作り…[illegible]) 菓子のやうのものあり、又肉を煉りたるやうの物あり
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[image 23-2, left page, columns 1 to 6: the old man’s guess] [illegible]故老の云ふ、蛮国の王、此女(ムスメ)を他へ嫁(めあは)せしが、密夫あり、 其の密夫は刑せられしを、さすがに王のむすめなれば、 殺すに忍びずして、虚舟(ウツロブネ)に乗せて、生死を天に任せて 流しやりしなるべし、其の箱の中なるは密夫の首にやあらん [illegible: about four columns] [illegible] 官府へ[?] 雑費も大[かるべし?][illegible]
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[image 23-3, right page, columns 1 to 5: the closing remark] 先例もあれど[illegible]舟に乗せし女を沖へ引き出して推し流しけると[illegible] [illegible] 此の蛮字のごとくありしより、[illegible]浦[illegible]沖に歌り[?]るイギリス船も[illegible] これらは蛮字ありけ[る?]かれば[?]、件の蛮女は[illegible]イギリス[illegible] [illegible]ベンガラ[illegible]アメリカなどの蛮王の女なりけん、これも亦知るべからず
Translation
Ours. Only the lines we could read are translated; gaps are marked.
1. The opening. “The barbarian woman of the hollow ship.” In the spring of Kyōwa 3, the year of the pig (癸亥, mizunoto-i), on the 22nd day of the second month, around noon, in Hitachi Province [illegible], in the fief of Ogasawara Etchū no kami (5,000 koku), off a beach called, as we read it, Harayadori [first characters uncertain], something like a boat could be seen offshore. Many shore people rowed out in small boats and in the end apparently drew it to the shore to look. The vessel was shaped like an incense box and was more than three ken long [text between the numeral and “more than” illegible]. Its top was glass window panels, apparently sealed with pine resin; its bottom was plated with iron, laid in bands, probably so that it would not break if it struck rocks at sea. From above one could see right through, with nothing hidden.
2. The woman and the box. Her eyebrows and hair were red, while her face was pink; she wore false hair [illegible]; it was long and white and hung down her back. Because no words could be exchanged, it could not be known where she came from. This barbarian woman apparently held a box about two shaku square and apparently let no one come near it. A small bottle held about two sho of water (a note beside it says that another copy has two to where this one has two sho [the first numeral is uncertain; rest illegible]). There were things like sweets and things like kneaded meat.
3. The old man’s guess. An old man of the place said: the king of that foreign country had married this girl to a man elsewhere, but she had a secret lover; the lover was put to death, but because she was the king’s daughter he could not bring himself to kill her, so, presumably, he put her in a hollow boat and set her adrift, leaving life or death to Heaven. Might what was in the box be the lover’s head? [Several columns illegible.] […] “the expense [of reporting it to the authorities] would be great [?]” [illegible].
4. The closing remark. There are earlier cases, but [illegible] they towed a woman who had been placed in a boat out to sea and set her adrift [illegible]. [illegible] the characters were like these foreign letters [illegible] an English ship offshore [verb uncertain] [illegible]. Because these characters were there [reading uncertain], the woman may have been the daughter of a barbarian king of England [illegible], of Bengal [illegible], of America or elsewhere; this too cannot be known.
Notes
The item is catalogued by the National Archives as 「うつろ舟の蛮女」 within the 弘賢随筆 (Hirokata zuihitsu, “Hirokata’s essays”, call number 特095-0004), with the author given as Takizawa Okitsugu (滝沢興継). Tanaka (2023, pp. 107 and 100) lists the Hirokata zuihitsu as item ②, “same as ①” the Toen shōsetsu of 1825, and leaves it out of his comparison tables for that reason. Image 23-4 holds two coloured drawings, the vessel and the woman with her box, with four signs written beside the vessel. Minakami (2014, p. 88) quotes Yanagita (1926) quoting, as Bakin’s note, the same closing words about the English ship and “this too cannot be known”.
The reading is ours from the images and several columns are cursive we could not resolve. The excerpt is meant to show how the story is told and what the writer says about it, not to replace the Archives’ own transcription, which we have not seen.