Kanrin Maru Day

What Is Kanrin Maru Day?

Every February 26th is "Kanrin Maru Day" (咸臨丸の日, Kanrin-maru no Hi) in Japan. On the 26th day of the 2nd month of Ansei 7 by the old calendar (March 17, 1860), the Japanese warship Kanrin Maru (咸臨丸) arrived in San Francisco after a 37-day voyage from Uraga — the first time a Japanese warship had crossed the Pacific to the United States. The voyage was a landmark step in Japan's effort to learn Western navigation and take part in international maritime affairs.

The Kanrin Maru and Its Historic Voyage

The Kanrin Maru was a steam-powered corvette — one of the first Western-style warships in the Tokugawa Shogunate's navy — purchased from the Netherlands in 1857. The 1860 Pacific voyage carried a Japanese diplomatic mission to ratify the Harris Treaty with the United States; the Kanrin Maru sailed in parallel with the American warship Powhatan, which carried the main diplomatic delegation. Japanese officers were in command, but U.S. Navy Lieutenant John Mercer Brooke and eleven of his men, who boarded at Uraga, are said to have handled much of the actual sailing during the stormy North Pacific crossing.

Katsu Kaishū and Fukuzawa Yukichi

The ship's de facto captain was Katsu Kaishū (勝海舟, 1823–1899), serving under Commodore Kimura Yoshitake (木村喜毅) — — a remarkable naval officer who would later play a crucial role in the peaceful handover of Edo to imperial forces at the Meiji Restoration. Also aboard, as Kimura's attendant, was Fukuzawa Yukichi (福沢諭吉) — Japan's future leading intellectual and educator — who used the voyage as his first experience of the Western world. Fukuzawa's subsequent educational and writing career would fundamentally shape modern Japanese thought.

The Voyage's Significance

The Kanrin Maru's Pacific crossing demonstrated that Japan could engage with Western maritime technology, navigation, and international diplomatic practice on its own terms. The voyage signaled Japan's determination to participate in the modern world not as a subordinate recipient of Western technology but as a competent operator of it — a harbinger of the Meiji Restoration's broader project of adopting and mastering Western knowledge.

Fun Facts

• Fukuzawa's observations: Fukuzawa Yukichi's accounts of what he saw in San Francisco — the democratic society, the lack of hereditary class distinctions, the independent spirit of ordinary Americans — are said to have influenced his subsequent advocacy for Japanese modernization and his famous work "An Encouragement of Learning" (学問のすゝめ).
• Katsu's peaceable nature: Katsu Kaishū later became famous for negotiating the bloodless surrender of Edo Castle to the Meiji imperial forces in 1868 — demonstrating the same pragmatic commitment to avoiding unnecessary conflict that had made him a capable naval commander.