The Hollow Ship, Japan's Unsolved Maritime Mystery.

Welcome back to brief encounters, where history whispers about things that don't quite fit.

I'm your host, Nick, and today we're traveling to the shores of feudal Japan,

to the year 1803, a time when samurai still held power and isolation from the outside world was strictly enforced.

It's a story passed down through strange drawings, oral tales and old scrolls.

A ship unlike any other drifts ashore.

Not wooden, not familiar, a metallic disc with glass windows,

covered in symbols no one could read. And inside, a pale woman with red hair,

holding a box no one could open or take from her. It's a story known as the Utsuro-Bune legend.

Some say it's folklore, some say it's a parable, but others, they say it might be Japan's first alien encounter.

Let's step onto the beach and into the unknown.

The name Utsuro-Bune translates roughly to hollow ship or empty boat.

According to multiple historical Japanese texts, like the Toen Shosetsu,

Ume no shiri, and Yoriu Kishu, a strange craft washed ashore in Itachi province,

what is now Ibaraki prefecture in the early 19th century. Villagers who found it were startled,

not just by the vessel itself, but by what, or rather who, was inside. Let's break it down.

The vessel was described as circular or bowl-shaped, resembling an incense burner, about three meters high and five meters

wide, made of metallic plates and glass windows. Reinforced with strange materials that did not

resemble any Japanese shipbuilding of the time, it floated just offshore and didn't appear to be powered by sail or ore.

The inside, padded and ornamented with strange carvings or symbols, like writing no one could decipher.

In short, it wasn't a boat, not in any conventional sense.

Inside the craft was a woman.

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