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the podcasts. Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 242, Castaway.

This week, we're going to explore a story that I've always loved, and that is particularly timely right now.

It's got everything, sweeping drama, high-seas adventure, but it starts innocently enough.

It starts, you see in a small village,

Nakanoama, in Tosa province, what's now Colchi prefecture, in the year 1841. Now renamed

the city of Tosashi Mizu, it's about as far as you can get in the province from the central

city of Kolchi without crossing the border

into the neighboring areas. The story begins specifically with a person, a boy, all of 14, named

Manjiro, who, like every other male in his family, worked the family trade. They were fishermen.

...