Robinsonade literature is literature in the tradition of marooned sailors. It gets its name from the literary work, which sparked the tradition, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. This essay establishes criteria for evaluating whether or not a piece of literature belongs in the Rubinsonade genre. It looks at an accounted of a shipwrecked Japanese sailor. The account, Nankai Kibun translates from Japanese to Sothern Ocean. It is an account of a Japanese sailor who was the only one of his crew to survive and one-day return to Japan. While the Japanese sailor's account is interesting, there are several reasons why it should not be included as part of the Robinsonade genre..
Readers of the 18th century were fascinated with the idea of a person being stranded alone on an island. This was a golden age of ship travel, so ocean crossing vessels were becoming more and more a part of people’s everyday life and, as a result, there was a growing interest in this genre. There only became a name for this genre after Daniel Defoe published his bestselling novel, Robinson Crusoe. The success of this led the genre that contained it to be named after the novel. By the middle of the 19th century, literary works featuring someone being stranded on an island became known as The Robinsonade genre. Robinson Crusoe was very popular when Defoe wrote it in 1719, and it only continued to get popular with time. The website “Early American Bestsellers” gives the official Encyclopedia Britannica definition of a Robinsonade as “any novel written in imitation of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe that deals with the problems of the castaway’s survival on a desert island. “ The definition goes further and establishing four elements that are included in a “Robinsonade Proper.” These elements are progress through technology, triumph and the rebuilding of civilization, economic achievement, and solitary survival in a hostile environment.
In Defoe’s book, Robinson Crusoe was an Englishman who is the only survivor on an expedition. He salvages materials from the shipwreck and begins to establish himself on the island. Creating tools and situation that increase his advantage. In deciding if Magotaro’s story fits in the Robinsonade genre, it is careful to consider how it was written, when it was written, who wrote it and why it was written. The account of the lost Japanese sailor is unique. Japanese people were not allowed to leave Japan during the time it occurred, so there were very few such stories of sailors who had left Japan and then returned. But in 1773 the Japanese sailor and his crew became lost at sea, and it would be eight more years before he would return.
He starts his trip relatively young. He writes that in 1763, he was twenty-one years old and had just been taken on a new ship. He gives a good view into the life of a sailor at that period with vivid descriptions of various ports of call the ship came to load and unload cargo. The sailor wrote about a few weeks when the weather seemed untrustworthy. “Later in the evening black clouds rose from the southwest, therein came down in buckets, and thunder and lightening were unremitting (Magotaro, 3).
The sailor tells of his life as a sailor in Japan prior to bad weather causing he and the rest of the crew to become lost for days. When they finally find land, they have no idea where they are in the world and are taken as slaves by the tribal people where they were found. Many Hallmarks of Magotaro’s story hit the right points to for the Robinsonade genre. But a careful analysis of the text and comparing it to Robinsonade works show that while it some of the key elements of the Robinsonade genre, it does not fit this classification.
This weather led them to need to cut their sail. Soon they had traveled, by their estimate, 5,000 miles without seeing a single island. When they do see one, they are unable to make their way to it since the crew in losing the sail and the rudder in the storm have lost much of their ability to maneuver their ship. Fourteen days after this initial siting, they crew catches site of another island. They are also unable to land on this island and continue to grow weaker. When they finally land on the island they encounter a tribal people with spears who gives them sweet potatoes. Eventually, they are brought further inland, and each of the sailors is kept as a slave in a different household. While there are no in-depth descriptions of the treatment of the Japanese sailors as slaves, one suspects they were not kept in very healthy conditions as they began to die one after another.
Eventually, The Japanese Sailor is sold to a Chinese merchant. At this point, all of his fellow Japanese sailors have died or have been taken elsewhere. The Japanese sailor is alone. He soon learns the language and can communicate with his master. He accompanies him to various places in their region of the world. While it is not expressly stated in the text, the reader gathers that the Japanese sailor has found favor with his Chinese master. In the hopes that reverence to one’s parents will tug on the heartstrings of his master, the Japanese sailor says that he is content where he is, but that one day he would like to go back to Japan, because surely his parents miss him. This is a clever ploy on his part to tug the heartstrings of his master. Eventually, this plan works and he begins to arrange for him passage back to Nagasaki aboard a Dutch vessel.
The story is very interesting from a historical standpoint in understanding the place during the period that it was being written. It takes place during the same period of shipping that “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet” takes place. Both also involve shipping during the late 18th century. But neither of these works fits the strict description of being of the Robinsonade genre.
They do have commonalities with the genre. The most important aspect of a plot to Robinson Crusoe the book is being lost at sea. The theme of Nankai Kebun certainly fits with this. But unlike Robinson Crusoe and the genre is sparked, the Japanese sailor was never marooned on a deserted island. He visited an inhabited island and was turned into a slave. He did not use his surroundings to improve his technology situation. He can learn the local language tells a sob story and eventually moves his master to release him out of pity. It also must be remembered that the story of the Japanese sailor is a true account of one sailor’s misfortune and his unlikely repatriation to his homeland. There is certainly a comparison between both stories. Both present the dangers of the high sea, but they stories fit with different traditions.
In order to fit the Robinsonade genre in the strictest sense, I believe that from our class discussions that it would need to be a fictional story. Also, the Japanese sailor who is recounting the story has no knowledge of the genre. Since Defoe’s novel sparked an interested in literature of this kind, there needs to be some connection between the author of Robinsonade writing and his knowledge of Robinson Crusoe. This all means that anything considered in the Robinsonade genre should have been specifically written to be there. If Nankai Kebun could be considered part of the genre, then one would essentially have to put in every story of a shipwrecked sailor into the genre.
The differences between the Japanese sailors account and Robinson Crusoe are significant. One is fiction; the other is a non-fiction account. One is about surviving on an island all alone. One is about escaping from slavery. One is about keeping one’s master pleased. The other is about overcoming obstacles for surviving. Robinsonade is a very specific genre of literature. The definition of in the Encyclopedia Britannica lists four essential elements that comprise a work written in the genre. They are progress through technology, triumph and the rebuilding of civilization, economic achievement, and solitary survival in a hostile environment. While the Japanese sailor was able to find two of these things, solitary survival in a hostile environment and progress through economic advantage, this is not enough for his true account to be considered apart of a fictional tradition that mirrors Daniel Defoe’s book Robinson Crusoe.
Works Cited
Ficklan, Joan. "The Scribblers Cove." : What the Heck is a Robinsonade?. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2014. <http://thescribblerscove.blogspot.com/2012/06/what-heck-is-robinsonade.html>.
Magotaro. Aoki Okikatu. Fukuoka History Collective: Nankai Kiban, 2004. Print.
Populi, Vox. "Early American Bestsellers." : The Robinsonade. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2014. <http://earlyamericanbestsellers.blogspot.com/2011/02/robinsonade.html>.
