Names of ``animals that taste better than beef'' that 16 Japanese who washed ashore on an uninhabited island in the Pacific enjoyed to the fullest [2021 second half BEST 5]

March 5 (Sat) 10:15 President

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In the second half of 2021 (July-December), we will deliver the best 5 articles that received a great response on President Online. The second place in the education category is——. (First published: August 21, 2021) In 1899, a Japanese sailing vessel conducting fishery research runs aground, leaving 16 crew members stranded on an uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean. They didn't have enough food, but thanks to a creature that came to the island, they lived a "luxury" diet. Writer Makoto Shiina explains——. (Part 2)

*This article is a re-edited version of Makoto Shiina's "What Did Castaways Eat?" (Shincho Sensho).

Photo = iStock.com / kurakurakurarin *The photo is an image - Photo = iStock.com / kurakurakurarin

■ "Sixteen people living on a deserted island"

There are categories in the drifting diary There are several. The adrift of Sengokubune in the Edo period was ruthlessly involved in Japan's national isolation policy at the time, and the causes of drifting in distress have been categorized.

The most terrifying and unparalleled drifting in the world happened unexpectedly in Japan. About 30 years ago, a harpooned diver accidentally drifted away for three days. I also do diving, so I can imagine the horror in concrete terms.

When I was looking for various drifting stories, I found a title in an old document that made me drool. He had many old documents, but one of them caught his eye: a photo of an old advertising leaflet with a worn-out binding.

"Sixteen people living on a deserted island" (Kunihiko Sugawa). 46 size hard cover. I didn't know what kind of book it was because there was no introduction or obi. The title is similar to "Jugo Shonen Drifting Chronicle". Boken stuff for kids? It was a Kodansha book. Even though it is an old book, it comes from a prestigious publisher.

Because of my work, I have acquaintances in various departments at Kodansha. I immediately inquired. It took about 3-4 days, but as expected, it is already out of print.

"Isn't it in your library?"

She was an honest editor and immediately looked it up.

"There was only one book in the reference room, not in the library"

Oh. I'm glad you checked it out.

"However, it seems that there is only one copy of this book in our company, and it is treated as a no-go."

As a Drifting Freak, this kind of refusal is a killer phrase. In a hoarse voice, I asked the editor if he could make a copy of the whole story so that I wouldn't have to rush it. What I really wanted to do was copy it right now and send it to me!

"Ah, then it's easy."

He was a nice guy. Let's do better work with this guy.

I read it the same day I got it. She's actually quite funny enough to apologize for her initial doubts. It was so interesting that I even thought that there was someone like Jules Verne in Japan's Meiji era who wrote it.

As the title suggests, a ship with 16 uncles and young men drifts ashore on an uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where they struggle to survive.

■A story of drifting like a fiction

A 76-ton, two-masted schooner-type sailing ship is small and cute for a ship. The ship runs aground and ends up on a tiny, uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean. That's how the tough but wonderful 16 uncles and young men's battle begins.

May 1909. There is a description that it ran aground at Pearl End Hermes near (but far from) the Midway Islands. It is said that from the small island they drifted ashore, they wrote that on a copper plate with a nail and nailed it to a piece of driftwood and threw it away.

This ship ran aground and it seems that the main purpose of the ship was fishing research. The main focus of my work is the capture of sharks, sea turtles and seabirds. On his way home, he was wrecked. It would be tragic if a small sailing ship ran aground in a sea of ​​giant corals. The anchor that was dropped is torn apart and played with by the sea of ​​hard coral, and is slammed into a half-destroyed state. Using a unique method, the 16 people manage to escape from the ship by pulling a rope across a relatively large rock from the half-destroyed ship, and carry the salvaged craft tools, household items, and a small amount of food to the shore. From this point on, I am fascinated by the radical development of this drifting diary. Read all the way to the end. It was so interesting that I thought it might be fiction. Neither the name of the island nor the area of ​​the sea was written on it.

When I finished reading and was happy that it was interesting, I was supposed to go to an island in the Sea of ​​Japan for an interview with Shinchosha's graphic magazine. It is a group of four people, including an editor and a cameraman.

I was an interesting book on the road! One of the accompanying editors was interested because he said so with all his might.

This is Saudi (nickname). His real name is Shoji, but he grew up in Saudi Arabia because of his father's job. That's why the thought relationship is a bit eccentric. For example, he asks an old woman who runs a tourist ramen shop on a shiketa hut on a remote island in the Sea of ​​Japan, "What is the difference between the 850-yen seafood ramen and the 750-yen special ramen?" .

"Idiot or you?"

I was amazed by seniors in the editorial department.

I forgot which grade was higher, but when I finished eating ramen, Saudi-kun let me read a copy of the book that I was so amused by! said emphatically.

Kunihiko Sugawa, Sixteen People Living on a Deserted Island (Shincho Bunko)

When I had completely forgotten about that conversation, I received a phone call from Mr. Saudi.

"I found an old newspaper that says that all 16 crew members of that mysterious shipwreck returned to Japan. Based on that, I may be able to contact the author's bereaved family."

That's what I got. Poor Glade Saudi.

A few months later, I got a call from Mr. Saudi again.

"Shinchosha will be able to reproduce that book as a paperback. Of course, I contacted Kodansha, so please write a commentary."

I was happy to begin sketching out the days of the 16 men and the young man on the hot island, anxious, anxious, and at one point in joy that could only be experienced on a solitary island in the Pacific.

■ A sailing ship with 16 people ran aground in the Pacific Ocean and was wrecked.

This small sailing ship "Ryusuimaru" is mainly responsible for communication with the mainland, with its home port at Senshu Island at the tip of the Kuril Islands of Hokkaido. Met. During the winter, she is docked at Okawaguchi in Tokyo, and the captain wanted to take her to the South Seas, which she had never sailed during this period.

It was coming true.

The captain was also thinking about this.

Since Shintorishima, which is located at the southeastern tip of Japan, is a volcanic island, the seafloor rises to the surface and sinks again due to eruptions. And there is a rumor that there is a pirate base nearby. If you find it, you may find treasure hidden by pirates, and it will be very useful for the safe operation of Japanese fishing boats. In addition, it is said that there is a jellyfish-like jellyfish that sperm whales spit out in the South Sea, an expensive treasure that weighs 1 gram = 1 gram of gold. Isn't it a wonderful story that there is a mass of about 100 kilograms of it?

The person introduced as a crew member of this ship is the leader and is written as the driver in the book, but since it is a name that does not fit a sailing ship, I arbitrarily interpreted it as a navigator. It is said that the fishery chief has more authority than the captain when it comes to fishing boats. Underneath that, the head sailor who has been trained from practical experience and has extraordinary ability. In addition, there are four members of Houkougikai (pioneering organization). These people have wintered on Senshu Island for several years, endured hardships, and have made excellent achievements in the fishing industry. In addition, there are 2 trainees and 3 people who have been naturalized in Japan while helping whaling ships in the Ogasawara Islands. There are also three sailors and three fishermen. The other is Mr. Kurayoshi Nakagawa, the narrator of this book and a captain who later became an instructor at the Tokyo Merchant Marine School.

I spent a lot of space explaining the background of the story.

Thus, the story progresses at once to the point where the fate of this delicate sailing ship becomes doubtful.

On the way back from the waters near Midway, I caught a lot of sharks and sea turtles, collected a lot of oil, and then got caught in an unexpected swell.

The waves were so ferocious that the ship was drawn closer and closer to the reef, where it soon went ashore.

The wooden schooner is being destroyed more and more by the constant waves.

The sixteen climbed from the half-dead ship to the relatively safe rocks with the ropework of a skilled sailor. I managed to salvage two bales of rice that had been piled high, some canned meat and fruit, and some empty oil cans. It was all I could do to bring matches and well digging tools to the top of the rock.

■Washed ashore on a small uninhabited island and dug a well to secure drinking water

16 people boarded a small boat that escaped the spill, and made a makeshift raft made of wood removed from the boat. A raft was loaded with what he had managed to salvage, which he managed to land on a small island with a sandy shore, avoiding crashing into a coral reef. There are no rocks there, just a sandy beach, and the elevation is only about one meter above sea level. The Ryuusuimaru had been slammed against rocks by raging waves and was already a complete wreck.

All 16 people who desperately made it to the island were safe. To celebrate that everyone was saved, I opened a single can of fruit and tasted the sweetness with a small spoon.

After a while, someone shouted, "I can see the island." If you look in the direction you're pointing, it's an island three or four times larger than the one you're standing on. "It's that island." All of them jumped on a horse boat and headed for the island.

The first thing you need to do is dig a well. However, under what was thought to be sand, coral reefs spread out and it was not easy to dig a hole. Meanwhile, the distilled water team began boiling seawater using coral clumps, sand, oil cans, and driftwood found on the island.

While working hard on the rocky ground, we managed to dig a well of about 4 meters in shifts, and white water came out. However, the salty water does not make it drinkable.

On the other hand, distilled water boiled seawater for an hour in a distiller, which was a combination of coral and sand furnaces and three oil cans. After working in the scorching sun, my mouth was swollen with a desire for water.

Another group built a hut with large tents, using lumber and sails they had brought with them. Another well was dug another two meters, but the water was still white. Another two-meter well dug was also slightly salty, but still not drinkable by humans. Eventually, they thought that a shallow well close to the grass roots might provide better water, and they tried it, and although it was still salty, they mixed distilled water and managed to get water that they could drink one sip at a time.

■Boiled and grilled green sea turtle meat tastes better than beef

Before long, the cooking team hurriedly prepared the first "meshi" on the island. There were many green turtles on the island. The size of the shell is 1 meter in diameter. The meat that was grilled and simmered in seawater tasted better than beef. I was so hungry that I devoured them all.

Photo = iStock.com/cinoby *The photo is an image - Photo = iStock.com/cinoby In order to make it last longer, I'd like you to drink rice water three times a day from the next meal, and then make your stomach with fish and turtle meat."

Saying that, everyone nodded.

From that day on, we decided to take off our clothes, dry them, store them carefully, and live naked for the rest of our lives.

Everyone nodded again.

Furthermore, I stopped making distilled water from the next day. It turned out that there was more fuel than I thought. Instead, the rain (squall) that often fell was caught in a tent, collected in one place, stored in an oil can, and mixed with well water to drink.

If you rely on matches for fire, you will soon run out and be miserable. So, on sunny days, I used the convex lenses of my binoculars to make fire from the sun's rays. But even this is useless unless it is sunny. So I put sand in an empty can, poured oil taken from green sea turtles into it, put a wick into the oil-soaked sand, lit it, and it turned into a splendid paper lantern. To prevent the canned goods from being blown out by the wind, I made a frame around it with a canvas curtain and made it a perpetual lamp that I could carry around freely.

■The rule of not touching a school of seals

When the green turtles that I caught on the first day ran out, I focused on fishing. Many of the 16 were masters of fishing. I was able to catch a lot of bonito, dolphinfish, and horse mackerel. As for the fish, I was most grateful for the fact that sashimi requires no effort or fuel, and I ate grilled fish, boiled fish, and fried fish in turtle oil on a shovel.

From the north side of the island, there was a place that looked like a small dejima island continuing from the sandy beach. The dejima was twisted by large and small seals. Seals are master fish-catchers. When catching fish, everyone dives together and eats a lot, and when they are full, they come up here and there on the peninsula and relax in the sun. There were about 30 of them in all, but they soon became friends.

Seeing the flock, the captain said,

"Don't do anything to that seal for the time being."

said. If humans attack them with the intention of eating them, they can catch some at first. But it would be bad if the seals were wary and hostile and everyone went away. They don't do anything to humans, and neither do we. But if we are starving to death because we have absolutely nothing to eat, we may be able to eat them and survive for a while.

So let's not walk blindly into that seal peninsula, even if we don't catch them.

The captain made that one of his rules.

■When he could no longer catch fish, he made a net from the wreckage of the ship

The average altitude of the island was 2 meters. It was the highest grassland on the island in the west, a little higher than that, at 4 meters. They decided to build a watchtower on top of it and keep a lookout at all times to keep an eye on the ships sailing around them. However, since there was not even a single piece of driftwood, a persevering strategy was started in which everyone carried sand from the beach to create a sand dune. We put sand in petroleum cans and carried it all the time, but eventually we came up with the idea of ​​putting sand in the shell of a green sea turtle, which is one meter in diameter, and attaching a rope to it and carrying it with everyone.

Shortly there was a literal sand dune about four meters high. Combined with the original height, it will be 8 meters, and a guard will be attached to the top in turn.

The lookouts were put on duty, but the second lookout made a wonderful discovery.

He said he found a lot of driftwood washed up on the beach visible from the top of the mountain. When I went there in a hurry, there were really a lot of large and small driftwoods washed up. When they saw it, it belonged to their "Ryuusuimaru" which had been decomposed by the waves. But there are also long, thick logs that serve as girders, all of which are useful.

I immediately used the girder to build a yagura around the watchtower, and made a splendid watchtower 12 and a half meters above the sea level. My field of vision widened. However, even if they found a ship going far from Yagura, it would be meaningless unless they found this place. I always kept oil cans filled with oil so that I could make fire and smoke at any time. To keep it from getting wet in the rain, I usually covered the pile of materials for the bonfire with a canvas.

There was a report from a cook who suddenly stopped catching fish, probably due to changes in the season, water temperature, and currents.

"Let's make a net"

said the chief fisherman who knows all about fish. We loosened the canvas and put it on the thread, cut the board and made a net sewing needle, and the weight was a large nail and hardware that was attached to the driftwood. Large oyster shells were used where it was not enough, and in 14 days a splendid net with a length of 36 meters and a width of 2 meters was made.

This was loaded on a horse boat and set up with a net. Then the nets were full of fish, and it became very busy. Since it is necessary to catch fish every day from now on, I brought back only the amount that I could eat for the time being and released it into the sea.

■ Seabird meat is not good, but eggs are omelettes and boiled eggs.

Since then, various kinds of seabirds have been arriving on the island every day. Duck-sized reed birds, warship birds, terns, white-headed guillemots, large albatrosses, and more.

Photo = iStock.com/sanyanwuji *The photo is an image - Photo = iStock.com/sanyanwuji

They were gathering in groups and laying eggs. As many as 60 or 70 eggs are laid in an area of ​​about 2 meters square, the coast is like a map with different colors for different countries.

Sixteen picked eggs and walked. It was made into boiled eggs, or a fish omelet made from a washed shovel coated with tortoise oil. It's not written in the book, but you can eat eggs from different birds, so the taste would have been very different depending on the bird. Warship birds and short-tailed albatrosses are very voracious eaters, swallowing large amounts of fish from their mouths to their stomachs before returning from the sea.

The seabirds themselves didn't seem to eat much meat.

There is a description that "It seems to be a luxury, but eating green turtle meat made a big difference and was bad."

■Constipation caused by eating too many eggs is solved with weeds

When large flocks of birds finish laying eggs, green sea turtles come to land to lay their eggs. When sea turtles come ashore, they carefully dig holes with their hind legs, and a single large green sea turtle lays 90 to 170 perfectly round eggs. The hawksbill turtle lays about 130 to 250 pieces. After giving birth, they are carefully covered with sand and returned to the sea.

It's easy to catch and eat them, but the number of sea turtles coming ashore is also increasing day by day, so it's a hassle. It was suggested that sea turtles should be raised in preparation for the coming winter.

I learned that green turtle eggs are perfectly round and the egg whites don't harden no matter how much you boil them. But very tasty. The hawksbill egg was also good, but the parent meat smelled bad. Loggerhead turtle meat is also smelly and inedible. In any case, the two kinds of eggs are delicious, so perhaps because they ate so much, all of them became completely constipated.

I figured it was because I didn't eat any vegetables, so I looked into the grass growing on the island and found that there are four types. One of these days I discovered a plant that resembled wasabi, and when I eat it with sashimi, it tastes pretty good. At the same time, when I drank about half a bowl of seawater, everyone's constipation was cured.

■Tie and keep a lot of sea turtles

What should I do to keep sea turtles? I put them in a well that had been dug before and was useless, and soon they all died.

Therefore, if many stakes were driven into the water's edge of the shore, and ropes were tied firmly between the stakes and the fins on the back of the turtle, when the turtle became hungry, it would go into the sea to eat fish, and then quietly go to the sandy beach. I'm back and I'm drying the shell. I decided to build two such farms and keep many turtles. Of course, the tortoise keeper who took care of the whole team also took on the role of replacement.

Makoto Shiina, What Did Castaways Eat? Even though it's called an island, it's almost not high, and it's a flat and forlorn scale with an average altitude of about 2 meters where we are.

Every time I went to the Seal Peninsula, I saw a lot of seals. Since the captain's first orders and promises were kept and no one would harm the seals, the seals who met humans for the first time quickly became friends with them. In particular, if you bring the fish you caught as a gift to make friends, they will become friends quickly, but from a human perspective, you probably won't be able to tell them apart. However, the seals who became friendly began to find the person from the other side. And it's cute because it's said that when you come near me, you'll be spoiled and come close to me.

When I read about the friendship of a large seal who became particularly close to one of the crew members, I was fascinated by it.

The captain stands on a rock and throws a stick into the sea, all the seals follow the stick and whoever bites the first one brings it to the human who threw it away, and throws it away. There is also an episode that is waiting for you.

---------- Makoto Shiina is a writer and film director. Born in Tokyo in 1944. As a traveler in the frontier, he writes reports and appears in documentary programs. In 1990, he won the Japan Science Fiction Grand Prize for Ad Bird. He is the author of many books, including "I can't sleep" (Shincho Shinsho). ----------

(Artist Makoto Shiina)

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