July 28, 2017 • 62 mins
It's a tale that dates back centuries -- a bizarre, spherical ship washes ashore in Japan, containing a single passenger. Visibily female and humanoid, but clothed in strange garments, with unusual hair and skin. Fast forward to the modern day -- experts still aren't sure what exactly happened. What was Utsuro Bune? Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they delve into the mystery.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:25):
and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Noel is with us in spirit and they call me Ben.
We are joined by our super producer Tristan. Of course
you are you, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. Never fear, our compatriot will be
returning physically as well as one would presume is spiritually.
(00:46):
In a later episode, Matt, We've got something pretty interesting
for you today. Oh yes, yeah, everybody out there listening,
this is something that I am just learning about. Of Ben.
I think you had seen this before in whispers on
the internet and in books, but it's it's a fascinating
(01:08):
happening that occurs way back in the eighteen hundreds, that
maybe an encounter with another species, another civilization, right, you've
heard of this before. We have often over the course
of the show explored aliens and inexplicable history. We found
numerous examples of just weird weird stuff, allegations of lost technology,
(01:33):
entire loss civilizations, and of course, at some point, what's
that guy's named George Slucos close the ancient aliens at
some point, aliens, extraterrestrials or allegations thereof. We do want
to point out that we and the world at large
has found no universally agreed, solid proof of any sort
(01:55):
of alien encounter. Was begrudgingly true, but we have seen
some incredibly strange stuff. Nonetheless, and as much as it
may irk humanity to admit this, we may well never
knew the full story behind some historical accounts and events.
It's true a lot of times it's written down once
(02:15):
by one person, and we can find that. But that's
all we have to go on. And we do know
that at various times, quote unquote, historical accounts have been anecdotal,
heavily biased, written with some sort of strange agenda in mind,
or entirely made up and passed off as the real thing.
(02:37):
Do you have to make make the whims of some
king or some you know, could be a monarchy, it
could be just a government. It could be a single
influential person. Hey, increasingly, it could be a corporation. Right,
what happens when they write the textbooks? I know, an
episode perhaps for another day. But we point this out
(02:59):
because we want to thank all of the historians in
the audience who are probably, as we speak, going nuts
over figuring out some detail that other people have overlooked, misinterpreted,
or even purposefully uh mischaracterized, or even you armchair historians
(03:21):
out there who are just scouring the web on your
own time. The work you do is important and you
know nobody else is doing it, So thank you. Right
and history, our understanding of history is nowhere near as
clear cut and uh concrete as some people would have
us believe. And then also, you know this sort of
(03:44):
confusion persists in the modern day. We're not so different
from the earlier examples of our species. So today we're
looking at one such account of strange historical account. We'll
call it the legend of the Utsuru Bune. And before
we dive in here, we want to be crystal clear
with this. Uh you don't speak Japanese. I am unaware
(04:09):
if I do, okay, and I will also be surprised
if I start speaking Japanese. We're saying this because, um,
we do want to be respectful to different cultures, and
if there are any mispronunciations or mischaracterized americanisms that sweep
in uh in regards to our accents. Then we hope
(04:30):
that it's still close enough to get the gist. Yeah,
and let us know if we do make any mistakes
like that, you can reach us Jonathan dot Strickland at
how stuff works dot com. We have we welcome all feedback.
Our complaint department is open twenty four hours a day,
seven days a week. So we're diving in, or better yet,
we're floating ashore to Japan and the dawn of the
(04:54):
nineteen century. Our story is called we set it at
the top with suro bune, but you may also see
it online somewhere as utsuro fun a with an f
or uro bun, a kind of putting them together, and
it refers to this object, a ship of sorts that
allegedly washed ashore in eighteen zero three eighteen o three
(05:17):
uh in Hitachi Province on it that's on the eastern
coast of Japan, and it's located near where modern day
Tokyo is, not quite but near there, which will we
will explore that part of the story in a little
bit further depth. Accounts of this tale appear in multiple
texts three of the most popular examples are also from
(05:37):
the early to mid nineteen century. So there's one called
the toWin Show Setsu, which translates to Tales from the
Rabbit Garden, published in eighteen five. This has the most
detailed account or detailed anecdote, and there are similar stories,
similar enough that we we pretty much know their retellings
(05:59):
of the same thing from a work called Diaries and
Stories of Castaways in eighteen thirty five and Dust of
the Apricot in eighteen forty four. So what happens, well, well,
immediately right here we have to point out at the top,
as we've been talking about history and things being written down,
we're twenty two years they're the recording of this is
(06:20):
twenty two years after the alleged event, which is already
a little suspect, but perhaps it was. It was more
of a story told by word of mouth. That kind
of thing wasn't necessarily recorded in any history this happening,
But just keep that in mind as we go through here,
right right, right, So, according to the legend of Bune,
(06:44):
there was this young woman, she was attractive. She arrives
on a beach aboard this thing that they referred to
as a hollow ship because they had no words to
describe it. This thing. Yeah, and there were there were
local fishermen who who brought her inland. They wanted to
know what the what the heck is going on here,
(07:06):
and they found that she was unable to communicate with
these guys because she spoke some other language that they
were unfamiliar with. And the fishermen ended up returning her
to this ship, this hollow ship that they found her in,
and then they pushed her back out to sea, and
according to the legend, it drifted away. That's the gist.
(07:26):
And it sounds like they're a couple of Yeah, there's
some styling on it. Yes, excellent summation, Matt. We can
already tell it sounds like there are a few things
that have been glossed over in this story. Oh for sure.
That's definitely the crib notes version. When you see it
written down like that, and we have some images here
(07:47):
of the ship. Do you want to get into that
now where we can come back to that later. Let's yeah,
we can. We can go into it now. So, as
we said, February twenty second, eighth three, that's when these
local fishermen see this ship drift in the water, they
tow it to land, and they take measurements of it.
(08:07):
So they find that it is uh almost eleven feet
high three point three meters and almost eighteen feet wide
five point four or five meters, and to be more exact,
it's ten point eight three ft high and seventeen point
eight eight feet wide. That's kind of weird. Why do
(08:29):
we have such apparently specific measurements? There is because the
these measurements and meters and feet are conversions from the
measurement system that the Japanese community was using at the time.
So what may have been a more rounded number or
approximation in their original measurement system, when converted to the
(08:52):
measurement systems we use today, it's gonna come out. It's
gonna come out wonky. Was like, the important part of
this description is not that they were measuring in feet
and meters. You know, they weren't. They weren't going, Okay,
that's seventeen point eight seven. Somebody put your thumb. Somebody
(09:12):
put your thumb on the on the tape. Yeah, hold it,
hold it down. And now the shape of this thing
specifically reminded a lot of the witnesses of something that
they knew of that they saw in their everyday lives
as part of ritual um and it was an incense burner,
a type of incense burn This specific rounded shape of
(09:35):
the boat, Yeah, that's the other thing. This this is
not a box. It has like a it has a
dome top to it sorts. It's a little bit wider
at the top than it is at the base, almost
like similar to a cupcake shape. That's you know, that's
kind of what I'm seeing too. But the bottom is
almost more pointed in this weird way like a ship
(09:57):
would be, where the weight is meant to be at
the center of right, and then water displacement occurs as
you moved to the outer edges, right. Yeah, So it
seems like it could have been meant to float like
an actual boat, and from the surface this would have
looked like a floating disc or a bubble like floating
(10:18):
on the surface of the water, which has led many
people more on the fringe conjecture side of stuff to
ask themselves if this was a U s oh perhaps, right,
which is something you turned me onto a long time ago,
unidentified sub merged object, But in this case it would
(10:38):
be a U it would be a UFO, but it
would be a floating right right right right, uh, And
as long as it's not a sinking object. And just
because there are some artist depictions of this that you
can find online if you take a look at them.
In my mind, just when I glance at it, it
looks like some kind of of escape capsule or maybe
(11:03):
from an early spaceship or an early rocket that let's
say NASA would have sent up um the module that
comes down and returns to Earth. That's what it looks
like to make some sort of re entry exactly. Well,
we do know a little bit more about the craft
itself or the ship. The upper part of the vessel
(11:24):
appeared to be made of a red coated rosewood, while
the lower part was covered with plates, brazen plates that
people conjectured were meant to protect it from sharp edged
rocks so it wouldn't pierce the ship and compromise its
ability to function. Because it didn't seem to have any
kind of control system, like it's just kind of floating
(11:47):
there in the ocean and you never know what you're
gonna run into. And the upper part allegedly had several
windows made of glass or crystal, covered with bars and
clogged with an unidentified as in that they believe came
from a tree. The windows, however, were completely transparent, and
this is important because the fishermen looked through the windows
(12:08):
and that's when they saw not only uh, the occupant
of the vessel, which will will get to in a moment,
but also they saw texts written in an unknown language
decorating the interior of the ship. And there's so many
questions that go through my mind when you start thinking
about why would there be texts inside the vehicle, And
(12:32):
we will get into that a little later as well.
But they also found other stuff in there. There were
bed sheets, so apparently the occupant was, you know, sleeping
in this thing, or at least would have been sleeping
in this thing. There was a bottle with some water
in it, quite a lot of according to legend, it
was three point six leaders. And we get back into
(12:53):
that the whole measurement. Right. Um, there was even some
cake and some meat that was prepared. So we know
that these uh, we know that these witnesses were able
to identify items of sustenance, right, food and water. And
then also betting um, the woman that they saw inside
(13:16):
the ship. They supposed that she was eighteen to twenty
years old. She was said to be about a little
bit less than five ft tall four point nine two
ft or one five. She had red hair and red eyebrows,
which was very unusual. Right. Her hair was elongated by
(13:37):
artificial white extensions. So let me check with you guys
that this doesn't that seem a little weird because all
of a sudden we've makes an appearance in this three um.
You know, I can't say that I'm any kind of
experts on the hairstylings of the eight hundreds. You're not
a hair story, no, not a hair story it but
(14:02):
that does seem a bit odd, especially considering they were
trying to figure out what they were made out of
in the stories, and it was written down that perhaps
they were made out of some kind of fur um
or some kind of powdered textile, like just some strange
substance that was elongating her hair. And then they go
on to say, and you'll read this and multiple accounts
(14:23):
and other videos on the subject that you can find
out there on the net, this hairstyle cannot be found
in any literature. Whatever that means. I don't think that's
I'm not so amazed by that, you know, yeah, because
it's a big world. There's a lot of different hairstyles
that don't show up in magazines or are you know,
(14:45):
have illustrations from the eighteen hundreds. The lady's skin was
a very pale, pink shade. She wore long, smooth clothes
of unknown fabrics. Okay, unknown fabrics. No, And and here's
where we would start asking, were we like investigative lawyers,
(15:06):
were this a trial? This would be the part where
the defendants story breaks down. The witnesses say that the
woman began speaking, no one understood her. She did not
seem to understand the fisherman either, so no one could
ask about her origin. Although she appeared friendly and courteous,
she acted strange, and she was always holding a pale
(15:29):
box a little bit less than twenty four inches in size.
She would not allow anyone to touch the box. The
fisherman disassembled, apparently disassembled the ship, and then they started conjecturing,
and they started asking themselves, who is this person? What
(15:49):
is this person doing? Is this a person? And will
explore that as well right now in in this episode,
after a word from our sponsor and we're back. Then
(16:13):
I have to go. Let's I'm doing the minus ten
seconds thing on my ivepad right now, going back. So
I want to get to a group of local fishermen
on the coast of Japan meeting someone who they can't
understand the language, and there's no immediate translator there for
(16:34):
whatever language is being spoke. Doesn't it seem like maybe
it could be a traveler from any number of other
places Burbank, I don't know so much from Burbank Otnership. Well,
that would be that would end up, of course, being
a time travelers. Well, you have to imagine there are
a lot There are a lot of places that someone
(16:55):
floating in a ship that doesn't have any kind of
controls could be coming from. However, it seems like it
would have had to be a short journey in order
to survive in that thing, unless it was packed full
of food and water. Anyway, we can get into more
of that later. But I just I'm just imagining a
bunch of local fishermen not being able to understand many languages.
(17:17):
I know if I was one of those fishermen and
I only spoke Japanese. Mm hmm, that's it. I can't
understand anything you're saying to me. I'm sorry, sure, yeah,
But there's also a situation where you would think through
hand gestures, right or or drawing, some communications should be
(17:39):
possible to to, yeah, have some sort of two way communication.
I don't know. Have you ever been in a situation
where you're talking to someone who doesn't have a common
language with you. Absolutely? Yeah, yeah, And a lot of it,
you're right, can be solved in those ways. I I
(18:01):
wonder if there was any kind of panic going on
because of the somewhat mysterious situation everybody was in. Maybe
that led to even less communication being available. Who knows.
So that's a I mean, that's a really that's a
really good point. And we are probably never going to
(18:22):
know what this person was saying. I'm pretty sure they're
not from Burbank. But other than that, we don't we
don't know what they said. We do, however, have in
these accounts, we have people who claimed to be eyewitnesses.
One was an older man from the local village, and
he thought he didn't think this is some strange alien
(18:45):
or extra terrestrial. He thought that this passenger was a princess,
perhaps of a foreign realm and that she married in
her homeland. But and this this guy is he's clearly
out a future as a screen It's going full backstory, Yeah,
full backstory. He says, she's probably princess from for in
(19:07):
realm and she married in her homeland. But when she
had an affair with a townsman after the marriage, it
caused scandal and the lover was executed and the princess
was banned from home. I just have him. I just
had this idea of him doing it like a TV pitch. Sure,
and the princess, right, it was banned from home, so she, uh,
(19:27):
she had to go, but they couldn't kill her because
everybody liked her. And then she had a lot of
sympathy and she liked this big fan club, so they said, Okay,
we're not gonna we're not gonna kill you. Um getting
this weird boat. Yeah, he was working. He was working
on script for a play that he was gonna be
putting on and man, he just went full on. So
(19:49):
under his account, if this were correct, then that box
would contain the head of her deceased lover. And here's
something else. So in the past, this wasn't the first
time this kind of trope turned up in the past,
(20:10):
a very similar object with a woman apparently washed ashore
on it close by beach, and this time there was
a not a box, but there was a small board
with a head pinned to it. Geez. So then again,
this person's conjecture is that the box would probably be
the same, and that's why she protected it so fervently.
(20:32):
And there are other legends in Japan that have to
do with something kind of similar, where there's a a
box that's given to a character and the characters still
never to open the box. Right, And I'm sorry I'm
not giving specifics because this is just from cursory reading,
but inside the box is something very special you're not
(20:54):
allowed to show anybody. When the character returns to his home,
he realizes that no buddy around that he knows is
there anymore, and turns out it's been three hundred years
since he was last in his hometown, even though he
doesn't think it's been three hundred years, and he proceeds
to open the box, and inside the box was actually
(21:15):
his age like his all the time that she saves him,
that this God has saved him was actually inside the box,
and he became an old man when he opened it. Right, Okay,
that's a new one to me. Another similar anecdote from
the folklore perspective of the forbidden access concept would be
(21:40):
the famous story was a Blackbeard. Okay it was it
was blue Beard, alright, pirate captain who would marry somebody
or who married a lady. And then he said, everything
you want is yours, just don't go in this one
room ever, And of course she goes in, and that's
where he has killed all the other women you marry
(22:03):
because he told them not to go into the room.
He's kind of creating his own problem. I think in
that story, what's happening? Yeah, But you know, I I
I don't talk about in personal life too much, but
I've never been in a situation where I had a
dead body room that I wouldn't let that. I just
(22:24):
feel like, if you have a room you don't want
people to go into, then you should just lock it
and you shouldn't point it out all the time, or
I mean, clean up after yourself. That's only you know,
that's a good point. But this was also a different
period in history. You know, they didn't have like plastic
tarps and yeah, yeah, soaked would wooden planks. But before
(22:50):
we go too far into folklore, let's take let's take
a look at the rest of the story. So, so
the fisher folks say, it would take a lot of effort,
essentially for us to investigate this woman and figure out
what's up with her boat. We have a lot of
fishing to do. You know. They thought maybe this was
(23:12):
just a tradition that some other group of people practiced.
So they said, okay, we'll just put this craft back together.
We won't mess with your stuff, so we'll leave your water,
we'll leave your food, leave and will help push this
thing back out to the ocean and travels late view
(23:33):
to your destiny. And then the older man who was
giving this account has a great quotation here. From human sight,
it might be cruel, but it seems to be her
predetermined destiny. That's a that's kind of cold, But you know,
(23:54):
I I get it. Maybe this is what she's meant
to do, float around until she finds the rightful place.
So February eighteen o three this happens, And eighteen oh
three is not that long ago. It's a little over
two hundred years, which in the span of time is
just like that. So that's why you will sometimes hear
(24:17):
people describe this as the first quote unquote modern UFO
citing Let's look at the analysis, all right, folklore, folkloric similarities,
um as. As you know, I extensively mess around with folklore,
and um folks a lot, a lot of a lot
(24:43):
of you listening now also do extensive folklore research. Right.
This stuff is fascinating and it's great. And one of
the things that we find in any kind of investigation
of anecdotes or legends is that aspects of stories are
contagious and they mixed together, right, especially when they cross cultures,
(25:06):
especially when they crossed cultures, and then they start to
exist in a different framework. We mentioned before the stories
of fay or fairy abductions, right where they would take
a kid, a human child, a human jacket and replace
it with a change lean sort of like a sick baby.
This was this was kind of the d n A
(25:30):
of what would later become alien abduction stories. And of
course we're not saying that people who believe they have
been abducted by some kind of extraterrestrial entity or a
government agency or extra dimensional thing We're not saying they
don't believe it. We're saying that the two types of
stories culturally have a lot in common. Yeah, there's a
(25:52):
precedent to the belief of being taken a lot, taken
away by something unknown or unseen, and then return. I
always wanted to as long as a kid. One of
my favorite folklore stories was Rip van Winkle, Oh Sure,
where he falls asleep, time passes and he's playing these
bowling with the he he gets wasted one night and
(26:15):
he play he goes bowling with it changes sometimes elves,
sometimes their gnome. Sometimes they're just sketchy mountain folk. They're
like carneys, short corn carneys bowling with carneys. That sounds
I it sounds like something I would watch, read or
listen to. I. I don't you know. I'm not that
(26:38):
great at bowling. It's a curse. So you you might
get tricked into betting a little bit and then a
little more. You know. Oh wow, is that? I I
don't know. So that's a that's a fascinating story. And
that's what I was thinking when you brought up the
idea of someone losing time finding their age in those
(26:59):
two story is most likely exists and we're created independently. Sure,
I mean they may have mortality is a heck of
a motivator, so that probably separately inspired the authors of
those stories. But for the purposes of this exploration, what
(27:19):
that means is that there may be elements of the
Utsuru Buni story that either come from another earlier story
or were later transmitted to something. And then there's also
we will be remiss if we didn't say the UFO
(27:40):
USO angle right, sure, floating object, flying objects, submerged object.
Pros and cons for it being one of those types
of objects. Okay, Well, let's start off with the ship
being made largely out of wood. Yes, that you know,
traditionally not a space faring material, or at least not
(28:02):
a ideal space farring material. Okay, so that's a con.
I'll do some devil's advocacy here and say a pro
would be that they had never seen this type of
craft before. Okay, yeah, that's that is definitely up there.
I know that the type of boat was similar to
(28:25):
something that they would be familiar with with the rounded
the rounded bottom was a boat shape that they would
be used to, but the top part was like completely
out of the out of the element, like why would
that be there? Um. Another pro is the unusual appearance
(28:46):
of the occupant, which to them in this period would
have probably would have been alien, I mean not a
not even alien extraterrestrial sense, just a very very strange,
licking person. And if we want to bridge a kind
of the folklore aspect and the UFO USO aspect, we
lou you look to some stuff having to do with
(29:07):
the dragon god of the sea, Reugion um. And this
is there's this place called the Dragon Palace Castle, which
is a translation of course, that is at the bottom
of the sea where this god lives and he has
servants or the god has servants. There are let's see,
(29:28):
it's built out of solid crystal, which might bring in
you know what, they believed the windows to be created
out of um. And there are a lot of legends
about this place, and one of the legends has to
do with the inhabitants who had guess what, red hair
and pink skin. So it feels like maybe if you
(29:50):
see this and you know about these legends, you're aware
of Reugion and the denizens or excuse me, the inhabitants
of the palace under the sea. You may think, well,
maybe that's what this is. Maybe this is an emissary
from that realm, from that area, or you know, someone
trying to escape. Yeah, you know, and that that's a
(30:13):
great point because we know that having some pre existing information,
even if you're not even if it's not the front
of your mind, right, we know that it it can
be a very powerful priming influence. Yeah, it's a lens
that you end up seeing it or even though you
don't realize the lenses there. Other ethnologists and historians also
(30:34):
took a look at this case um often before it
became kind of known in the West, because you won't
find a whole lot of information on it in English. No,
there are a lot of blogs though. So if you
do speak Japanese speaking read Japanese, and you have some
(30:56):
Japanese sources that you would like to hip us too,
then please cinem our way um give me what you
think the best translations are. I would love to learn
more about this. Here's what we have now in various
in various decades after this event February three, uh other
(31:20):
experts or scholars investigated this, and one fellow named Yanagita
Kunio really went deep. He went hard on the painting,
and he emerged a little more skeptical. So he points
out that the circular boat shapes as as you said, Matt,
we're not unusual in Japan. They've been around for a while.
(31:43):
And he said that the really weird stuff for people
at this time would have been windows made of glass
and those brazen protective plates, so they would make it
look um, sort of exotic to the people. Would be
like seeing a modern car in the time when you know,
the model T is the thing that you see rolling
down the street, you know, with with all of the
(32:06):
glass products and other things, and it would just be strange.
You couldn't really understand what you're looking at. Yeah, exactly exactly,
and it would be kind of a It would be
close enough that you would say that's some sort of car,
and now they're like, that's some sort of boat. He
(32:26):
also points out that the oldest versions of this not
necessarily the most popular, but the oldest versions, according to Yanagita,
describe humble, circular, open log boats without any dome, and
he argues that these details, these plates, and these windows
(32:50):
and stuff were added afterwards because people would inevitably ask
how did this logboat make it across the open sea? Oh,
that's a great question, especially an open logboat like that,
susceptible to any kind of weather. Two waves, it's just
(33:13):
it's going down. But if it's enclosed, I guess it
makes a lot of sense. So in this way, it's
almost like adding on details, not necessarily to a lie,
but to a story. You know that you're making up
as you go, and you add more details to make
it seem more credible, embellishing. Yeah, the high seas could
be a dangerous place, and some of that may hinge
(33:33):
on the shape of the boat, because if you're imagining,
you know, something more like a lifeboat or a canoe,
that would be that would probably have a better chance
because it's slightly better shape. But no, this is just
um a thing that's spherical at the top and rounded
at the bottom and bobbing along, just moving where the
(33:58):
ocean takes it. It's like bait and tack, you know.
Strange so Yanagita also points out that most legends similar
to that of the suro Bune sound alike. Someone finds
a strange person, almost always a girl or young woman
inside a circular boat, and either rescues them or sends
(34:20):
them back to the ocean. Huh, tails, oldest time this time? Oh,
I was going to break into song there. Um. Yeah,
I mean there are so many legends about that kind
of thing, and you can imagine the stories that mostly
male sailors would make up while out on the high season.
(34:41):
You're probably familiar with a lot of them, you know.
I'm glad you brought that up, Matt, because it reminds
me of one of the strangest what are the strangest
cases of sailors stories that are found out about? Is
it safe for work? Yeah? It is, Well, we'll tell
this for work version. For a long time, since people
(35:05):
were sailing the oceans, right, Uh, there were always legends
of sea monsters and of aquatic creatures that were very
close to people. Essentially Mr Folk mermaids, and sailors would
talk about seeing mermaids from a distance on the shore.
I mean, this goes back to like Greco Roman stuff
(35:26):
with sirens singing. Um. And then the best guests that
a couple of people have is that they were manatees.
That doesn't you know. That's the thing that gets me.
It's I keep thinking, how long did these guys have
to be out there on the ocean to to think, uh,
(35:51):
to mistake humanity for a person, and this this misidentification,
whether it was through you know, seeing a seal or
manatee or another creature that would kind of like lounge out.
I mean, I guess maybe a walrus, but the tusk
would probably make it hard to mistake. I guess it
(36:11):
depends on the distance exact. But um, you know, in
a way, if these people were hoping to see a
human of some sort, then they were always kind of
primed to see it. And if people were familiar with
these sorts of legends, then they would end up in
(36:35):
the in the telling, especially if it's oral recounting memories
so treacherous, they might end up accidentally adding details that
somebody else misunderstands that add up into something else there
were Or if it's a great story that you're retelling
at a tavern somewhere, I mean, why would you just say, oh, no,
it was just a walrus. That's no fun. I'm just saying,
(37:00):
all of a sudden, all of a sudden, it was
a it was a beautiful mermaid. And the person you
found a drift in this boat had hair extensions. I'm
not discounting stories of mer folk. I'm just saying it's unlikely.
That's all. The ocean is a big place, and from
our previous episodes, we know that if there are any
large undiscovered creatures today, they had the odds are highest
(37:25):
that they would exist in the ocean. Right, so maybe
they're there. I don't want to I don't want to
ruin that for anybody, you know, but I do have
to say they definitely weren't um discovered by a certain
channel on television in a series called Mermaids. They can
confirm that they absolutely were not. And I would never
play play ball with that notion. Um. But I'm not
(37:48):
going to act like I'm not gonna go see aqua man.
I'll check it out for sure. I've diverted us. The
The point here is that there were other scholars who
are taking vigorous looks at this. One is named Dr
Kazu Tanaka. Yes, this is a professor for computer and
(38:09):
electronics engineering at a university in Tokyo. He investigated the
original texts. The three texts that are you can find now.
They actually exist in real life right now in museums.
You can go and pick them up. Um and this
he did this research and he's considering he's really looking
(38:32):
at the popular versions of UFO sightings, the more modern
ones that we can think about, and then comparing those
to the turo Bune event, let's say, or the retelling
of it. And he he points out that these legends
of bun a it never, it never flies, It never
(38:53):
you know, drives, like we said, it has no control mechanisms,
at least it's not recorded. It doesn't show any signs
of technology besides being a boat and maybe having some windows,
like extraordinary technology. Yeah, nothing beyond what could be GPS,
No lasers. No, Uh what's that thing in Star Trek
where it will just create any food or beverage you desire. Oh,
(39:17):
the it's the food machine. I don't know what it's called.
Or tricorder. They didn't she didn't have a tricorder with it, right,
that's a good example. It just I mean this this
ship just drift. It just drifted across the water. It
drifted to the fisherman, or they didn't even drift to them.
They had to go get it and reel it in.
And so uh Tanaka concluded that this tail was a
(39:41):
mix of folklore and imagination. He also based his assumptions
on Yanagita's earlier work. He had one more uh, he
had a couple more holes to poke in the story
to will examine after a word from our sponsor, and
(40:10):
we're back that there's one big problem with this story.
And it's a really big problem that as somebody from
the United States just learning about this, I wouldn't have
thought about unless somebody like Dr Tanaka went through and
actually examined it. And that's the location of where this
(40:31):
event purportedly happened. Yes, according to Dr Tanaka, locations that
have been referenced in various accounts of this are in
fact fictitious. Uh. He specifically points out Haa Tono Hamma
and Haara Yador to make the anecdote sound credible. He
(40:53):
believes the author designated the beaches as personal acreages of
a local land owner named Ogasawa Nagashigi. Uh. And this
this character did. This is a real person who did
live during the Edo period, but his land was in
in the heartland away from the water, right, and so
(41:15):
it seems pretty definite, at least according Dr Tanaka, that
this fellow never had any contact with the fishermen on
the Pacific coast. Uh. The Ogasawari clan served the Tokugawa
dynasty and they had power over most of northeastern Japan
until eighteen sixty eight, and that's a long time after this,
(41:39):
right right, and there um, their mainland holdings were in
the Hitashi province, and geographically that's very close to eastern beaches,
and so Dr Tanaka found it very odd that such
a strange incident could have occurred and it wasn't commented
(42:02):
upon in any official documents, right You'd think so if
something this strange and seemingly important occurred to an individual
who's that close and proximity to power occurred, you think
it would be written down somewhere. Somebody somewhere is being
told this, and they would go, Okay, the strange thing happened.
Perhaps there's some kind of invaders going on with this.
(42:23):
It's at least worth documentary, right Yeah. And let's also
keep in mind that this was during a period of isolation,
national insolation, right where in Japan really limited um, really
limited a lot of international interactions. So nearly all foreigners
(42:48):
were barred from entering except in a very specific circumstances,
the common resident of Japan, like the normal you know
Jane or John Doe of Japan like you and I,
had very little chance of ever leaving the country, so
this would have been beyond unusual, right uh. And there
(43:12):
is a remarkable incident that is documented that Dr Tanaka
found and it happened in eighteen twenty four when a
British whaler was stranded on the northeastern coast of the
Hitachi district. Before you ask, no, he did not show
up in a weird cupcake looking chip. Uh. Tanaka also
found out that during the rulership of the Tokugawa clan,
(43:34):
uh the Ogasawara family and the Tokugawa started mapping their territories.
And this is important because the names of both of
the beaches mentioned in the text are missing, and they
also do not appear on the maps of the whole
of Japan, which came out in nineteen o seven. If
(43:57):
the name of a village, a city, or a place
had changed in history, this would have been noted right
So because of this, Dr Tanaka thinks thinks that this
is probably just a legend of folklore similar to um
similar to the stories in modern urban legends, right, you know,
(44:21):
the one trace the call, and the phone call was
coming from inside the house, and it wasn't at this town,
and it wasn't my first cousin, but it's someone that
knows my first cousin, and they live a few towns over.
And there was a hook sticking out of the side
of the driver window. Yeah, and I'm pretty sure it
was a Pontiac were the pontiac is not around anymore.
(44:43):
This happened to someone's older brother who went to a
school a couple of districts away. They were think, yeah,
there were a few grades above us. You know, it's
always just a little bit, a little bit too far
to reach, and it's tantalizing lee possible. And let's go
back into this eighteen twenty four account of the British
(45:03):
whaler who got stranded. Uh. The first accounting of this
is recorded the next year in the first the first one,
what was it called um Tales of the Rabbit Garden
is when that is officially written. So perhaps there's a
little styling going on there of something an actual occurrence,
(45:25):
and then you bring some folklore into it. I mean,
that's that's at least a great tale to put into
your book called Tales from the Rabbit Garden. That's a
good point. So we know there's an isolation is placed
where this sort of incident would have been reported immediately. Right.
And also these uh ethnologists and historians who look back
(45:46):
at this later in the modern day, they they pointed
out something that really caught me, which is that originally
aliens UFOs were not part of the conversation. Okay, there
was There wasn't like a term for flying saucer, right,
um so or extraterrestrial. I guess there might be a term,
(46:09):
but it wouldn't be applied the same way we use
it today. A visitor of sorts, but not like that.
So they're saying that over time the ufo thing got
retro fitted onto it, you know what I mean. Uh.
The particularly European appearance of the woman right uh, shades skin,
(46:30):
red hair, uh, the upper part of the utsu bune,
and the unknown writing right the language that the fisherman
could not identify, lead both Tanaka and Yanagida to the
conclusion that the entire story was based on this historical circumstance.
(46:51):
Um people. If the of the period were totally insulated
from the outside world, so that this was more or
a tale reflecting xenophobic cultural attitudes, sort of the same
way again that modern urban legends reflect fears that are
already in popular culture. Right like in the n nineties,
(47:15):
the Satanic Panic, late eighties Satanic Panic thing gripped the nation.
In these people, every um, every region had some sort
of tale of a secret occult thing going on. And
in some cases, I'll go on record saying it, Yeah,
in some cases they were probably true. Not that like
(47:36):
dark magic worked or anything, but there were people who
conducted ritual murders. Yeah, and it may not have had
anything to do with Satan or anything like that. Right,
it made it, But that stuff happened. It just didn't
happen near as often nor as widespread as people thought
it did. But there's often a seed of truth in
(47:57):
these sorts of stories. And if we look at it
from a structural perspective, the construction of the story, it's
ultimately like a lot of other legends itself explaining the
woman disappears, knowing in what she said, the boxes goes
with her. Yeah, there's no artifact, there's no nothing. And
(48:22):
another thing which was new information to us is that
the people of the period here apparently had great interest
in paranormal things, loved ghost stories, monster stories, bizarre events.
So it wouldn't be surprising to find these stories of
the strange and inexplicable in these books. Yeah, those are
(48:44):
the best stories in my opinion. That's I think one
of the big reasons why you and I and Nol
and Trustan are interested in these things, because it's so
other and outside of anything we experience that you get
to you live in that world where monsters exist and ghosts,
you know, remain after the physical body leaves. I think
(49:07):
we're going to have to differ here, Matt, you don't
want to live in there. No monsters do exist, I think.
But but like like Krakens, or are we talking about
human monsters? What kind of monsters are we talking about? Where? Wolves?
So when we bring it all back together, what our conclusions.
(49:32):
Could this be nothing more than a popular legend recited
over and over, changing a bit each time. It's pretty
clear that in the years following the initial reports, a
large portion of the population except that this is fact,
believed something came ashore. But does that mean it actually happened?
I mean the fictitious locations are real obstacle here yea.
(49:55):
And as far as Dr Tanaka looked into it, it
seems that those locations are Indeed, it's much more likely
that those locations were fictitious rather than renamed. Yeah. For me,
it's more and more feeling like a version or a
retelling of an older story that had some new details
(50:19):
put into it. And I really, I really think you're
well their analysis and then our going over the idea
that perhaps it was a morphing. It was a morphing
of these these folklore tales dealing with the isolationism in
the area at the time in the eight when the
(50:40):
story was written, and then later on kind of doing
the same thing, except for in more modern times in
the nineteen nineties, tales of alien spacecraft that were very
popular then get morphed like this thing gets or they
get pulled into this thing, right, So then it's just
kind of just been changing over time little by little.
(51:03):
But there there's some other questions, and I think we
can end on some questions here, how seaworthy would a
vessel like this actually be? As we said, no sales,
no steering equipment, no oars, etcetera. Where did it come from?
Could it have come from Russia? Perhaps if you look
at some of the ocean currents around here, not around
(51:25):
here we're not in right now, but around the land
mass of Japan. You see here on the coast there's
a current that goes from sort of southwest to northeast
along the bottom and then later sort of the eastern
part of Japan. But at the top there's a current.
(51:45):
In the northeast, there's a current that goes the exact
opposite direction. So as these if you if you look
at the way these currents well swarm around, it looks
like it's possible that something with no steering could have
drifted down. But you know the best way to find
(52:08):
that out is to build one of these ships and
put it out the water and see what happens. What
are you what are you doing? What are you doing
this summer? I'm building around ship that has some brazen
sides and a couple of windows. But you know, the
one last thing we have to get into is is
(52:28):
it possible that there's something even crazier like the here's
where it's get it gets crazy moment, Like could this
have been a person that was pulled out of time,
perhaps out of some other dimension, out of some other
you know, maybe a time when ships did look like that,
or an alternate dimension. I know, that's you're getting into
(52:52):
the weirdness. I mean, probably not right, I especially because
there's meat and water, like some kind of container, water bedding,
recognizable stuff, and oh yeah, and the language could have
just been cyrillic Russian, you know. And if there's an
isolations policy, then the chances of people knowing or even
(53:18):
without like speaking reading, just recognizing another written language and
being able to say, oh that's Russian, oh that's French
or something, those chances are pretty low. And the very
last question, the one that stuck with me. I don't
know about you, Matt, but the one that stuck with me,
(53:40):
the one that has our producer shrugging in uh, infuming
and frustration. What happened to the lady in the ship?
What happened to the woman on the ship. Well, she
went back down to the dragon palace and you know,
she got she took a bunch of notes, she wrote
them inside her ship. That's what she was doing. That's
why there's all the writing there. And they were like,
(54:01):
did you remember the box? And she said, definitely. The
question is what was its function? What was it doing?
Maybe it was some kind of sound recording device or
a camera maybe yeah, maybe yeah, maybe it was an
a nes classic. If people are getting doing weird stuff
(54:22):
to those that is that how Nintendo, it was a
brilliant marketing campaign that started centuries ago. I know, four
video games. I just found out that they were making
you know cards in the eight hundreds, which is pretty awesome. Nintendo,
Good on you for making that switch. Oh yeah, I
(54:43):
didn't even expect that one until it was nice. That's nice,
And we would like to hear your opinion about this,
and additionally, we would like to hear other historical anomalies
that you have found, because whether this is entirely gen
whether it's based in truth, whether it's something even weirder
than the various theories we explored today, we'd like to
(55:07):
hear about it. Yeah, and you're part of the world.
Did a ship like this show up in a little
bit later in eighteen o two, eighteen o three, Maybe this,
you know, matches up somewhere else in the world where
it just floated to Did your parents, grandparents or ancestors
meet when one of them washed ashore in a mysterious craft.
If so, have you taken a DNA test, we'd love
(55:29):
to hear about it, or just send us some DNA
and you know we'll take care of it. Or you
can write an email which reminds me it's time for
our chat at Corners. Our first shout out comes from Sydney.
Sidney says, hi, guys, I was listening to both episodes
of your Serial Killers series. Loved them. You said you
(55:53):
might do a third one. I was going to suggest
maybe the West Mesa murders from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I
live here and people are still talking about them pretty often.
I don't know. Check it out if you want. Thanks
for reading. Oh all right, Sydney, I don't know much
about that, Ben. Are you aware of these at all?
That this was absolutely news to me. I think we
(56:15):
should do a third episode or the installment of that series,
So let us know if we would like Matt Nolan
I to uh to investigate this in a future episode
and send us just take a page out of Sydney's
book and send us your suggestions. Awesome, thank you for writing, Sydney.
I'm glad that enjoy is not the right word to use.
(56:38):
I think we talked about it in that episode, But
there's something compelling and fascinating, especially when you consider how
many of these crimes occur with relatively little fanfare outside
of their region. I mean, the Highway of Tears was
an active hunting ground for how long decades? And just
(56:59):
to add a little bit of mystery here to the
end of it, I just looked it up. Ben. In
two thousand nine, the remains of eleven women were found
buried in the desert of West Mesa, and no suspects
have been arrested, and a serial killer is believed to
be responsible. All right, we're on the case. Our next
(57:20):
Our next shout out is a little bit unusual. It's
something that we we haven't always done en. It's something
I'd like your help with, folks. So I went on
Twitter recently for a tangentially related thing to ask a
question because I spent part of an afternoon trying to
figure out the proper plural of bigfoot? Is it just
(57:44):
big foot like sheep? Yeah, there are there are several
big foot and there are some sheep um or is
it big foots? Three big foots were on the road
that day or is it big feet? Man, I don't
even know how many big feet I was here and
walking around. These are great examples, Matt, this is this
(58:04):
is a gift. So we went on Twitter. We asked
about it, and we we got a lot of responses.
We're just gonna read a few here. Oh Man, Yawn
has a great one. This is my favorite. All right,
what is it? John says, I believe it's like surgeons
and attorneys general bigg's foot? Um all right? Uh? And
(58:28):
then Stephen Even says one big foot, more bigfoot and
big foot ist definitely a Kyle Sherman says, I wonder
if you can call a group of bigfoot a trample
a trample of bigfoot? You can, now, but then what
do you you gotta still say something for a trample
of big Foot's See, here's the thing, Okay, I was thinking,
(58:49):
I spent way too much time thinking about this. You
wouldn't say teeth brushes if you had two toothbrushes. That's
very true. So also, yeah, you're never brushing a single tooth. Well,
I guess sometimes you are due to circumstances. But it's
a teeth brush. It's a teeth brush. Uh. So We
(59:14):
also had a buddy friend of the show, Josh Clark,
chime in. Do you Clark? I know that guy. He
and I talked about the issues, the important issues at hand.
He voted for bigfoots really, which is sort of what
David Bakara I feel like David Bakara from our earlier
bigfoot interview he hit the ploys used was Bigfoot's. Well,
(59:36):
do right in and let us know. Because I still
can't let this go and it seems like there's not
really a consensus. We have time for one more. Shoutout.
Jeff from Ontario, shout out to you. Jeff says, Hey, guys,
I just listened to the Pyramids episode. I listened to
the whole thing, wondering if you were going to mention
the pyramids on Mars. By the way, that is pyramids
(59:59):
on Mars. I'm kind of glad you didn't go there.
It would have cheapened the sincerity of the subject. We
did mention something that actually I kind of need to correct.
I said a monolith on one of the moons of Jupiter.
That is incorrect. It's on one of the more moons
of Mars. But we did mention that. Let's get back
(01:00:20):
in here. Jeff also writes you were right about skaed
Dooch proceeding Kung Fu Panda by quite a bit. I'm
a big Jabls fan and user of skadooch as sort
of an exclamation point, enough so that it was one
of my niece and nephew's first words. Well, congratulations. It
brought them a ton of joy and it was super
(01:00:40):
cute to see their smiles peek out as they struggled
to say it through their pacifiers. Thanks for the great show, Jeff, Well,
thank you, Jeff. You know, I think pyramids on any
other planet is just an awesome topic because if it,
if we did find that, I mean, the implications ben
(01:01:00):
right right. But again, going back to that episode, is
that a pyramid or is it just sort of a
pointy mountain? It's probably just like the one that they discovered.
And then yeah, and then also, and this will warm
(01:01:21):
knowles heart, will warm our colleagues heart to hear your
information about schedooch, Jeff, So thank you so much. Writing
This concludes our gosh, but not our show. We will
return next week with something. Just let's see what do
we have lined up? Oh, we have some interviews oh yes,
and we have another one coming up. Can we spoil
(01:01:44):
kind of what it is or just let it come out?
I don't know what do you think it has to
do with what happens when something catastrophic occurs in Washington,
d C. I think that's cryptic enough. Yeah, check it out.
Your future just might depend on it. No pressure. In
the meantime, you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter,
(01:02:07):
where we are Conspiracy Stuff and Conspiracy Stuff Show, respectively.
If none of that is quite um scratching your itch
the opening your yeah, then you can take a tip
from your fellow listeners and email us directly. We are
(01:02:28):
conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:25):
and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Noel is with us in spirit and they call me Ben.
We are joined by our super producer Tristan. Of course
you are you, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. Never fear, our compatriot will be
returning physically as well as one would presume is spiritually.
(00:46):
In a later episode, Matt, We've got something pretty interesting
for you today. Oh yes, yeah, everybody out there listening,
this is something that I am just learning about. Of Ben.
I think you had seen this before in whispers on
the internet and in books, but it's it's a fascinating
(01:08):
happening that occurs way back in the eighteen hundreds, that
maybe an encounter with another species, another civilization, right, you've
heard of this before. We have often over the course
of the show explored aliens and inexplicable history. We found
numerous examples of just weird weird stuff, allegations of lost technology,
(01:33):
entire loss civilizations, and of course, at some point, what's
that guy's named George Slucos close the ancient aliens at
some point, aliens, extraterrestrials or allegations thereof. We do want
to point out that we and the world at large
has found no universally agreed, solid proof of any sort
(01:55):
of alien encounter. Was begrudgingly true, but we have seen
some incredibly strange stuff. Nonetheless, and as much as it
may irk humanity to admit this, we may well never
knew the full story behind some historical accounts and events.
It's true a lot of times it's written down once
(02:15):
by one person, and we can find that. But that's
all we have to go on. And we do know
that at various times, quote unquote, historical accounts have been anecdotal,
heavily biased, written with some sort of strange agenda in mind,
or entirely made up and passed off as the real thing.
(02:37):
Do you have to make make the whims of some
king or some you know, could be a monarchy, it
could be just a government. It could be a single
influential person. Hey, increasingly, it could be a corporation. Right,
what happens when they write the textbooks? I know, an
episode perhaps for another day. But we point this out
(02:59):
because we want to thank all of the historians in
the audience who are probably, as we speak, going nuts
over figuring out some detail that other people have overlooked, misinterpreted,
or even purposefully uh mischaracterized, or even you armchair historians
(03:21):
out there who are just scouring the web on your
own time. The work you do is important and you
know nobody else is doing it, So thank you. Right
and history, our understanding of history is nowhere near as
clear cut and uh concrete as some people would have
us believe. And then also, you know this sort of
(03:44):
confusion persists in the modern day. We're not so different
from the earlier examples of our species. So today we're
looking at one such account of strange historical account. We'll
call it the legend of the Utsuru Bune. And before
we dive in here, we want to be crystal clear
with this. Uh you don't speak Japanese. I am unaware
(04:09):
if I do, okay, and I will also be surprised
if I start speaking Japanese. We're saying this because, um,
we do want to be respectful to different cultures, and
if there are any mispronunciations or mischaracterized americanisms that sweep
in uh in regards to our accents. Then we hope
(04:30):
that it's still close enough to get the gist. Yeah,
and let us know if we do make any mistakes
like that, you can reach us Jonathan dot Strickland at
how stuff works dot com. We have we welcome all feedback.
Our complaint department is open twenty four hours a day,
seven days a week. So we're diving in, or better yet,
we're floating ashore to Japan and the dawn of the
(04:54):
nineteen century. Our story is called we set it at
the top with suro bune, but you may also see
it online somewhere as utsuro fun a with an f
or uro bun, a kind of putting them together, and
it refers to this object, a ship of sorts that
allegedly washed ashore in eighteen zero three eighteen o three
(05:17):
uh in Hitachi Province on it that's on the eastern
coast of Japan, and it's located near where modern day
Tokyo is, not quite but near there, which will we
will explore that part of the story in a little
bit further depth. Accounts of this tale appear in multiple
texts three of the most popular examples are also from
(05:37):
the early to mid nineteen century. So there's one called
the toWin Show Setsu, which translates to Tales from the
Rabbit Garden, published in eighteen five. This has the most
detailed account or detailed anecdote, and there are similar stories,
similar enough that we we pretty much know their retellings
(05:59):
of the same thing from a work called Diaries and
Stories of Castaways in eighteen thirty five and Dust of
the Apricot in eighteen forty four. So what happens, well, well,
immediately right here we have to point out at the top,
as we've been talking about history and things being written down,
we're twenty two years they're the recording of this is
(06:20):
twenty two years after the alleged event, which is already
a little suspect, but perhaps it was. It was more
of a story told by word of mouth. That kind
of thing wasn't necessarily recorded in any history this happening,
But just keep that in mind as we go through here,
right right, right, So, according to the legend of Bune,
(06:44):
there was this young woman, she was attractive. She arrives
on a beach aboard this thing that they referred to
as a hollow ship because they had no words to
describe it. This thing. Yeah, and there were there were
local fishermen who who brought her inland. They wanted to
know what the what the heck is going on here,
(07:06):
and they found that she was unable to communicate with
these guys because she spoke some other language that they
were unfamiliar with. And the fishermen ended up returning her
to this ship, this hollow ship that they found her in,
and then they pushed her back out to sea, and
according to the legend, it drifted away. That's the gist.
(07:26):
And it sounds like they're a couple of Yeah, there's
some styling on it. Yes, excellent summation, Matt. We can
already tell it sounds like there are a few things
that have been glossed over in this story. Oh for sure.
That's definitely the crib notes version. When you see it
written down like that, and we have some images here
(07:47):
of the ship. Do you want to get into that
now where we can come back to that later. Let's yeah,
we can. We can go into it now. So, as
we said, February twenty second, eighth three, that's when these
local fishermen see this ship drift in the water, they
tow it to land, and they take measurements of it.
(08:07):
So they find that it is uh almost eleven feet
high three point three meters and almost eighteen feet wide
five point four or five meters, and to be more exact,
it's ten point eight three ft high and seventeen point
eight eight feet wide. That's kind of weird. Why do
(08:29):
we have such apparently specific measurements? There is because the
these measurements and meters and feet are conversions from the
measurement system that the Japanese community was using at the time.
So what may have been a more rounded number or
approximation in their original measurement system, when converted to the
(08:52):
measurement systems we use today, it's gonna come out. It's
gonna come out wonky. Was like, the important part of
this description is not that they were measuring in feet
and meters. You know, they weren't. They weren't going, Okay,
that's seventeen point eight seven. Somebody put your thumb. Somebody
(09:12):
put your thumb on the on the tape. Yeah, hold it,
hold it down. And now the shape of this thing
specifically reminded a lot of the witnesses of something that
they knew of that they saw in their everyday lives
as part of ritual um and it was an incense burner,
a type of incense burn This specific rounded shape of
(09:35):
the boat, Yeah, that's the other thing. This this is
not a box. It has like a it has a
dome top to it sorts. It's a little bit wider
at the top than it is at the base, almost
like similar to a cupcake shape. That's you know, that's
kind of what I'm seeing too. But the bottom is
almost more pointed in this weird way like a ship
(09:57):
would be, where the weight is meant to be at
the center of right, and then water displacement occurs as
you moved to the outer edges, right. Yeah, So it
seems like it could have been meant to float like
an actual boat, and from the surface this would have
looked like a floating disc or a bubble like floating
(10:18):
on the surface of the water, which has led many
people more on the fringe conjecture side of stuff to
ask themselves if this was a U s oh perhaps, right,
which is something you turned me onto a long time ago,
unidentified sub merged object, But in this case it would
(10:38):
be a U it would be a UFO, but it
would be a floating right right right right, uh, And
as long as it's not a sinking object. And just
because there are some artist depictions of this that you
can find online if you take a look at them.
In my mind, just when I glance at it, it
looks like some kind of of escape capsule or maybe
(11:03):
from an early spaceship or an early rocket that let's
say NASA would have sent up um the module that
comes down and returns to Earth. That's what it looks
like to make some sort of re entry exactly. Well,
we do know a little bit more about the craft
itself or the ship. The upper part of the vessel
(11:24):
appeared to be made of a red coated rosewood, while
the lower part was covered with plates, brazen plates that
people conjectured were meant to protect it from sharp edged
rocks so it wouldn't pierce the ship and compromise its
ability to function. Because it didn't seem to have any
kind of control system, like it's just kind of floating
(11:47):
there in the ocean and you never know what you're
gonna run into. And the upper part allegedly had several
windows made of glass or crystal, covered with bars and
clogged with an unidentified as in that they believe came
from a tree. The windows, however, were completely transparent, and
this is important because the fishermen looked through the windows
(12:08):
and that's when they saw not only uh, the occupant
of the vessel, which will will get to in a moment,
but also they saw texts written in an unknown language
decorating the interior of the ship. And there's so many
questions that go through my mind when you start thinking
about why would there be texts inside the vehicle, And
(12:32):
we will get into that a little later as well.
But they also found other stuff in there. There were
bed sheets, so apparently the occupant was, you know, sleeping
in this thing, or at least would have been sleeping
in this thing. There was a bottle with some water
in it, quite a lot of according to legend, it
was three point six leaders. And we get back into
(12:53):
that the whole measurement. Right. Um, there was even some
cake and some meat that was prepared. So we know
that these uh, we know that these witnesses were able
to identify items of sustenance, right, food and water. And
then also betting um, the woman that they saw inside
(13:16):
the ship. They supposed that she was eighteen to twenty
years old. She was said to be about a little
bit less than five ft tall four point nine two
ft or one five. She had red hair and red eyebrows,
which was very unusual. Right. Her hair was elongated by
(13:37):
artificial white extensions. So let me check with you guys
that this doesn't that seem a little weird because all
of a sudden we've makes an appearance in this three um.
You know, I can't say that I'm any kind of
experts on the hairstylings of the eight hundreds. You're not
a hair story, no, not a hair story it but
(14:02):
that does seem a bit odd, especially considering they were
trying to figure out what they were made out of
in the stories, and it was written down that perhaps
they were made out of some kind of fur um
or some kind of powdered textile, like just some strange
substance that was elongating her hair. And then they go
on to say, and you'll read this and multiple accounts
(14:23):
and other videos on the subject that you can find
out there on the net, this hairstyle cannot be found
in any literature. Whatever that means. I don't think that's
I'm not so amazed by that, you know, yeah, because
it's a big world. There's a lot of different hairstyles
that don't show up in magazines or are you know,
(14:45):
have illustrations from the eighteen hundreds. The lady's skin was
a very pale, pink shade. She wore long, smooth clothes
of unknown fabrics. Okay, unknown fabrics. No, And and here's
where we would start asking, were we like investigative lawyers,
(15:06):
were this a trial? This would be the part where
the defendants story breaks down. The witnesses say that the
woman began speaking, no one understood her. She did not
seem to understand the fisherman either, so no one could
ask about her origin. Although she appeared friendly and courteous,
she acted strange, and she was always holding a pale
(15:29):
box a little bit less than twenty four inches in size.
She would not allow anyone to touch the box. The
fisherman disassembled, apparently disassembled the ship, and then they started conjecturing,
and they started asking themselves, who is this person? What
(15:49):
is this person doing? Is this a person? And will
explore that as well right now in in this episode,
after a word from our sponsor and we're back. Then
(16:13):
I have to go. Let's I'm doing the minus ten
seconds thing on my ivepad right now, going back. So
I want to get to a group of local fishermen
on the coast of Japan meeting someone who they can't
understand the language, and there's no immediate translator there for
(16:34):
whatever language is being spoke. Doesn't it seem like maybe
it could be a traveler from any number of other
places Burbank, I don't know so much from Burbank Otnership. Well,
that would be that would end up, of course, being
a time travelers. Well, you have to imagine there are
a lot There are a lot of places that someone
(16:55):
floating in a ship that doesn't have any kind of
controls could be coming from. However, it seems like it
would have had to be a short journey in order
to survive in that thing, unless it was packed full
of food and water. Anyway, we can get into more
of that later. But I just I'm just imagining a
bunch of local fishermen not being able to understand many languages.
(17:17):
I know if I was one of those fishermen and
I only spoke Japanese. Mm hmm, that's it. I can't
understand anything you're saying to me. I'm sorry, sure, yeah,
But there's also a situation where you would think through
hand gestures, right or or drawing, some communications should be
(17:39):
possible to to, yeah, have some sort of two way communication.
I don't know. Have you ever been in a situation
where you're talking to someone who doesn't have a common
language with you. Absolutely? Yeah, yeah, And a lot of it,
you're right, can be solved in those ways. I I
(18:01):
wonder if there was any kind of panic going on
because of the somewhat mysterious situation everybody was in. Maybe
that led to even less communication being available. Who knows.
So that's a I mean, that's a really that's a
really good point. And we are probably never going to
(18:22):
know what this person was saying. I'm pretty sure they're
not from Burbank. But other than that, we don't we
don't know what they said. We do, however, have in
these accounts, we have people who claimed to be eyewitnesses.
One was an older man from the local village, and
he thought he didn't think this is some strange alien
(18:45):
or extra terrestrial. He thought that this passenger was a princess,
perhaps of a foreign realm and that she married in
her homeland. But and this this guy is he's clearly
out a future as a screen It's going full backstory, Yeah,
full backstory. He says, she's probably princess from for in
(19:07):
realm and she married in her homeland. But when she
had an affair with a townsman after the marriage, it
caused scandal and the lover was executed and the princess
was banned from home. I just have him. I just
had this idea of him doing it like a TV pitch. Sure,
and the princess, right, it was banned from home, so she, uh,
(19:27):
she had to go, but they couldn't kill her because
everybody liked her. And then she had a lot of
sympathy and she liked this big fan club, so they said, Okay,
we're not gonna we're not gonna kill you. Um getting
this weird boat. Yeah, he was working. He was working
on script for a play that he was gonna be
putting on and man, he just went full on. So
(19:49):
under his account, if this were correct, then that box
would contain the head of her deceased lover. And here's
something else. So in the past, this wasn't the first
time this kind of trope turned up in the past,
(20:10):
a very similar object with a woman apparently washed ashore
on it close by beach, and this time there was
a not a box, but there was a small board
with a head pinned to it. Geez. So then again,
this person's conjecture is that the box would probably be
the same, and that's why she protected it so fervently.
(20:32):
And there are other legends in Japan that have to
do with something kind of similar, where there's a a
box that's given to a character and the characters still
never to open the box. Right, And I'm sorry I'm
not giving specifics because this is just from cursory reading,
but inside the box is something very special you're not
(20:54):
allowed to show anybody. When the character returns to his home,
he realizes that no buddy around that he knows is
there anymore, and turns out it's been three hundred years
since he was last in his hometown, even though he
doesn't think it's been three hundred years, and he proceeds
to open the box, and inside the box was actually
(21:15):
his age like his all the time that she saves him,
that this God has saved him was actually inside the box,
and he became an old man when he opened it. Right, Okay,
that's a new one to me. Another similar anecdote from
the folklore perspective of the forbidden access concept would be
(21:40):
the famous story was a Blackbeard. Okay it was it
was blue Beard, alright, pirate captain who would marry somebody
or who married a lady. And then he said, everything
you want is yours, just don't go in this one
room ever, And of course she goes in, and that's
where he has killed all the other women you marry
(22:03):
because he told them not to go into the room.
He's kind of creating his own problem. I think in
that story, what's happening? Yeah, But you know, I I
I don't talk about in personal life too much, but
I've never been in a situation where I had a
dead body room that I wouldn't let that. I just
(22:24):
feel like, if you have a room you don't want
people to go into, then you should just lock it
and you shouldn't point it out all the time, or
I mean, clean up after yourself. That's only you know,
that's a good point. But this was also a different
period in history. You know, they didn't have like plastic
tarps and yeah, yeah, soaked would wooden planks. But before
(22:50):
we go too far into folklore, let's take let's take
a look at the rest of the story. So, so
the fisher folks say, it would take a lot of effort,
essentially for us to investigate this woman and figure out
what's up with her boat. We have a lot of
fishing to do. You know. They thought maybe this was
(23:12):
just a tradition that some other group of people practiced.
So they said, okay, we'll just put this craft back together.
We won't mess with your stuff, so we'll leave your water,
we'll leave your food, leave and will help push this
thing back out to the ocean and travels late view
(23:33):
to your destiny. And then the older man who was
giving this account has a great quotation here. From human sight,
it might be cruel, but it seems to be her
predetermined destiny. That's a that's kind of cold, But you know,
(23:54):
I I get it. Maybe this is what she's meant
to do, float around until she finds the rightful place.
So February eighteen o three this happens, And eighteen oh
three is not that long ago. It's a little over
two hundred years, which in the span of time is
just like that. So that's why you will sometimes hear
(24:17):
people describe this as the first quote unquote modern UFO
citing Let's look at the analysis, all right, folklore, folkloric similarities,
um as. As you know, I extensively mess around with folklore,
and um folks a lot, a lot of a lot
(24:43):
of you listening now also do extensive folklore research. Right.
This stuff is fascinating and it's great. And one of
the things that we find in any kind of investigation
of anecdotes or legends is that aspects of stories are
contagious and they mixed together, right, especially when they cross cultures,
(25:06):
especially when they crossed cultures, and then they start to
exist in a different framework. We mentioned before the stories
of fay or fairy abductions, right where they would take
a kid, a human child, a human jacket and replace
it with a change lean sort of like a sick baby.
This was this was kind of the d n A
(25:30):
of what would later become alien abduction stories. And of
course we're not saying that people who believe they have
been abducted by some kind of extraterrestrial entity or a
government agency or extra dimensional thing We're not saying they
don't believe it. We're saying that the two types of
stories culturally have a lot in common. Yeah, there's a
(25:52):
precedent to the belief of being taken a lot, taken
away by something unknown or unseen, and then return. I
always wanted to as long as a kid. One of
my favorite folklore stories was Rip van Winkle, Oh Sure,
where he falls asleep, time passes and he's playing these
bowling with the he he gets wasted one night and
(26:15):
he play he goes bowling with it changes sometimes elves,
sometimes their gnome. Sometimes they're just sketchy mountain folk. They're
like carneys, short corn carneys bowling with carneys. That sounds
I it sounds like something I would watch, read or
listen to. I. I don't you know. I'm not that
(26:38):
great at bowling. It's a curse. So you you might
get tricked into betting a little bit and then a
little more. You know. Oh wow, is that? I I
don't know. So that's a that's a fascinating story. And
that's what I was thinking when you brought up the
idea of someone losing time finding their age in those
(26:59):
two story is most likely exists and we're created independently. Sure,
I mean they may have mortality is a heck of
a motivator, so that probably separately inspired the authors of
those stories. But for the purposes of this exploration, what
(27:19):
that means is that there may be elements of the
Utsuru Buni story that either come from another earlier story
or were later transmitted to something. And then there's also
we will be remiss if we didn't say the UFO
(27:40):
USO angle right, sure, floating object, flying objects, submerged object.
Pros and cons for it being one of those types
of objects. Okay, Well, let's start off with the ship
being made largely out of wood. Yes, that you know,
traditionally not a space faring material, or at least not
(28:02):
a ideal space farring material. Okay, so that's a con.
I'll do some devil's advocacy here and say a pro
would be that they had never seen this type of
craft before. Okay, yeah, that's that is definitely up there.
I know that the type of boat was similar to
(28:25):
something that they would be familiar with with the rounded
the rounded bottom was a boat shape that they would
be used to, but the top part was like completely
out of the out of the element, like why would
that be there? Um. Another pro is the unusual appearance
(28:46):
of the occupant, which to them in this period would
have probably would have been alien, I mean not a
not even alien extraterrestrial sense, just a very very strange,
licking person. And if we want to bridge a kind
of the folklore aspect and the UFO USO aspect, we
lou you look to some stuff having to do with
(29:07):
the dragon god of the sea, Reugion um. And this
is there's this place called the Dragon Palace Castle, which
is a translation of course, that is at the bottom
of the sea where this god lives and he has
servants or the god has servants. There are let's see,
(29:28):
it's built out of solid crystal, which might bring in
you know what, they believed the windows to be created
out of um. And there are a lot of legends
about this place, and one of the legends has to
do with the inhabitants who had guess what, red hair
and pink skin. So it feels like maybe if you
(29:50):
see this and you know about these legends, you're aware
of Reugion and the denizens or excuse me, the inhabitants
of the palace under the sea. You may think, well,
maybe that's what this is. Maybe this is an emissary
from that realm, from that area, or you know, someone
trying to escape. Yeah, you know, and that that's a
(30:13):
great point because we know that having some pre existing information,
even if you're not even if it's not the front
of your mind, right, we know that it it can
be a very powerful priming influence. Yeah, it's a lens
that you end up seeing it or even though you
don't realize the lenses there. Other ethnologists and historians also
(30:34):
took a look at this case um often before it
became kind of known in the West, because you won't
find a whole lot of information on it in English. No,
there are a lot of blogs though. So if you
do speak Japanese speaking read Japanese, and you have some
(30:56):
Japanese sources that you would like to hip us too,
then please cinem our way um give me what you
think the best translations are. I would love to learn
more about this. Here's what we have now in various
in various decades after this event February three, uh other
(31:20):
experts or scholars investigated this, and one fellow named Yanagita
Kunio really went deep. He went hard on the painting,
and he emerged a little more skeptical. So he points
out that the circular boat shapes as as you said, Matt,
we're not unusual in Japan. They've been around for a while.
(31:43):
And he said that the really weird stuff for people
at this time would have been windows made of glass
and those brazen protective plates, so they would make it
look um, sort of exotic to the people. Would be
like seeing a modern car in the time when you know,
the model T is the thing that you see rolling
down the street, you know, with with all of the
(32:06):
glass products and other things, and it would just be strange.
You couldn't really understand what you're looking at. Yeah, exactly exactly,
and it would be kind of a It would be
close enough that you would say that's some sort of car,
and now they're like, that's some sort of boat. He
(32:26):
also points out that the oldest versions of this not
necessarily the most popular, but the oldest versions, according to Yanagita,
describe humble, circular, open log boats without any dome, and
he argues that these details, these plates, and these windows
(32:50):
and stuff were added afterwards because people would inevitably ask
how did this logboat make it across the open sea? Oh,
that's a great question, especially an open logboat like that,
susceptible to any kind of weather. Two waves, it's just
(33:13):
it's going down. But if it's enclosed, I guess it
makes a lot of sense. So in this way, it's
almost like adding on details, not necessarily to a lie,
but to a story. You know that you're making up
as you go, and you add more details to make
it seem more credible, embellishing. Yeah, the high seas could
be a dangerous place, and some of that may hinge
(33:33):
on the shape of the boat, because if you're imagining,
you know, something more like a lifeboat or a canoe,
that would be that would probably have a better chance
because it's slightly better shape. But no, this is just
um a thing that's spherical at the top and rounded
at the bottom and bobbing along, just moving where the
(33:58):
ocean takes it. It's like bait and tack, you know.
Strange so Yanagita also points out that most legends similar
to that of the suro Bune sound alike. Someone finds
a strange person, almost always a girl or young woman
inside a circular boat, and either rescues them or sends
(34:20):
them back to the ocean. Huh, tails, oldest time this time? Oh,
I was going to break into song there. Um. Yeah,
I mean there are so many legends about that kind
of thing, and you can imagine the stories that mostly
male sailors would make up while out on the high season.
(34:41):
You're probably familiar with a lot of them, you know.
I'm glad you brought that up, Matt, because it reminds
me of one of the strangest what are the strangest
cases of sailors stories that are found out about? Is
it safe for work? Yeah? It is, Well, we'll tell
this for work version. For a long time, since people
(35:05):
were sailing the oceans, right, Uh, there were always legends
of sea monsters and of aquatic creatures that were very
close to people. Essentially Mr Folk mermaids, and sailors would
talk about seeing mermaids from a distance on the shore.
I mean, this goes back to like Greco Roman stuff
(35:26):
with sirens singing. Um. And then the best guests that
a couple of people have is that they were manatees.
That doesn't you know. That's the thing that gets me.
It's I keep thinking, how long did these guys have
to be out there on the ocean to to think, uh,
(35:51):
to mistake humanity for a person, and this this misidentification,
whether it was through you know, seeing a seal or
manatee or another creature that would kind of like lounge out.
I mean, I guess maybe a walrus, but the tusk
would probably make it hard to mistake. I guess it
(36:11):
depends on the distance exact. But um, you know, in
a way, if these people were hoping to see a
human of some sort, then they were always kind of
primed to see it. And if people were familiar with
these sorts of legends, then they would end up in
(36:35):
the in the telling, especially if it's oral recounting memories
so treacherous, they might end up accidentally adding details that
somebody else misunderstands that add up into something else there
were Or if it's a great story that you're retelling
at a tavern somewhere, I mean, why would you just say, oh, no,
it was just a walrus. That's no fun. I'm just saying,
(37:00):
all of a sudden, all of a sudden, it was
a it was a beautiful mermaid. And the person you
found a drift in this boat had hair extensions. I'm
not discounting stories of mer folk. I'm just saying it's unlikely.
That's all. The ocean is a big place, and from
our previous episodes, we know that if there are any
large undiscovered creatures today, they had the odds are highest
(37:25):
that they would exist in the ocean. Right, so maybe
they're there. I don't want to I don't want to
ruin that for anybody, you know, but I do have
to say they definitely weren't um discovered by a certain
channel on television in a series called Mermaids. They can
confirm that they absolutely were not. And I would never
play play ball with that notion. Um. But I'm not
(37:48):
going to act like I'm not gonna go see aqua man.
I'll check it out for sure. I've diverted us. The
The point here is that there were other scholars who
are taking vigorous looks at this. One is named Dr
Kazu Tanaka. Yes, this is a professor for computer and
(38:09):
electronics engineering at a university in Tokyo. He investigated the
original texts. The three texts that are you can find now.
They actually exist in real life right now in museums.
You can go and pick them up. Um and this
he did this research and he's considering he's really looking
(38:32):
at the popular versions of UFO sightings, the more modern
ones that we can think about, and then comparing those
to the turo Bune event, let's say, or the retelling
of it. And he he points out that these legends
of bun a it never, it never flies, It never
(38:53):
you know, drives, like we said, it has no control mechanisms,
at least it's not recorded. It doesn't show any signs
of technology besides being a boat and maybe having some windows,
like extraordinary technology. Yeah, nothing beyond what could be GPS,
No lasers. No, Uh what's that thing in Star Trek
where it will just create any food or beverage you desire. Oh,
(39:17):
the it's the food machine. I don't know what it's called.
Or tricorder. They didn't she didn't have a tricorder with it, right,
that's a good example. It just I mean this this
ship just drift. It just drifted across the water. It
drifted to the fisherman, or they didn't even drift to them.
They had to go get it and reel it in.
And so uh Tanaka concluded that this tail was a
(39:41):
mix of folklore and imagination. He also based his assumptions
on Yanagita's earlier work. He had one more uh, he
had a couple more holes to poke in the story
to will examine after a word from our sponsor, and
(40:10):
we're back that there's one big problem with this story.
And it's a really big problem that as somebody from
the United States just learning about this, I wouldn't have
thought about unless somebody like Dr Tanaka went through and
actually examined it. And that's the location of where this
(40:31):
event purportedly happened. Yes, according to Dr Tanaka, locations that
have been referenced in various accounts of this are in
fact fictitious. Uh. He specifically points out Haa Tono Hamma
and Haara Yador to make the anecdote sound credible. He
(40:53):
believes the author designated the beaches as personal acreages of
a local land owner named Ogasawa Nagashigi. Uh. And this
this character did. This is a real person who did
live during the Edo period, but his land was in
in the heartland away from the water, right, and so
(41:15):
it seems pretty definite, at least according Dr Tanaka, that
this fellow never had any contact with the fishermen on
the Pacific coast. Uh. The Ogasawari clan served the Tokugawa
dynasty and they had power over most of northeastern Japan
until eighteen sixty eight, and that's a long time after this,
(41:39):
right right, and there um, their mainland holdings were in
the Hitashi province, and geographically that's very close to eastern beaches,
and so Dr Tanaka found it very odd that such
a strange incident could have occurred and it wasn't commented
(42:02):
upon in any official documents, right You'd think so if
something this strange and seemingly important occurred to an individual
who's that close and proximity to power occurred, you think
it would be written down somewhere. Somebody somewhere is being
told this, and they would go, Okay, the strange thing happened.
Perhaps there's some kind of invaders going on with this.
(42:23):
It's at least worth documentary, right Yeah. And let's also
keep in mind that this was during a period of isolation,
national insolation, right where in Japan really limited um, really
limited a lot of international interactions. So nearly all foreigners
(42:48):
were barred from entering except in a very specific circumstances,
the common resident of Japan, like the normal you know
Jane or John Doe of Japan like you and I,
had very little chance of ever leaving the country, so
this would have been beyond unusual, right uh. And there
(43:12):
is a remarkable incident that is documented that Dr Tanaka
found and it happened in eighteen twenty four when a
British whaler was stranded on the northeastern coast of the
Hitachi district. Before you ask, no, he did not show
up in a weird cupcake looking chip. Uh. Tanaka also
found out that during the rulership of the Tokugawa clan,
(43:34):
uh the Ogasawara family and the Tokugawa started mapping their territories.
And this is important because the names of both of
the beaches mentioned in the text are missing, and they
also do not appear on the maps of the whole
of Japan, which came out in nineteen o seven. If
(43:57):
the name of a village, a city, or a place
had changed in history, this would have been noted right
So because of this, Dr Tanaka thinks thinks that this
is probably just a legend of folklore similar to um
similar to the stories in modern urban legends, right, you know,
(44:21):
the one trace the call, and the phone call was
coming from inside the house, and it wasn't at this town,
and it wasn't my first cousin, but it's someone that
knows my first cousin, and they live a few towns over.
And there was a hook sticking out of the side
of the driver window. Yeah, and I'm pretty sure it
was a Pontiac were the pontiac is not around anymore.
(44:43):
This happened to someone's older brother who went to a
school a couple of districts away. They were think, yeah,
there were a few grades above us. You know, it's
always just a little bit, a little bit too far
to reach, and it's tantalizing lee possible. And let's go
back into this eighteen twenty four account of the British
(45:03):
whaler who got stranded. Uh. The first accounting of this
is recorded the next year in the first the first one,
what was it called um Tales of the Rabbit Garden
is when that is officially written. So perhaps there's a
little styling going on there of something an actual occurrence,
(45:25):
and then you bring some folklore into it. I mean,
that's that's at least a great tale to put into
your book called Tales from the Rabbit Garden. That's a
good point. So we know there's an isolation is placed
where this sort of incident would have been reported immediately. Right.
And also these uh ethnologists and historians who look back
(45:46):
at this later in the modern day, they they pointed
out something that really caught me, which is that originally
aliens UFOs were not part of the conversation. Okay, there
was There wasn't like a term for flying saucer, right,
um so or extraterrestrial. I guess there might be a term,
(46:09):
but it wouldn't be applied the same way we use
it today. A visitor of sorts, but not like that.
So they're saying that over time the ufo thing got
retro fitted onto it, you know what I mean. Uh.
The particularly European appearance of the woman right uh, shades skin,
(46:30):
red hair, uh, the upper part of the utsu bune,
and the unknown writing right the language that the fisherman
could not identify, lead both Tanaka and Yanagida to the
conclusion that the entire story was based on this historical circumstance.
(46:51):
Um people. If the of the period were totally insulated
from the outside world, so that this was more or
a tale reflecting xenophobic cultural attitudes, sort of the same
way again that modern urban legends reflect fears that are
already in popular culture. Right like in the n nineties,
(47:15):
the Satanic Panic, late eighties Satanic Panic thing gripped the nation.
In these people, every um, every region had some sort
of tale of a secret occult thing going on. And
in some cases, I'll go on record saying it, Yeah,
in some cases they were probably true. Not that like
(47:36):
dark magic worked or anything, but there were people who
conducted ritual murders. Yeah, and it may not have had
anything to do with Satan or anything like that. Right,
it made it, But that stuff happened. It just didn't
happen near as often nor as widespread as people thought
it did. But there's often a seed of truth in
(47:57):
these sorts of stories. And if we look at it
from a structural perspective, the construction of the story, it's
ultimately like a lot of other legends itself explaining the
woman disappears, knowing in what she said, the boxes goes
with her. Yeah, there's no artifact, there's no nothing. And
(48:22):
another thing which was new information to us is that
the people of the period here apparently had great interest
in paranormal things, loved ghost stories, monster stories, bizarre events.
So it wouldn't be surprising to find these stories of
the strange and inexplicable in these books. Yeah, those are
(48:44):
the best stories in my opinion. That's I think one
of the big reasons why you and I and Nol
and Trustan are interested in these things, because it's so
other and outside of anything we experience that you get
to you live in that world where monsters exist and ghosts,
you know, remain after the physical body leaves. I think
(49:07):
we're going to have to differ here, Matt, you don't
want to live in there. No monsters do exist, I think.
But but like like Krakens, or are we talking about
human monsters? What kind of monsters are we talking about? Where? Wolves?
So when we bring it all back together, what our conclusions.
(49:32):
Could this be nothing more than a popular legend recited
over and over, changing a bit each time. It's pretty
clear that in the years following the initial reports, a
large portion of the population except that this is fact,
believed something came ashore. But does that mean it actually happened?
I mean the fictitious locations are real obstacle here yea.
(49:55):
And as far as Dr Tanaka looked into it, it
seems that those locations are Indeed, it's much more likely
that those locations were fictitious rather than renamed. Yeah. For me,
it's more and more feeling like a version or a
retelling of an older story that had some new details
(50:19):
put into it. And I really, I really think you're
well their analysis and then our going over the idea
that perhaps it was a morphing. It was a morphing
of these these folklore tales dealing with the isolationism in
the area at the time in the eight when the
(50:40):
story was written, and then later on kind of doing
the same thing, except for in more modern times in
the nineteen nineties, tales of alien spacecraft that were very
popular then get morphed like this thing gets or they
get pulled into this thing, right, So then it's just
kind of just been changing over time little by little.
(51:03):
But there there's some other questions, and I think we
can end on some questions here, how seaworthy would a
vessel like this actually be? As we said, no sales,
no steering equipment, no oars, etcetera. Where did it come from?
Could it have come from Russia? Perhaps if you look
at some of the ocean currents around here, not around
(51:25):
here we're not in right now, but around the land
mass of Japan. You see here on the coast there's
a current that goes from sort of southwest to northeast
along the bottom and then later sort of the eastern
part of Japan. But at the top there's a current.
(51:45):
In the northeast, there's a current that goes the exact
opposite direction. So as these if you if you look
at the way these currents well swarm around, it looks
like it's possible that something with no steering could have
drifted down. But you know the best way to find
(52:08):
that out is to build one of these ships and
put it out the water and see what happens. What
are you what are you doing? What are you doing
this summer? I'm building around ship that has some brazen
sides and a couple of windows. But you know, the
one last thing we have to get into is is
(52:28):
it possible that there's something even crazier like the here's
where it's get it gets crazy moment, Like could this
have been a person that was pulled out of time,
perhaps out of some other dimension, out of some other
you know, maybe a time when ships did look like that,
or an alternate dimension. I know, that's you're getting into
(52:52):
the weirdness. I mean, probably not right, I especially because
there's meat and water, like some kind of container, water bedding,
recognizable stuff, and oh yeah, and the language could have
just been cyrillic Russian, you know. And if there's an
isolations policy, then the chances of people knowing or even
(53:18):
without like speaking reading, just recognizing another written language and
being able to say, oh that's Russian, oh that's French
or something, those chances are pretty low. And the very
last question, the one that stuck with me. I don't
know about you, Matt, but the one that stuck with me,
(53:40):
the one that has our producer shrugging in uh, infuming
and frustration. What happened to the lady in the ship?
What happened to the woman on the ship. Well, she
went back down to the dragon palace and you know,
she got she took a bunch of notes, she wrote
them inside her ship. That's what she was doing. That's
why there's all the writing there. And they were like,
(54:01):
did you remember the box? And she said, definitely. The
question is what was its function? What was it doing?
Maybe it was some kind of sound recording device or
a camera maybe yeah, maybe yeah, maybe it was an
a nes classic. If people are getting doing weird stuff
(54:22):
to those that is that how Nintendo, it was a
brilliant marketing campaign that started centuries ago. I know, four
video games. I just found out that they were making
you know cards in the eight hundreds, which is pretty awesome. Nintendo,
Good on you for making that switch. Oh yeah, I
(54:43):
didn't even expect that one until it was nice. That's nice,
And we would like to hear your opinion about this,
and additionally, we would like to hear other historical anomalies
that you have found, because whether this is entirely gen
whether it's based in truth, whether it's something even weirder
than the various theories we explored today, we'd like to
(55:07):
hear about it. Yeah, and you're part of the world.
Did a ship like this show up in a little
bit later in eighteen o two, eighteen o three, Maybe this,
you know, matches up somewhere else in the world where
it just floated to Did your parents, grandparents or ancestors
meet when one of them washed ashore in a mysterious craft.
If so, have you taken a DNA test, we'd love
(55:29):
to hear about it, or just send us some DNA
and you know we'll take care of it. Or you
can write an email which reminds me it's time for
our chat at Corners. Our first shout out comes from Sydney.
Sidney says, hi, guys, I was listening to both episodes
of your Serial Killers series. Loved them. You said you
(55:53):
might do a third one. I was going to suggest
maybe the West Mesa murders from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I
live here and people are still talking about them pretty often.
I don't know. Check it out if you want. Thanks
for reading. Oh all right, Sydney, I don't know much
about that, Ben. Are you aware of these at all?
That this was absolutely news to me. I think we
(56:15):
should do a third episode or the installment of that series,
So let us know if we would like Matt Nolan
I to uh to investigate this in a future episode
and send us just take a page out of Sydney's
book and send us your suggestions. Awesome, thank you for writing, Sydney.
I'm glad that enjoy is not the right word to use.
(56:38):
I think we talked about it in that episode, But
there's something compelling and fascinating, especially when you consider how
many of these crimes occur with relatively little fanfare outside
of their region. I mean, the Highway of Tears was
an active hunting ground for how long decades? And just
(56:59):
to add a little bit of mystery here to the
end of it, I just looked it up. Ben. In
two thousand nine, the remains of eleven women were found
buried in the desert of West Mesa, and no suspects
have been arrested, and a serial killer is believed to
be responsible. All right, we're on the case. Our next
(57:20):
Our next shout out is a little bit unusual. It's
something that we we haven't always done en. It's something
I'd like your help with, folks. So I went on
Twitter recently for a tangentially related thing to ask a
question because I spent part of an afternoon trying to
figure out the proper plural of bigfoot? Is it just
(57:44):
big foot like sheep? Yeah, there are there are several
big foot and there are some sheep um or is
it big foots? Three big foots were on the road
that day or is it big feet? Man, I don't
even know how many big feet I was here and
walking around. These are great examples, Matt, this is this
(58:04):
is a gift. So we went on Twitter. We asked
about it, and we we got a lot of responses.
We're just gonna read a few here. Oh Man, Yawn
has a great one. This is my favorite. All right,
what is it? John says, I believe it's like surgeons
and attorneys general bigg's foot? Um all right? Uh? And
(58:28):
then Stephen Even says one big foot, more bigfoot and
big foot ist definitely a Kyle Sherman says, I wonder
if you can call a group of bigfoot a trample
a trample of bigfoot? You can, now, but then what
do you you gotta still say something for a trample
of big Foot's See, here's the thing, Okay, I was thinking,
(58:49):
I spent way too much time thinking about this. You
wouldn't say teeth brushes if you had two toothbrushes. That's
very true. So also, yeah, you're never brushing a single tooth. Well,
I guess sometimes you are due to circumstances. But it's
a teeth brush. It's a teeth brush. Uh. So We
(59:14):
also had a buddy friend of the show, Josh Clark,
chime in. Do you Clark? I know that guy. He
and I talked about the issues, the important issues at hand.
He voted for bigfoots really, which is sort of what
David Bakara I feel like David Bakara from our earlier
bigfoot interview he hit the ploys used was Bigfoot's. Well,
(59:36):
do right in and let us know. Because I still
can't let this go and it seems like there's not
really a consensus. We have time for one more. Shoutout.
Jeff from Ontario, shout out to you. Jeff says, Hey, guys,
I just listened to the Pyramids episode. I listened to
the whole thing, wondering if you were going to mention
the pyramids on Mars. By the way, that is pyramids
(59:59):
on Mars. I'm kind of glad you didn't go there.
It would have cheapened the sincerity of the subject. We
did mention something that actually I kind of need to correct.
I said a monolith on one of the moons of Jupiter.
That is incorrect. It's on one of the more moons
of Mars. But we did mention that. Let's get back
(01:00:20):
in here. Jeff also writes you were right about skaed
Dooch proceeding Kung Fu Panda by quite a bit. I'm
a big Jabls fan and user of skadooch as sort
of an exclamation point, enough so that it was one
of my niece and nephew's first words. Well, congratulations. It
brought them a ton of joy and it was super
(01:00:40):
cute to see their smiles peek out as they struggled
to say it through their pacifiers. Thanks for the great show, Jeff, Well,
thank you, Jeff. You know, I think pyramids on any
other planet is just an awesome topic because if it,
if we did find that, I mean, the implications ben
(01:01:00):
right right. But again, going back to that episode, is
that a pyramid or is it just sort of a
pointy mountain? It's probably just like the one that they discovered.
And then yeah, and then also, and this will warm
(01:01:21):
knowles heart, will warm our colleagues heart to hear your
information about schedooch, Jeff, So thank you so much. Writing
This concludes our gosh, but not our show. We will
return next week with something. Just let's see what do
we have lined up? Oh, we have some interviews oh yes,
and we have another one coming up. Can we spoil
(01:01:44):
kind of what it is or just let it come out?
I don't know what do you think it has to
do with what happens when something catastrophic occurs in Washington,
d C. I think that's cryptic enough. Yeah, check it out.
Your future just might depend on it. No pressure. In
the meantime, you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter,
(01:02:07):
where we are Conspiracy Stuff and Conspiracy Stuff Show, respectively.
If none of that is quite um scratching your itch
the opening your yeah, then you can take a tip
from your fellow listeners and email us directly. We are
(01:02:28):
conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.
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