Banjin

Masahiro, a thirteen-year-old fisherman’s apprentice, is shipwrecked and rescued from certain death on Mujin-Shima by an American whaler, Captain Higgins. He learns whaling and becomes Americanized during the adventure-filled half-year-long ocean voyage from Japan to Massachusetts. Now, as John Mong, Masahiro is educated in the United States. He decides to return to Japan, in spite of the barbaric treatment that awaits returning expatriates. As a despised Banjin, he endures almost a year of torture. But due to the discovery of a small daguerreotype photograph in his possession, he is befriended by one of Japan’s high Lords. Over the ensuing years, now as Lord Tanaka Masahiro, advisor to the Imperial Court, he succeeds in bringing about the opening of Japan by Commodore Perry and the birth of modern Japan.