The Utsuro-Bune Incident

Utsuro-bune (うつろ舟 ‘hollow ship’), refers to an unknown object which allegedly washed ashore in 1803 in Hitachi province on the eastern coast of Japan. Accounts of the tale appear in three texts: Toen shōsetsu (1825), Hyōryū kishū (1835) and Ume-no-chiri (1844).

According to legend, an attractive young woman holding a mysterious box arrived on a local beach aboard the “hollow ship”. Inside the ship was writing that the Japanese had never seen before or since, shown in the top right corner of the third picture. Fishermen brought her inland to investigate further, but the woman was unable to communicate in Japanese. The fishermen then returned her and her vessel to the sea, where it drifted away. This same woman in her craft was reported to have visited many different parts of Japan. People from all over Japan described having seen the exact same woman in the exact same ship, still tightly holding her wooden box

Historians, ethnologists and physicists such as Kazuo Tanaka and Yanagita Kunio have evaluated the “legend of the hollow boat” as part of a long-standing tradition within Japanese folklore. Alternately, certain ufologists have claimed that the story represents evidence for a close encounter of the third kind.

