North to Matsumae – Australian Whalers to Japan 

by Noreen Jones 
published by Univ of WA Press 2008 
RRP $39.95 (Paperback 208 pages; 146mm x 228mm) 
  Whaling in the 19th century was a violent, bloody business and the men who took part were of necessity often a fairly hardened lot. Whaling ships were at sea for long periods; they needed to frequently replenish supplies of vegetables and fresh meat to keep scurvy at bay, and they needed timber to fire the trypots on deck in which they rendered the blubber and extracted the valuable whale oil. 
  The sub-title of this book, ‘Australian Whalers to Japan’, might suggest it is just another whaling story. It is in fact more a journal of exploration and adventure in exotic lands (the islands to Australia’s north all the way to Japan). The author has digested for us and paraphrased the log of the whaler Lady Rowena (a log that wasn’t discovered until the late 20th century) and has added her own perspective gained from her years of Japanese studies. 
  Lady Rowena left Australia in November 1830 under the command of Captain Bourn Russell, and experienced seaman who first skippered ships to Australia carrying convicts but who graduated to the more lucrative whaling trade. Russell’s detailed log is in some ways reminiscent of James Cook’s, in that he not only makes careful survey notes along his route but describes in great detail the peoples encountered as they carried out their search for water, provisions and wood. 
  He was a keen observer of human nature, and his thoughts as each encounter on the beach takes place (they were sometimes bloody skirmishes with natives being shot and hostages taken) make exciting reading. In this respect the book was for me a pleasant surprise and gives it a much greater depth than might have been expected. Captain Russell relates the difficulties encountered in running and maintaining a 19th century wooden ship and the difficulties of managing the crews, keeping them away from each other’s throats as well as keeping them free from scurvy so that they could continuous to perform the arduous work of cutting up and processing the leviathans that they captured. Lady Rowena was possibly the very first contact Australia ever had with Japan. That country isolated itself from the rest of the world for several hundred years when in the early 1600s the ruling Samurai began to suspect that Portuguese Catholic missionaries were undermining their control. Japan was totally ‘closed’ to the rest of the world from about 1639 to 1854, and the absence of trading ports where whalers could re-provision caused tensions and sometimes outright conflict as pugnacious British, American and Australian captains exercised what they saw as their ‘right’ to avail themselves of life support. 
  During this time the Japanese fell behind the rest of the world technologically, rendering them vulnerable to, for example, the superior firearms carried by the whalers. 
  In her introductory notes the author laments the current state of the whaling debate between Australia and Japan and feels that we have closed our minds to the history and long tradition of Japanese whaling (which has been carried out for 1,000s of years) – sustainable, subsistence harvesting of whales for the purpose of feeding themselves in a country that was not suitable physically to the raising and eating of fourlegged animals and spiritually disinclined to eat them because of Buddhist teachings. 
  It was British, American and Australian whalers that decimated the whale populations in Japanese waters in pursuit of oil for commerce rather than the sustaining of life, and this had a seriously adverse impact on traditional Japanese coastal whaling. The early Japanese whalers believed that human life can only be sustained through eating another living thing, either animal or vegetable, and they revered whales offering prayers and shrines to their departed souls. 
  The advent of the International Whaling Commission gave recognition to sustainable whaling by some Scandinavian countries and made provision for ‘scientific whaling’ to be carried out by Japan, an unfortunate term that openly invites criticism in the same way that insistence upon the term ‘marriage’ by gays has invoked the ire of some Christians. The trouble is, the Japanese are no longer technologically backwards in any way. 
  Those who enjoy reading about 19th century ships and who are fascinated by European encounters with ‘primitive natives’ in ‘foreign lands’ will find North to Matsumae an engaging read, if occasionally long-winded.