An extravagantly decorated ship figure marks the rooftop of the Tojin tombs on Ishigaki, as if to bring the best of Chinese culture to those who lie there. (©John Carroll)
Memories are a funny thing, especially memories of unfamiliar places we have visited and unfamiliar things we have seen. Sometimes we miss the significance entirely unless we delve deeper and uncover the underlying story. One memory that has stuck in my mind concerns a trip to Ishigaki Island in the Yaeyama Islands in 2021.
First of two parts
To the casual tourist, Ishigaki might appear as just another laid-back subtropical island in Okinawa Prefecture's southernmost chain. However, it has actually witnessed some amazing events.
These days, Ishigaki, with a population of around 49,000, is known primarily as a sightseeing destination. In fact, it is regularly ranked as the number one island in Japan. Among its leading attractions are Kabira Bay on the northwest coast of the island — famed for its black pearls and glass-bottom tour boats — and Shiraho near the airport, which boasts the largest blue coral reef in the Northern Hemisphere.
Ferries also depart from Ishigaki Harbor for Iriomote, a World Heritage Island, Taketomi, and other islands farther afield. They are all technically part of the city.
The casual traveler might get the impression that Ishigaki is a peaceful refuge from our strife-torn world. But one look at the many large Japan Coast Guard patrol vessels homeported here tells a different tale.
There is a menace lurking beyond the horizon. These ships have their hands full dealing with incursions by Chinese government vessels into waters around the Senkaku Islands, roughly 170 kilometers to the north, which are also administered from Ishigaki.
The Tojin Tombs
On the day I visited Kabira Bay, I left Ishigaki City early. I wanted to make a stop at the Tojinbaka (the Tojin Tombs), located four kilometers to the west of the city center. Tojin (literally "people of Tang") was a name used in the past to refer to overseas Chinese. It was a reference to the great Tang Dynasty.
Social media sites I consulted had quite a few dismissive comments about the Tojinbaka, such as "Pretty, but not worth the stop." Nevertheless, I was determined to visit this monument as I was fascinated by its origin story.
The Tojinbaka is located in a park on the side of a slope near the Kannonzaki Lighthouse, facing the cobalt blue ocean and Iriomote in the distance. It is a traditional Chinese structure decorated with figures from Chinese history and mythology. Easy to find, it is recreated in a riot of colors, with reds, yellows, and greens predominating. The area is justly known for its beautiful sunsets.
"We should learn from history." So goes an old adage. However, history's lessons are often opaque, ambivalent, fragmentary, and contradictory. That is certainly true of the story of the Robert Bowen Incident of 1852 and the dead Chinese laborers whom the Tojinbaka commemorates.
The Robert Bowen Incident
Prior to the incident, the biggest crisis Ishigaki had faced was undoubtedly the Great Yaeyama Tsunami of August 1771. According to scientific data and historical records, it appears to have been 30 meters high and killed 10,000 people. It also destroyed the local economy and killed thousands more later due to disease and famine. The area had still not recovered by the mid-19th century.
Many guidebooks and travel websites, in both Japanese and English, characterize the Robert Bowen Incident of 1852 as a mutiny or "slave rebellion" on an American ship sailing from the Chinese port of Amoy (Xiamen). It was carrying 405 contract laborers (coolies) to the goldfields of California.
Gold had been discovered there in January 1848. In the 1850s, nearly 66,000 Chinese contract laborers made the more than 100-day trip to California. The coolie trade was dominated by British and American shippers.
According to later investigations, the Chinese all came from poor villages in Fujian Province that had suffered drought for several years. They became irate when Captain Lesley Bryson had crew members cut their braided queues. At the time, all Chinese males were required to wear the braids by the ruling Manchus, on pain of execution. Bryson also had them scrubbed down on the deck of the ship while naked.
Some sources additionally claim they were branded on their chests. Furthermore, the crew dumped the bodies of sick coolies into the sea. (Accounts differ as to whether they were alive or dead at the time.)
The Chinese might also have concluded that their actual destination was not California, but rather the dreaded "Death Islands" off Peru.
Mutiny Off Ishigaki
The result was a mutiny on March 30, 1852. After murdering the captain and five other crew members, the mutineers demanded that the remaining crew members take them to Taiwan. However, the Robert Bowen ended up hitting a reef off Sakieda Village on Ishigaki and 380 of the Chinese coolies managed to make it to shore.
At that time, Ishigaki Island was part of the nominally independent Ryukyu Kingdom. Ryukyu was a "mini-kingdom" with a total population of about 170,000.
During the 15th century, merchant ships from the Ryukyus had ranged as far as Siam and Java. They had also transported high-end Chinese products to Japan and Korea. However, they lost much of their business after the Portuguese and Spanish appeared in East Asian waters during the 16th century.
In 1429, the Ryukyu Kingdom had become a tributary state of the Ming Empire, and some among the ruling elites were culturally and emotionally attached to China. Nevertheless, after the Satsuma feudal domain in Kyushu invaded the main island of Okinawa in 1609, the Satsuma pulled the strings from the shadows.
This double attachment made resolution of the Robert Bowen affair even more difficult. It became an international crisis, involving the Ryukyu Kingdom, the Qing Empire, Satsuma, Great Britain, and the United States.
Fate of the Chinese Laborers
After the Chinese laborers got on dry land, they were given refuge by the local islanders. Temporary shelters were built for them, and islanders shared their meager food supplies.
In the meantime, the ship refloated and remaining members of the crew tied up the 19 coolies left on board. Those apparently included the ringleaders. They then sailed back to Amoy, where they reported the mutiny.
Later, the USS Susquehanna, flagship of the US Far East Station, arrived in Ishikagi and took 69 of the Chinese back to Canton. Incidentally, this same ship formed part of Commodore Matthew Perry's flotilla that arrived off Tokyo Bay the following year. That event opened up Japan from nearly three centuries of isolation.
Actually, before that, a British warship showed up off Ishigaki. It bombarded the encampment of the laborers before British soldiers landed. According to a lurid version of the story, they hunted down the Chinese, killing 128, many by hanging, and capturing a few dozen more. Terrified, many of the other Chinese fled into the bush.
Ferreting Out the Facts
Shinyo Tajima, a former high school teacher living on Ishigaki, has conducted extensive research on the Robert Bowen affair. He has also translated official Ryukyu records concerning the incident, and even journeyed to London to comb libraries and archives there for information. In a book he wrote in 2011, he argues that much of what had been taken for fact about the Robert Bowen Incident was totally wrong or exaggerated.
For example the vessel was characterized as a "slave ship" in order to condemn the evils of the coolie trade. On another point, he concluded that the British cannon only fired warning shots. Similarly, the actual number of Chinese killed by the British soldiers was only three.
That is not to deny that the coolie trade was inhumane. In fact, in the ports of southeast China it was colloquially referred to as the "pig trade." That term referenced the barracoons (zhuziguan), the cramped holding barracks where the laborers waited for transportation on ships that were nearly as overcrowded as those that made the notorious Middle Passage from Africa with Black slaves. Most of the indentured Chinese laborers were recruited from Fujian and Guangdong provinces. In many cases, they were hoodwinked into signing false contracts or even drugged and then kidnapped.
Coolies to Central and South America
Meanwhile, the ships that took coolies to the Chincha Islands off Peru or the sugar cane fields of Cuba were indeed slave ships in all but name. Most of the laborers sent to those two destinations died from overwork or suicide before completing their contracts.
Fortunes were made in the guano trade in the 19th century. Dried excrement from fish-eating seabirds was in great demand for use as fertilizer because of its high content of nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium. And deposits up to 30 meters thick were found on the Chincha Islands. Contract laborers sent to dig guano on these "Islands of Hell," located 25 kilometers off the coast of Peru, almost never survived.
As of 1860, it was calculated that not one of the 4,000 coolies brought to do the backbreaking work of extracting, had survived to leave the islands. They were first maltreated by their Peruvian overseers. But beyond that, their lungs were quickly ruined by the ammonia-infused dust that they labored amidst.
Repatriating the Chinese Coolies
Back in Canton, the US Consul tried and convicted 17 of the Chinese who had returned on the Robert Bowen after charging them with aggravated piracy and murder. They were handed over to the Chinese authorities, but only one of them was eventually executed.
Finally, in May 1854, Ryukyu government officials provided two ships to repatriate the Chinese on Ishigaki. By then, there were only 172 survivors. Others who had not already been repatriated on Western warships had succumbed to disease, starvation, or suicide. They were buried in fields on Ishigaki with their graves marked by coral gravestones.
Throughout the ordeal, the officials sent from Naha showed little concern about the residents of the island. They were more anxious to please the Chinese government, even though it showed little interest in getting its countrymen back.
Continues in part 2
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Author: John Carroll
