page_title: Ranald MacDonald
section_title: Japan
hierarchical_section_title: Ranald MacDonald / Japan
caption_attribution_description: English: USS Preble 日本語: USS Preble
context_page_description: Ranald MacDonald was the first native English-speaker to teach the English language in Japan, including educating Einosuke Moriyama, one of the chief interpreters to handle the negotiations between Commodore Perry and the Tokugawa Shogunate.
context_section_description: A restless man, he soon quit his bank job and decided that he would visit Japan. Despite knowing the strict isolationist Japanese policy of the time, which meant death or imprisonment for foreigners who set foot on Japanese soil, he signed on as a sailor on the whaling ship Plymouth in 1845.  In 1848, he convinced the captain of the Plymouth to set him to sea on a small boat off the coast of Hokkaidō. On July 1, he came ashore on Rishiri Island where he pretended he had been shipwrecked. He was caught by Ainu people, who remitted him to the daimyō of Matsumae clan. He was then sent to Nagasaki, the only port allowed to conduct limited trade with the Dutch.
  Since more and more American and British ships had been approaching Japanese waters, and no man in Japan spoke English with any sort of fluency, fourteen men were sent to study English under MacDonald. These men were samurai, who had previously learned Dutch and had been attempting to learn English for some time from secondhand sources, such as Dutch merchants who spoke a little of the language. The brightest of these men, a sort of "language genius", was Moriyama Einosuke.
  MacDonald stayed in confinement, at Daihian, a branch temple of the Sofuku-ji in Nagasaki, for 10 months, during which he also studied Japanese before being taken aboard a passing American warship. In April 1849, in Nagasaki, MacDonald was remitted together with fifteen shipwreck survivors to captain James Glynn on the American warship USS Preble which had been sent to rescue stranded sailors. Glynn later urged that a treaty should be signed with Japan, "if not peaceably, then by force".
  Upon his return to North America, MacDonald made a written declaration to the US Congress, explaining that the Japanese society was well policed, and the Japanese people well behaved and of the highest standard. He continued his career as a sailor.
  After travelling widely, MacDonald returned to Canada East (now Quebec) and, in 1858, went to the new colony of British Columbia where he set up a packing business in the Fraser River gold fields and later in the Cariboo, in 1864. He also participated in the Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition.
  Although his students had been instrumental in the negotiations to open Japan with Commodore Perry and Lord Elgin, he found no real recognition of his achievements. His notes of the Japanese adventure were not published until 1923, 29 years after his death. He died a poor man in Washington state in 1894, while visiting his niece. His last words were reportedly "Sayonara, my dear, sayonara..."
caption: Captain James Glynn's sloop-of-war USS Preble, on which MacDonald returned from Japan.
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