The Otherwordly Woman In The Hollow Boat

UFOs, flying saucers, and their inhabitants first came to mass attention in the late 1940s. Sociologists, and others who wish to find a rational, terrestrial explanation for these phenomena, will point to the dominant anxieties of that time and insist that our subconscious turned those fears into a visible manifestation of flying craft. In a world defined by nuclear proliferation, the advent of space exploration, and rapid innovation in technology, it is easy to understand why every flashing light in the sky could be interpreted as a hot rod spaceship from galaxies far away.

But what do we make of the rare, yet compelling, depictions of UFOs and mysterious humanoid beings from centuries past? This Serbian fresco, painted by an unknown artist in 1350, shows two unusual objects in the sky… which historians claim are the Sun and moon. However, no explanation is given for the pilots visible inside the objects.

In this illustration of the Baptism of Christ from 1710, Biblical scholars cite the Gospel quote “the heavens opened and the Spirit descended like a dove” to explain the unusual imagery. Yet it is hard to imagine an artist this skilled choosing to paint a dove in this way.

This depiction from 19th century Japan is based on the eyewitness accounts of a group of fishermen, describing a glass-domed ship and a quite peculiar inhabitant: a red-haired woman with distinctively non-Japanese features, piloting the so-called “hollow boat”, or as it is known in Japanese, the Utsuro Bune.

On February 22, 1803, a group of fishermen were finishing their morning harvest in the Hitachi province, on the eastern coast of Japan, when they spotted an unusual ship floating in the distance. The round craft resembled nothing these men had encountered before: 11 feet tall and 18 feet around, the spherical ship was mostly built of rosewood, with iron plates covering its bottom half and glass panels adorning the dome-shaped top. Peering inside the windows revealed interior walls decorated with texts written in an unknown language.

On the floor were several blankets, made of a fine and unidentifiable fabric, a large bottle of water, a small amount of cake and other food, and a young woman- quite foreign in her appearance. She was 5 feet tall, roughly 18-20 years old, with pale pink skin and bright red hair and eyebrows. Her hair was adorned with artificial white extensions- perhaps made of fur; this unusual hairstyle is not found in any world literature of the time.

The woman spoke no Japanese, and no accounts of this tale were able to identify the language she spoke. Unable to communicate, the fishermen received no clues of the strange visitor’s origins. She clutched a box, roughly 2 ft wide, at all times. Although she was described as mostly polite and friendly, she would become agitated when someone would try to examine the box.

According to the account published in “Tales From the Rabbit Garden,” written by Kyokutei Bakin in 1825, an elder from the village surmised that the woman must be a foreign princess- banished from her homeland for an extramarital affair. The hollow boat was essentially her prison cell- the old man even suggested that the mysterious box might contain the decapitated head of her lover. The rest of the village was convinced by the elder man’s story- and honoring the woman’s sentence, they sent her back on the ocean inside the hollow boat.

“Tales From the Rabbit Garden” was the first written account, but it was followed by two others which vary only in the most minor details- “Diaries and Stories of Castaways” written by an unknown author in 1835, and “Dust of the Apricot,” written in 1844 by Nagahashi Matajiro. It is widely believed that all three of these texts have the same historical origins, yet the differences between them infer that they likely weren’t referencing each other.

Mainstream historians who have investigated the legend of the Utsuro Bune typically echo the conclusions of the village elder- proposing that the woman must have been a foreign traveler from Russia, Britain, or the United States. The first investigation in 1844 specifically references the Russian practice of using white powder to decorate the tips of the hair- as well as the proliferation of red-haired women from this country.

However, in 1803, the far-eastern coast of Russia was still largely undeveloped. The southern coast- closest to Japan would not be annexed by the Russians until the middle of the century. The most likely departure point for the Utsuro Bune would have been the small working town of Okhotsk. This Siberian port was the Russians’ principle access to the Pacific at this time. In the mid-February days of the Utsuro Bune encounter, this town held an average daytime temperature well below freezing- typically in the single digits Fahrenheit. The area where the boat washed up featured a much warmer and temperate climate- with average temperatures around 40 degrees F in the late winter.

However, even if the ship had been launched from a more temperate southern zone by some manor of Russian royalty, it would have somehow had to loop around the Japanese island to eventually land on the eastern shore. Imagining a journey from the United States is even more absurd- as the February Pacific ocean temperatures would have been intolerable during what would be at least a two week journey at sea.

Ufologists will point to several elements of the encounter as stereotypical aspects of the UFO experience- the all too familiar shape of the ship, the strange symbols adorning the ship’s interior, and the inhabitant’s red hair, which is echoed in numerous historical accounts of otherwordly beings- in fact, some alien theorists have presented evidence that all red-heads are actually alien-human hybrids. Yet, despite its physical resemblance to a typical flying saucer, the Utsuro Bune craft had no advanced means of locomotion- not only was it incapable of flight, but no descriptions of the ship include any means of propulsion whatsoever.

The unknown symbols written on the walls are said to resemble those described by witnesses of the 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident- in which military officers documented a close encounter with a landed UFO, covered in strange symbols. The similarity between these symbols is curious, but hardly an exact match.

Another explanation lies in the event’s proximity to a known area of paranormal activity. The ship may have emerged from Japan’s “Dragon’s Triangle”- the Bermuda Triangle of the East- a frequent location of disappearances and other high strangeness. One particular tale from the Dragon’s Triangle bears more than a slight resemblance to the Utsuro Bune. Shortly after the hollow ship encounter in the early 19th century, a mysterious lady was seen sailing another unusual vessel all by herself in the rough seas. The woman was described as having a “foreign look”, and the peculiar ship was said to look like a traditional incense box.

While there are many proposed explanations for the strangeness in the Dragon’s Triangle, as well as the Bermuda Triangle and other sites with high paranormal activity, little consensus has been reached by mainstream or alternative theorists.

Of course, tales of unusual humanoid creatures are nothing new. From the Djinn, to fairies, to ET grays, and the Mothman- paranormal entities have been interacting with humankind through our entire history. Some of the most intriguing encounters involve beings who appear almost entirely human- such as the unwelcome interrogations of the men in black; the terrifying knock of the black eyed kids; or the bizarre story of two children from the English village of Woolpit, who mysteriously appeared in the 12th century.

The brother and sister looked relatively normal, except for the green color of their skin. They spoke an unknown language and only ate raw beans. When the sister eventually learned to speak English, she claimed they came from a subterranean land where all the people were green. Who knows what fantastical tale the mysterious woman of the Utsuro Bune may have told, had she been permitted to stick around long enough to learn Japanese?