Introduction

Russia was among the Western powers that first attempted to approach Japan, which had been dormant in its isolation policy for two centuries. Commodore Perry’s rather threatening visit to the port town of Uraga in his fleet of kurofune (Black Ships) in 1853 is normally remembered as an incident that made Japan “wake up from the dream of peace,” but by a delay of a mere month Admiral E. Putyatin entered Nagasaki in his Pallada. Famously, I. Goncharov (1812–1891), the author of the 19th-century classic Oblomov was onboard Pallada as the secretary to the admiral. Together with Putiatin he landed on Japanese soil, was received by the bugyō (feudal magistrate) of Nagasaki and the ambassadors from Edo. Later he published Frigate Pallada to record his impressions from the trip which were neither objective nor fair. For instance, in the memoire he complains of the Japanese custom of serving tea without sugar.

Facing threatening visitors from the North, Japanese started to investigate Russia on their part. One of the major sources of information were accounts by castaways (returnees). The earliest recorded case of a castaway is that of Denbei from Osaka, who reached Kamchatka in 1695 and later taught Japanese at the command of Peter the Great in Moscow, never to return home. Another castaway, Gonza helped with the editing of a Russo-Japanese dictionary and a grammar book and taught at the School of Japanese founded in 1736 in St. Petersburg.