Sailing to the Heart of Japan
by Nicholas Coghlan
Seaworthy Publications 2024
For the ocean voyager, Japan remains something of an undiscovered country. Annie Brassey’s 1887 Japan by Yacht is an extraordinary tale told by an extraordinary woman, but her Sunbeam was 159 feet long overall with a professional crew and the book is of a different era. Hal Roth touches on Japan in his 1971 Two on a Big Ocean, an account of his and Margaret’s cruise in their 35-foot sloop, Whisper. Bob and Nancy Griffith’s Awahnee visited Japan, as told in his wonderful Blue Water (1979). There are other accounts of cruising in Japan, but not many.
Sailing to the Heart of Japan now can be added to the list, and it is a superb work. Every cruising guide falls somewhere on the spectrum between unadorned pilotage and a culture-heavy account of a journey that happens to be by boat. Coghlan’s book manages an excellent balance. When not voyaging, he was a Canadian diplomat (he was Canada’s first ambassador to South Sudan) and the book demonstrates a diplomat’s eye for details that reveal a culture’s heart. It is an excellent read for anyone, whether or not a mariner, contemplating an extended stay in Japan.
We all know in an academic sense that Japan suffers a demographic crisis: For 15 years the population has declined, the percentage of persons older than 65 is the world’s highest, rates of marriage and births are among the world’s lowest, and there is virtually no immigration. Yet most western news of Japan originates in the vibrant cities, where the young flock, a fact that masks the effects of the demographic crash. During her 15-month cruise, Bosun Bird (a Vancouver 27) visited ports and coastal villages, places often nearly bereft of the young. We learn of a school for 400, kept open for a single child. Two villages with a combined population of perhaps 400 have just two residents under age 20. There is a sense of pervading sadness.
Compensations exist. Outside the massively fortified concrete harbors, beauty abounds. The countryside is serene, often veiled in the mist one sees in Japanese art and filled with temples as ancient as the country. The Coghlans became aficionados of onsen, Japan’s hot mineral baths, and mastered the baths’ decidedly un-western etiquette.
The couple was met with great kindness. In nearly every port, no sooner had they secured Bosun Bird alongside, when a local would adopt them, bring gifts, escort them on excursions and so on, with no real sense that reciprocity was required. The decency and open-handed generosity of the locals was perhaps the distinguishing feature of their cruise.
We also learn some of the complexities of Japanese navigation. Anchoring is nearly unheard of: Bosun Bird moors alongside a pontoon or pier. If a yacht anchors, it is assumed she is in distress, and in any case the local fishermen who consider themselves to own the bottom will make their point of view distressingly plain. And can it be true, as Coghlan writes, that many Japanese yachts do not even own an anchor?
Virtually no sailing occurs at night. One reason may be the extensive kelp farms that fill many bays, sometimes extending for miles, rarely lit, which Coghlan calls “the bane of cruising sailors in Japan.”
In truth, there are relatively few cruising boats in Japan, and many seem to exist to provide a refuge for the men. Women rarely join their husbands on cruises and indeed, many boats exist as a place to drink with the guys. When Nick and Jenny socialize aboard a yacht, Nick is offered strong drink, but it’s fruit juice for Jenny, the only woman present. She is often excluded from the conversation. Yet several times Nick is asked “How do you persuade Jenny San to sail?”
Bureaucracy, even by global standards, is formidable. A yacht must pre-register for ports it may visit, and there is big trouble for a yacht entering a port for which it has not been cleared. Typically, Japanese yachts on a cruise establish a detailed itinerary, clear for those ports, then strive to keep to the schedule, thus ignoring what is surely the most fundamental rule of successful coastal cruising.
For a cruiser contemplating Japan, the nine maps and its 31-page appendix are reason enough to own the book. The appendix includes formalities, communications, approaches, weather and forecasting, charts, a short vocabulary of nautical terms and a long list of ports with accompanying GPS data and local knowledge, both maritime and ashore.
This book, though honest, well written and full of insight, does not compel me to make Japan my next cruising destination. But if I did go, no question I’d have Sailing to the Heart of Japan on board. n