Otokichi Yamamoto (1817– 1867) Born in Mihama, Japan, Otokichi Yamamoto set off in November 1832 as an apprentice sailor on a routine trade journey between Mihama and Edo (present- day Tokyo). A storm set his ship adrift in the Pacific Ocean. The vessel drifted for 14 months before touching land at Cape Alava, in what is now Washington State, with only Otokichi and two shipmates surviving the journey. After landfall, the three were enslaved by a native American tribe.

In 1834, they were rescued by John McLoughlin of the Hudson Bay Company, who placed them on a brig called the Eagle, for a circuitous journey home. McLoughlin hoped to establish trade with the Japanese shogunate through these Japanese men, and believed the Eagle’s stopover in the United Kingdom would help garner British support for his endeavours. Otokichi and his friends may have been among the first Japanese to visit the United Kingdom.

Travelling under the British flag, the Japanese voyagers stopped at Macau in December 1835, where they met Karl Friedrich August Gutzlaff, a German missionary. They taught Gutzlaff Japanese, and Otokichi assisted in the Japanese translation of the Gospel of John. Finally, they embarked for Japan in July 1836. Unfortunately, however, the sakoku, or ‘closed- door’ policy, of the Japanese government, made the Japanese authorities suspicious of the foreign ship, and the voyagers were turned back by gunfire.

Otokichi turned to Christianity thereafter, adopting the name John Matthew Ottoson. Working for various British companies, he travelled between Macau, Shanghai and Singapore, helping to repatriate shipwrecked Japanese to Japan. Otokichi returned twice to Japan. On the second occasion, he accompanied Admiral James Stirling when, on 14 October 1854, the admiral negotiated the first limited treaty between the United Kingdom and Japan. For this service, Otokichi was awarded British citizenship and a sum of money, which was believed to have paid for the purchase of his large estate in Singapore.

Otokichi is believed to have moved to Singapore around 1862, and records show he had been naturalized by 1864. He was known to have a residence off Killiney Road in the 1860s and another at Siglap, which he had rented from Robert Little (see John Little). It was at Siglap that he finally succumbed to tuberculosis on 17 January 1867. His remains were interred in the Bukit Timah Christian cemetery before they were moved to the Japanese Cemetery off Yio Chu Kang Road. In February 2005, following the trail of their forefather around the globe, some of Otokichi’s descendents and townsmen visited Singapore. They took a portion of Otokichi’s ashes from Singapore and returned them to Mihama.