Did a Close Encounter of the Third Kind Occur on a Japanese Beach in 1803?

Since the word hama in Japanese means "beach" in English, "Haratono-hama" would face the sea. The word yadori means "stay" or "stay in shelter." In an old geographical dictionary (Shitanaka 1983) we can find the place name of "Yadori-shima (Island)" which was used as a port. So, "Harayadori" would also face the sea. The eastern border of Hitachi state, which is present Ibaragi Prefecture in Honshu Island, directly faces the Pacific Ocean as shown in figure 4. Given this information, it is reasonable to conclude that "Haratono-hama" or "Hara-yadori" existed on the eastern long seashore of Hitachi state in 1802.

We next check the names of Ogasawara Izumi or Ogasawara Etchuu-no-kami, whose territory encompasses the area in question. The family name Ogasawara shows that he was in the Guards Division called "Hatamoto" of Tokugawa family i.e., Shogun family. The biographical histories of "Hatamoto" have been well recorded in Japan and its document has been published (Ishii and Ogawa 1989). The name Ogasawara Izumi written in Ume no Chin can be found in this record, but he had no territory in Hitachi state. We can find the name of Ogasawara Etchuu-no-kami and find that his position was "Yoriai" in Tokugawa shogunate with 4500 koku in 1799 in this record. We can also find that he had territories in Hitachi state. These documents agree well with the story of Toen Shousetsu. So we can conclude that Ogasawara Etchou-no-kami really existed in 1803 and had territories in Hitachi state.

Now to identify the positions of his territories in Hitachi state. Territory names and lord names of the territories in Tokugawa period have been well recorded in official documents (Kimura 1980). We can easily find his three territories in Hitachi state. However, all his territories were inland and do not face the Pacific Ocean. Furthermore, no places whose names resemble Haratono-hama or Hara-yadori can be found in his territories. They are not found in Hitachi state in a geographical record of Tokugawa period (Shitanaka 1988), nor are they found in a famous large Japanese geographical dictionary first published in 1907 (Yoshida 1992).

These facts suggest that Haratono-hama or Hara-yadori vanished in Japan before 1907 or that they did not exist. Place names in the Tokugawa period have been well recorded in many documents in Japan. When the place name was changed, the original names can still be traced in the records (Shitanaka 1988). It is difficult to believe that these place names, where an amazing incident occurred, vanished between 1803 and 1907 with no trace even in the Tokugawa period. The only reasonable conclusion is that these names are imaginary.

If we assume that the story is a fiction, we understand that the writer cleverly mixed both imaginary and real names of persons and places to give credibility to the story. Later investigators cannot quickly or easily verify the story due to the imaginary names. This kind of technique is often used in modern April Fool's stories.