For reviews and extracts please see below.
Diplomat and long-distance cruiser Nicholas Coghlan had been curious about Japan ever since his father, a veteran of infantry fighting in Italy and Greece, confessed to him a dread of being sent to the Japanese front when the war in Europe ended in the Spring of 1945.
Sailing to the Heart of Japan is a voyage of personal discovery as the author’s preconceptions are challenged. It’s also a unique account of one of the world’s least-known but most attractive cruising destinations.
Starting from New Zealand, Nicholas and his partner Jenny navigate Bosun Bird, their Vancouver 27, north through Pacific Island nations where memories of war linger. They make their landfall on Kyushu, in southwestern Japan. Over a period of fifteen months, they venture to the remote and depopulated archipelago of Goto Retto in the East China Sea, through Kanmon Kaikyo narrows and into the island-studded Inland Sea.
Everywhere – from Kagoshima to Tokyo Bay – Bosun Bird and her crew are met with astonishing kindness and thoughtful conversation. Travel by “yotto” allows them glimpses of an enigmatic land that are rarely offered to more conventional visitors.
The book comprises 242 pages, including 54 black and white illustrations (in colour in the e-version), nine maps and detailed descriptions of over 60 anchorages/mooring locations, complete with GPS coordinates, tips on weather and advice on navigating Japanese bureaucracy.
Sailing to the Heart of Japan is available in softback and electronic versions from all the usual outlets, notably: Sailing to the Heart of Japan: A Cruising Adventure and How-To Guide.
Reviews
Sailing Today / Yachts and Yachting
Canadian Foreign Service Alumni Bulletin (FORUM) – November 2024
This book recounts the 2011-2012 voyage of Nick and Jenny Coghlan from Opua, New Zealand to Kodiak, Alaska via Japan and its famed Inland Sea (Seto Naikai). Their boat was the tiny cutter-rigged Bosun Bird, a 26 foot long, well travelled, Vancouver 27. The book is an enjoyable and perceptive piece of serious travel writing with relevant asides and observations sprinkled throughout the lightly-worn text.
First, the sailing. With two serious stretches of the Pacific Ocean traversed, from New Zealand to Kagoshima, Japan and from Shimoda to Kodiak, Alaska one has the sense that the sailing challenges were much more substantive than Nick makes out. He was lucky to have had a knowledgeable and forgiving crew in his wife Jenny, who clearly got the pair through some tough moments. Anyone who has pulled on a musty, wet and smelly wet weather suit in the middle of a storm knows only too well that such devotion goes well beyond what can be expected. Nick was very lucky to have her along.
Even the somewhat more protected waters of Japan offered their fair share of challenges to the yachting couple. Shipping lanes, fishing boats, ferries, concrete harbours, islands, rocks, currents, fish and seaweed farms and oyster beds constantly threw obstacles in their way. It’s obvious that they operated as a team and their journey was much better for it.
Second, Japan. Nick makes no pretentious to being a Japan hand. He spoke virtually no Japanese, could read virtually no kanji, had not visited Japan before and had a father who refused to visit Japan based on a decades-old prejudice. And yet Nick is a perceptive observer who asks the right questions, notices the relevant trends and tries hard not to be overly judgemental.
Reaching Japan at the southern-most island of Kyushu, Nick immediately notices the depopulation of rural areas (particularly the far-off islands) that has devastated non-urban Japan. The strangulation of small towns, the aging populations, the lack of prospects for the young and the flight to the cities crop up time and time again as Nick and Jenny work their way through the beauty of the Inland Sea. So does the senseless bureaucracy, the antiquated system of open and closed ports, the acceptance that just because something was done one way, it always will be thus, even if it makes no sense at all. Nick and Jenny do not rail against the system, they accept it and move forward, although often with a sense of irony or a wistfulness of what might have been.
Japan should be, but is not, a yachting paradise. Too much concrete, sea weed and oyster beds, fishing boats and bureaucracy. Places such as the Inland Sea offer some of the most stunning cruising coastline anywhere. But what saves the situation is the decency, generosity and open-heartedness of the Japanese yachting community. This shines through time and time again. Wherever Nick and Jenny go they are met with kindness and a desire to make the visit of these foreigners to Japan as pleasant as possible.
[This is] a book that is insightful, perceptive, occasionally funny and an honest introduction to a voyage rarely undertaken.
John Sloan
John Sloan is a sailor (although not of the ocean-going variety) and finished his foreign service career in 2013 as Canada’s ambassador to the Russian Federation, Armenia and Uzbekistan. He had two postings to Japan (nine years in total) speaks Japanese and as a beginning language student in the 1970s, spent two weeks wandering around the Inland Sea.
Tidings magazine, Royal Cruising Club (UK) – autumn 2024
This is a well-researched and well written read for those with or without intention to sail in Japan. It is packed with interesting cultural insights, and lots of historical context. It paints a picture of the friendliness and generosity that the Coghlan’s found in Japan, and which we experienced five years later when we cruised here.
Their journey for this leg of their travels on Bosun Bird a Vancouver 27’, started in Opua, New Zealand, taking them north through Vanuatu, which the reader hears was ‘always what I’d hoped the Pacific would be like’.
A night time intruder with a machete must have coloured their experiences in the Solomon Islands, and their route onwards through Micronesia and Guam, both occupied by the Japanese in WW2 were a leap back into American culture.
First greetings in Japan were fairly onerous officialdom, cruising permits and paperwork, (hugely simplified since). The continued use of FAX, and carbon copies of multiple paperwork gives a less high-tech picture of Japan!
They found they were a rare species as a yacht, not normal tourists, and frequently needing advice and help, which somehow gave an entrée into people’s lives. They experienced huge kindness and time and again were welcomed into people’s homes.
Nicholas recounts how two men worked on their gearbox for a day, and finally solved the problem, but refused any payment; this replicates our experiences, as do the unsolicited cans of beer and presents left on board by unknown locals.
The culture of the Onsen or Sento, the hot public baths is ubiquitous, and the lack of inhibition soon acquired! The ageing and rapidly declining population, an empty school with a full quota of staff and only two pupils seems particularly strange.
Sailing in Japan one discovers is not about anchoring in deserted bays, but endlessly tying up against rough harbour walls, with a large tidal range. The Japanese love affair with concrete has subjugated the coastline to endless sea walls, and concrete harbours, making anchoring options very limited.
The Coghlan’s experienced a couple of serious typhoons while they were there, and those concrete harbour walls gave perfect shelter. Typhoon Talas killed 77 people but was treated with a degree of nonchalance as an everyday occurrence, people cared and helped those affected, but such is life. A selective memory of recent history, and a blanking of any type of confrontation all seem to contribute to the Japanese character.
The Pacific High refused to move north and give benign westerlies, but in late June Bosun Bird left Japan on the onerous passage NW to Alaska. They chose the long route to Kodiak Island 3,471nm, 43 days of damp and fog and for a couple of days bare poles in 40 knots, accompanied by sea birds and albatross. Standard stuff for that passage, but they must have been very relieved to arrive in Kodiak!
The appendix is full of useful comprehensive harbour information, very hard to obtain in Japan, with waypoints for guidance The book is a good read, traces much of the Japanese history in WW2, and the idiosyncrasies of cruising in Japanese waters of the Inland Sea. Hopefully it will inspire many more yachts to go there.
JTW
Pacific Yachting – November 2024
Currents Magazine, Bluewater Cruising Association, Vancouver – September 2024
Here’s a review from the Bluewater Cruising Association’s Currents magazine,
Those of you in BCA who have read Nick’s other books, Adventures in Fireland and Collapse of a Country, will recognize his voice in this meticulously researched book accompanied by explanatory maps. Reaching beyond obvious cultural differences from our Western perspective, he achieves an almost amazing affinity with his subjects.
It’s a serious work, but you will still laugh a lot. Nick displays a robust sense of humour, and you will be both instructed and entertained as he and his wife/Admiral, Jenny, sail their Vancouver 27 sailboat Bosun Bird on the 10,000 NM voyage from Opua, New Zealand to Japan, and then on to Kodiak, Alaska.
In their first stop, at the islands of Vanuatu, he tells about the language, Bislama, which was adopted as the official tongue in 1980. It includes such “real, colorful and expressive terms” as bagarup, meaning broken (from buggered up), and basket blong titti, meaning bra.
Some exotic religions appear, such as the cult of Jon Frum in Tanna. J.F. followers are arranged in ‘companies’. They attend meetings which incorporate the American flag, military-style parades, and music with banjos, drums, and singing, all taking place under the enigmatic banner of a red cross. In the Solomon Island of Pohnpei, the mostly dormant religion of Mu has re-surfaced with its version of a mythical Atlantis. Meanwhile, the rivalries between Christian faiths plague some islands. Lamentably, one faith prohibits eating the most delicious local seafood: shellfish and crustaceans.
Nick explains how the Solomon Islands got their name. When the late 16th Century Spanish explorer Alvaro de Mendaña got to Santa Cruz, he imagined this city to be the site of King Solomon’s mines. The name stuck, but “alas, there was no gold.”
Nick has a cautionary tale for those who’d like to cruise forever. “Every morning a group of five or six old white guys, most of them generous around the girth and florid … would install themselves at the same table at the Santa Cruz yacht club in Honoria. The topics were always the same: the place had gone to hell; the locals were thieves; the Solomons had no future; the beer was piss.”
Bosun Bird took the pair through islands known to us from the War in the Pacific. These stepping stones (from Guam and Guadalcanal) would lead the American forces through arduous fighting to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombs ended the War in the Pacific, but many artifacts still remain.
Once in Japan, Nick and Jenny encountered mostly helpful and interested people. They made many friends who introduced them to the language with its scripts, to temples and religions, and to Japanese food and customs. Learning to strip and enter the steaming hot and (mostly) segregated nude Onsen and Sento baths led to several hilarious unscripted moments. Nick portrays this male-dominated culture in a few telling encounters. When asked why Japanese females are permitted into the Male side, but males cannot enter the Female side, he is told it’s because females “don’t drink” (meaning alcohol). This also explains why Jenny was offered only orange juice unless she was forward and asked for the beer and wine that was freely flowing to the men. Another friend explained the fact that mostly “Japanese man don’t cook – only sushi chef!”
Of course, the women show some resentment to their men by calling them sodai gomi. “In recycling posters, this phrase is used for items like large, broken refrigerators or sofas. Annoyed Japanese housewives use it to describe their couch potato retired husbands who lie around the house while the wives are busy vacuuming and dusting.”
Most Japanese people don’t sail away: a person who leaves the culture is thought of as a rebel. In a rare, museum-type setting, two quite small sailboats that had actually sailed offshore were proudly displayed. Nick asked the curator about it. “He took some time before replying: Yes, you see for a Japanese man (or woman) it is still not usual to break away. You know the saying ‘The nail that sticks up gets hammered down?’”
The modernization – and often Americanization – of much of the world continues in Japan. Pop bands; anime; karaoke; pachinko parlours; a two-thirds replica of Venice’s St Mark’s Cathedral as an exhibit; the airport in Kitakyushu built on artificial land; vast seaweed farms which impair boating; recycling; the giant Iron Man #28: the list goes on. The famed red Tori gate seen in many posters of Japan was difficult for Nick to photograph because of an infestation of jet skis surrounding it.
Japan is experiencing massive de-population. On the island of Shodo Shima, only the re-positioning of the local school as a tourist attraction brings any money. Tourists here are contemporary, retired Japanese folks, nostalgically revisiting their early school years with chalkboards and slates. In Kabashima, the bureaucracy has a huge problem in maintaining two schools. At the Elementary school, the Coghlans met the only student, Kenji. He and his teacher Hideki would both graduate to be the only people at the Junior High School. “Of course, it is very expensive”, Hideki admitted. “But the law says every child has the right to go to school, so we keep the schools open.”
The first Gaijin (white westerner) to appear in Japan was William Adams (1564-1620), from Britain. He was known as Anjin San to the Japanese and worked as a trader employed by the Dutch East India Company. His story is featured in James Clavell’s novel Shogun. Christianity had a start in Japan with the arrival of St. Francis Xavier in 1596. Although it was only openly permitted for a short time, Christianity survived ‘underground’ for 200 years. In contrast, the Shinto and Buddhist religions and their temples form an important part of Japan’s cultural history and this book. Nick and Jenny walked to the top of Mount Misen on the island of Shikoku. They found a small wooden temple smoke-blackened by a flame that had (apparently) been kept burning for over 1,000 years, kept up by acolytes of the monk Kobo Daishi. He formed this sect of Shingon Buddhism after a trip to China in 804. He lit the fire on his return to Japan, and it is still burning.
The intricacies of sailing Japan with its Closed and Open Ports are detailed and de-mystified in the book. You want to avoid any mistakes as retribution could follow. If you enter a Closed Port without permission, for example, a rule states that “The captain shall be punished by imprisonment with work for not more than two years, or by a fine of 10,000 yen”. Nick’s book contains an extensive appendix: Notes for Japan tells you all you need to know. You can avoid this fate and many potential pitfalls with the help of this book!
About The Reviewer (Mary Anne Unrau)
Mary Anne has sailed 114,800 miles. Together with her husband Laurence, Mary Anne has crossed every meridian and reached latitudes from 65 S on the Antarctic Peninsula to 80 N at the northwest tip of Spitsbergen. Ports of Call have included such diverse spots as Pitcairn, South Georgia, Hamburg, Darwin and the Northwest Passage with lots of places between. In 2013 Mary Anne and Laurence sailed from St. Katharines Marina, London in late March and voyaged to Victoria, British Columbia in October via south English ports, the Irish Sea, the Hebrides, Iceland, Greenland, the Northwest Passage and Alaska. Their most recent voyage started and ended from with a departure from the Causeway Marina, Victoria in mid-April 2014 in a North Pacific circuit with stops in Mexico, Hawaii, King Cove Alaska and a return to Victoria heading south from a Canadian landfall in Prince Rupert.
Yachting Monthly – October 2024
University of Oxford Alumni Magazine (QUAD)- September 2024
Ahoy Cruise News – July 2024
BC BookLook – June 2024
Extracts
Canadian Foreign Service Alumni Bulletin (FORUM) – November 2024
Sailing Today (UK) – November 2024
SailWorld Cruising – June 2024
Here’s an extract from Sailing to the Heart of Japan (Chapter Four – Kagoshima and kamikazes – southern Kyushu) that describes our first landfall in Japan, with additional photos that don’t appear in the book.