The hollow boat at Hitachi: the Kuki utsuro-bune sheet (1803)
- An Edo-period manuscript of the 1803 'hollow boat' story, from the Okada family papers in Kuki, Saitama.
- It records a 5.5 m bowl-shaped boat, a woman of about 20 holding a box, and four unreadable characters.
- It is hearsay with no named witness; the museum judges it less embellished than other versions.
A sheet titled 'Utsuro-bune no zu' (空舩之図), kept in the papers of the Okada family, village headmen near Kurihashi, records that in early 1803 a hollow boat drifted ashore in Hitachi Province with a young woman inside who spoke an unknown language and clutched a box. The Kuki city museum found it last summer and is showing it for the first time; its study judges this version closer to the original story than the other dozen-plus known copies.
How plausible · Low
A genuine period record of a story told widely at the time, but every version is hearsay and the details grew in later copies.
- ●●Checkable details check out The sheet is on public display and over a dozen other manuscripts exist.
- ●○Independent convergence Many manuscripts agree on the boat, the woman and the box, though they may share one rumour.
- ●○No gain sought A village headman's family papers.
- ●○Fits the documented skeleton Shape and the unknown script recur across versions.
- −Story grew Later versions add imaginative detail; this one less so.
Plausibility weighs how well an account fits where secrecy hides the documents by design, so missing records never count against it. Strength measures what is documented. Assessed 2026-10-28.