Kanrin-maru Festival

When Commodore Perry with four black ships under his command arrived off Uraga in this city in 1853, the Tokugawa Shogunate government under its isoiation policy realized the importance of building up its own navy force and ordered the Dutch government to build a warship. It was the Kanrin-maru (49 meters in length, with 12 canons and three masts). It sailed out from the Netherlands in 1857 and, in September of that year, arrived in Nagasaki where it was used as a training ship. The ship produced various great people; Katsu Kaishu, Enomoto Takeaki and other important persons who built up the basis of Japan's modernization.

After the Japan-U.S. Commerce and Trade Agreement was signed in 1858, the Kanrin-maru under the commander of Kimura Settsunokami, carrying a Japanese mission to exchange documents of the ratification of the treaty in1860. Among the mission members were Katsu Kaishu, Fukuzawa Yukichi and John Manjiro.

Leaving Uraga Port on January 19 under the lunar calendar, the Kanrin-maru showed its Japanese flag at the mouth of San Francisco Bay after a 37-day voyage. The Epitaph of the Kanrin-maru's Departure was built in 1960 to commemorate the feat of the first Japanese warship's trans-Pacific voyage. In San Francisco, there is an epitaph commemorating the Kanrin-maru's arrival. The Kanrin-maru Festival has been held in May every year since 1974 as a major event of Yokosuka.