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Since the Titanic vanished beneath the frigid waters of tile North Atlantic 85 years ago, nothing in the hundreds of books and films about the ship has ever hinted at a connection to Japan-until now. Director James Cameron’s 200 million epic Titanic premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival last Saturday. Among the audience for a glimpse of Hollywood’s costliest film were descendants of the liner’s only Japanese survivor.
The newly rediscovered diary of Masabumi Hosono has driven Titanic enthusiasts in frenzy. The document is scrawled in 4,300 Japanese characters on a rare piece of RMS Titanic stationery. Written as the Japanese bureaucrat steamed to safety in New York aboard the ocean liner Carpathia, which rescued 706 survivors, the account and other documents released by his grandchildren last week offer a fresh and poignant reminder of the emotional wreckage left by the tragedy.
Hosono, then 42 and an official at Japan’s Transportation Ministry, was studying railway networks in Europe. He hoarded the Titanic in Southampton, enroute home via the US. According to Hosono’s account, he was awakened by a "loud knock" on the door of his second class deck with the steerage passengers. Hosono tried to race back upstairs, but a sailor blocked his way. The Japanese feigned ignorance and pushed past. He arrived on deck to find lifeboats being lowered into darkness, flares bursting over the ship and an eerie human silence. He wrote: "Not a single passenger would howl or scream."
Yet Hosono was screaming inside. Women were being taken to lifeboats and men held back at gunpoint. "I tried to prepare myself for the last moment with no agitation, making up my mind not to do anything disgraceful as a Japanese," he wrote. "But still I found myself looking for and waiting for any possible chance of survival." Then an officer shouted, "Room for two more!" Hosono recalled." I myself was deep in desolate thought that I would no more be able to see my beloved wife and children." Then he jumped into the boat.
When Hosono arrived in Tokyo two months later, he was met with suspicion that he had survived at some- one else’s expense. The culture of shame was especially strong in prewar Japan. In the face of rumors and bad press, Hosono was dismissed from his post in 1914. He worked at the office part-time until retiring in 1923. His grandchildren say he never mentioned the Titanic. again before his death in 19.39.
Even then, shame continued to haunt the family. In newspapers, letters and even a school textbook, Hosono was denounced as a disgrace to japan. Reader’s Digest reopened the wound in 1956 with an abridged Japanese version of Walter Load’s best seller. A Night to Remember, which described "Anglo-Saxons" as acting bravely on the Titanic, while "Frenchmen, Italians, Americans, Japanese and Chinese were disgraceful." Citing his father’s diary, one of Hosono’s sons, Hideo, launched a letter-writing campaign to restore the family name. But nobody in Japan seemed to care.
The diary resurfaced last summer. A representative for a US foundation that plans to hold an exhibition of Titanic artifacts in Japan next August found Hosono’s name on a passenger list. A search led him to Haruomi Hosono, a well-known composer, and to his cousin Yuriko, Hideo’s daughter. She revealed that she had her grandfather’s dairy as well as a collection of his letters and postcards. "I was floored," says Michael Findley, cofounder of the Titanic International Society in the US. "This is a fantastic, fresh new look at the sinking and the only one written on Titanic stationery immediately after the disaster."
The information allows enthusiasts to rearrange some historical minutes, such as which lifeboat Hosono jumped into. More chilling, the account confirms that the crew tried to keep foreigners and third-class passengers on the ship’s lower deck, effectively ensuring their name. The diary cannot correct injustice; but Hosono’s family hopes it will help clear his name. The Titanic foundation also hopes to capitalize on the diary and themovie to promote its upcoming exhibition. To that end, Haruomi Hosono, the composer, has been asked to give a talk at next month’s public premiere of Titanic! The diary cannot, of course, match Cameron’s fictionalized epic for drama and intrigue. But at least Masabumi Hosono’s tale really happened. (719)
What important role did the diary really play