Mamiya Rinzō (間宮 林蔵; 1775 – 13 April 1844) was a Japaneseexplorer of the lateEdo period. He is best known for his exploration of Karafuto, now known asSakhalin. He mapped areas of northeast Asia then unknown to Japanese.
Mamiya was born in 1775 inTsukuba District,Hitachi Province, in what is nowTsukubamirai,Ibaraki Prefecture. Later in life he would become an undercover agent for theTokugawa shogunate. He is best known for his exploration and mapping of Sakhalin (known to the Japanese as 樺太,Karafuto), which resulted in his discovery that Sakhalin was indeed an island and not connected to theAsian continent, although this had already been documented byJean-François de La Pérouse in 1787, who charted most of theStrait of Tartary. The strait would later be named after him in Japan as the Mamiya Strait.[1]
In 1785 Japanese explorers almost reached theStrait of Tartary to the west,Cape Patience to the east andUrup in the Kurils. In 1808 Mamiya sailed up the east coast and Matsuda Denjuro up the west coast. From near Cape Patience, Mamiya crossed the mountains to join Matsuda. The next year Mamiya sailed into the mouth of theAmur River and reached a Chinese trading post.
In 1828, he became a subordinate of Sadayuki Muragaki, the accounting magistrate, and investigated various parts of the country in secret for the shogunate, grasped the reality of smuggling in the Sekishu Hamada clan, and reported it toSadakazu Yabe, the magistrate of Osaka town. Engaged in activities such as leading to the arrest of the suspects (Takeshima Incident). Also, the Siebold Incident occurred in the same year.
In 1852 Mamiya's maps were published in Europe byPhilipp Franz von Siebold.
Although Japan believed that Mamiya had no child, it was announced in 2002 that he had had a daughter with anAinu woman, and their descendants were living inHokkaido.[2]He also had a son, Rinzo Mamiya, who was “Yoshi”, adopted by the Michishita family to carry on their namesake. The son, Rinzo had 3 sons: Tatsuzo, Senkichi and Yosaburo, and 3 daughters: who married Torisu, Yamaguchi and Nakamura. Yosaburo Michishita emigrated to America where his name was truncated to Mita. His 2 sons Naoto and Yoshiyo carried that name forward.
Naoto married Kimiye Tanaka and had one daughter, Louise. Yoshiyo married Ritsu Kaneta and had one daughter, Kathryn. Ironically, there was no male child to carry on the Mita name.
Mamiya is portrayed as one of the two main villains in the manga seriesShin Kozure Okami (NewLone Wolf and Cub). In this version, he is the chief henchman ofMatsudaira Nobutsuna (and his natural son) and a master of disguise who assumes different identities after murdering the original persons. He is also possibly even more ruthless that Matsudaira, subverting various ninja groups for his own use and usingopium as a means of ensnaring and controlling various people, including the Shogun. While Mamiya's historical explorations are mentioned, in this version they have been for a more malign purpose than mere exploration.
Graphic novel writerSean Michael Wilson featured Mamiya in a biography released as a graphic novel ("Mamiya's Maps: A Samurai Explores Sakhalin").
