Gonza (; ) (1718?–1739), sometimes also Gonzo, was a Japanese castaway who drifted ashore together with Sōza (; ), sometimes also Sozo, in the environs of

Kamchatka The Kamchatka Peninsula (, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and western coastlines, respectively. Immediately offshore along the Pacific ...

in 1729, after the wreck of their ship, the from

Satsuma Satsuma may refer to: * Satsuma (fruit), a citrus fruit * ''Satsuma'' (gastropod), a genus of land snails Places Japan * Satsuma, Kagoshima, a Japanese town * Satsuma District, Kagoshima, a district in Kagoshima Prefecture * Satsuma Domain, a ...

. The fifteen survivors from the two ships that went down were set upon by a contingent of

Cossacks The Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic languages, East Slavic Eastern Christian people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. Cossacks played an important role in defending the southern borde ...

under Andrei Shtinnikov: thirteen were killed, Gonza and Sōza enslaved. Shtinnikov was later jailed and then executed for his pains. In 1733 or 1734 the pair were taken to

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

, where they were presented to

Empress Anna Anna Ioannovna (; ), also russified as Anna Ivanovna and sometimes anglicized as Anne, served as regent of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia from 1711 until 1730 and then ruled as Empress of Russia from 1730 to 1740. Much of her administration ...

and baptised into the Orthodox Church, Gonza taking the name of Damian Pomortsev (Дамиан Поморцев), or "from the seashore", Soza that of Kozma Shultz (Козьма Шульц). Under the supervision of assistant librarian Andrei Bogdanov, who taught them Russian, from 1736 the pair were set to work teaching at the new school of Japanese at the Academy of Sciences, Dembei's school having closed some time before. Kozma died aged forty-three later the same year. Damian died aged twenty-one three years later, leaving behind a grammar, an anthology, and a reader, all printed in Russian. The school itself was restocked with shipwrecked Japanese in the 1740s, relocated to

Irkutsk Irkutsk ( ; rus, Иркутск, p=ɪrˈkutsk; Buryat language, Buryat and , ''Erhüü'', ) is the largest city and administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. With a population of 587,891 Irkutsk is the List of cities and towns in Russ ...

in 1753, and continued to function until 1816.

References

{{Reflist Castaways Japanese emigrants to Russia 1710s births 1739 deaths Japan–Russia relations People of the Edo period

See also

References