Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

170 • MACDONALD, RANALD
South Korean government insisted that Tokdo Island (the Korean
name for Takeshima Island) was under South Korean jurisdiction in
accordance with the Syngman Rhee Line. Japan has refused to recognize
the Syngman Rhee line, which Japan believes was abolished
under the Japan–South Korea Fishery Agreement concluded in 1965.
Nevertheless, the Tokdo–Takeshima island dispute continues to be an
unresolved matter between Japan and South Korea.
MACDONALD, RANALD (1824–1894). Born in Oregon territory
then claimed by the United States, Britain, and Mexico, MacDonald
was the son of a Hudson’s Bay Company executive and a Chinook
Indian woman. He became fascinated with Japan and convinced a
whaling ship to land him near Hokkaido in 1848. Captured by native
Ainu and turned over to officials of the Tokugawa shogunate, Mac-
Donald was sent to Nagasaki to wait for a Western ship. Technically,
MacDonald was under arrest for breaking Japan’s sakoku (“national
isolation”) policies, but was allowed to teach English to samurai interpreters
in Nagasaki. One of the interpreters taught by MacDonald
in Nagasaki was Einosuke Moriyama, who would later be an interpreter
for many negotiations between the Japanese and American
governments until the 1870s. MacDonald spent 10 months in Nagasaki
and was then returned to the United States with some shipwrecked
sailors. He spent the rest of his life as a wandering adventurer
in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the Northwest United States.
His autobiography, Ranald MacDonald: The Narrative of His Life,
contains useful and interesting information about Japan and Nagasaki
before the arrival of U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry. See also
CASTAWAY SAILORS, JAPANESE.
MAEKAWA REPORTS. The Maekawa Report, produced by the economic
structural adjustment study group for international cooperation,
was submitted to Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone on 7 April
1986. This study group consisted of 17 members and was chaired by
Haruo Maekawa, former Governor of the Bank of Japan. On 23 April
1987, the special committee of economic structural adjustment in the
Economic Council, Maekawa published another report (the so-called
New Maekawa Report) that contained provisions for putting the first
Maekawa Report into effect. Together, the two reports argued that