Japan

Japan is represented chiefly through Yokohama, a Pacific port where Passepartout finds himself stranded after losing contact with Phileas Fogg. The city’s crowded harbor and sharply contrasted European and Japanese quarters make it a place of transit and uncertainty: Passepartout must find help, but first attempts to manage alone among streets and customs he does not know.

A port between worlds

At dawn on November 13, the Carnatic entered Yokohama’s harbor in the Bay of Yeddo. The port served mail steamers and travelers moving between North America, China, Japan, and the islands of the Orient; ships displaying many nations’ flags crowded the quay by the custom-house. Yokohama is thus introduced not as an isolated destination but as a junction in an expanding network of ocean travel.

The city’s first district that Passepartout encounters is European in character. Its low-fronted houses have verandas and neat peristyles, while streets, squares, docks, and warehouses fill the space between the Treaty promontory and the river. Merchants from many backgrounds mingle there, ready to buy or sell. Yet the international bustle does not make Passepartout feel at home: surrounded by people, he feels profoundly alone.

Benten and the city’s streets

Rather than immediately seek the French or English consuls, Passepartout hesitates to tell them a story so closely bound up with his master’s adventures. He decides to exhaust other possibilities first, leaves the European quarter, and enters Benten, the Japanese quarter named for the sea goddess worshipped on nearby islands. His wandering carries him through groves of fir and cedar, distinctive sacred gates, bridges screened by bamboo and reeds, and temples shaded by immense cedar trees.

The account places religious sites and everyday street life alongside one another. Buddhist priests and followers of Confucius occupy sheltered retreats; processions move through crowded streets to the sound of tambourines; children play among small dogs and cats. Police and customs officers wear lacquered pointed hats and carry two swords, while soldiers and guards appear in differing uniforms and armor. The city is presented as a dense public scene, where religious, military, and civilian figures share the same streets.

Passepartout’s isolation and the narrative gaze

Yokohama’s vividness contrasts with Passepartout’s precarious situation. He has no money, although his passage has been paid, and only five or six days to decide what to do next. He eats heartily and tries to postpone asking the consuls for help, but his aimless movement through the city is not confident exploration: it is a search for a way forward while separated from Fogg and Aouda.

The descriptions also reveal the limits of the novel’s travel perspective. Yokohama is made legible to the reader through inventories of architecture, dress, religion, and human types, and the narrator emphasizes difference by comparing Japan with China and with Passepartout’s European expectations. These observations give the city a strong visual presence, but they remain organized around the visitor’s gaze rather than local voices. Japan consequently functions both as a real point on the journey’s maritime route and as a place the narrative renders through the estrangement of a foreign traveler.

Place in the journey

After the Tankadere signals for assistance near Shanghai, Fogg pays John Bunsby the agreed fare and an additional five hundred and fifty pounds. He boards the steamer with Aouda and Fix, and they set out for Nagasaki and Yokohama. They reach their destination on the morning of November 14; Fogg promptly goes aboard the Carnatic, where he learns news that delights Aouda. The return to the ship reconnects Yokohama’s port setting to the party’s larger itinerary, while the earlier arrival there has shown what the journey looks like from the perspective of a companion temporarily left behind.